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As the X-Men’s Inferno rages on, Marvel’s mutants elect two new leaders, and one hero could be a traitor who could turn the X-Men’s future into ash.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Inferno #2, available now from Marvel Comics.
Marvel’s mutant nation Krakoa is in a quiet state of crisis. Even though mutants laid claim to Mars and the X-Men reformed as the heroic public face of mutants, the cracks in Krakoa’s façade have been forming for months, as the seemingly inevitable extinction of mutants looms large over the horizon. To complicate matters, the Quiet Council, Krakoa’s self-appointed group of leaders, has had two vacancies.
And in Jonathan Hickman, Valerio Schiti, Stefano Caselli, David Curiel and Joe Sabino Inferno #2, the Quiet Council elects to fill those two vacancies with the resurrected precognitive mutant Destiny and the veteran hero Colossus. Despite the latter’s heroic history, Piotr Rasputin may very well be the harbinger of Krakoa’s doom.
Mystique’s late wife, Destiny, was resurrected and returned to public life in Inferno #1. Despite the wishes of the secret Krakoa mastermind Moira MacTaggert, Mystique quietly facilitated Destiny’s resurrection through Krakoa’s resurrection protocols. After nursing her back to health and helping her acclimate to the modern Marvel Universe, the shapeshifter made deals with various members of the Quiet Council to ensure Destiny’s election to it.
Despite Moira, Magneto and Charles Xavier’s objections, Destiny makes some degree of sense as a Quiet Council member. In the 1980s, she was a fairly prominent mutant leader with Mystique on the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and her powers offer potentially invaluable glimpses of the future. Although she once urged Mystique to burn Krakoa down if she wasn’t resurrected, those instructions were contingent on her not being alive. While she’s still no friend to Moira, Destiny may be serving what she sees as the best interests of mutantkind.
Although his election might seem more innocuous at first, Colossus represents a far greater danger to the sustainability of Krakoa, even if he doesn’t realize it.
After being sidelined by an injury early in the Krakoa era, Colossus has largely kept to the periphery of Krakoa’s larger goings-on. Even as his brother Mikhail Rasputin led a rival mutant faction in Russia and teamed up with the mutant-hating group XENO in X-Force, the steel-skinned X-Man was content to live a quiet life of farming and painting with his partner Kayla.
As revealed in X-Force #24, by Benjamin Percy, Martin Coccolo, Guru-eFX and Joe Caramagna, Mikhail turned Colossus into an unwitting spy through the Chronicler, a mutant who could remotely control Colossus’ thoughts and actions. When Kayla found the paintings of valuable intel Colossus had been compelled to create, Mikhail made the X-Man kill his beloved, seemingly moments before Xavier invited him onto the Quiet Council.
From a tactical standpoint, Colossus represents the ultimate security threat. As a member of the Quiet Council, Colossus will have access to almost all of Krakoa’s state secrets and high-level discussions, and he’ll doubtlessly be used to bring that information back to Mikhail, XENO and potentially other anti-mutant groups.
Although Destiny had enough foresight to vote against Colossus joining the Quiet Council, none of the other Quiet Council members seem to realize what’s going on. However, Beast thought Colossus could’ve been working with his brother when Mikhail first emerged as a threat. In Percy, Bazaluda, Guru-eFX and Caramagna’s X-Force #12, Beast and X-Force made a public show of taking Colossus into custody for questioning. However, a psychic interrogation by Jean Grey seemingly confirmed Colossus’ innocence.
In a cruel, ironic twist, Xavier and the X-Men on the Quiet Council voted for Colossus’ admission because they said that they could trust him implicitly. While many of the heroic mutants had called Colossus a close friend and trusted ally for years, the experience with Beast’s apparent false accusation likely underscored Colossus’ trustworthiness. While the X-Men’s trust in their friend is not misplaced, forces far beyond his control have turned him into the traitor he was accused of being.
Despite his inherently gentle nature, Colossus has endured as much familial tragedy as a character from classic Russian literature. But with his new position of power and influence, Colossus’ latest tragedy may be the tipping point for the fall of all of Marvel’s mutants.
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