In the last issue of Empyre: X-Men, a resurrected mutant finds his zombie body and has a talk, which raises disturbing questions.
WARNING: The following contains spoilers for Empyre: X-Men #4 by Jonathan Hickman, Jorge Molina, Lucas Weneck, Adriano Di Benedetto, Nolan Woodard, Rachelle Rosenberg, & VC’s Clayton Cowles, on sale now.
The final issue of Empyre: X-Men concluded with an explosive finale that saw the introduction of a dead mutant child who helped save the day. Hank McCoy, Beast, stole some technology from the Hordeculture ladies and used it to create his own doors and pathways into Krokoa. With a wry smile, he called himself the Devil and then invited a young man to come through the door. This mutant was Explodey Boy, and Beast asked him to be careful because this was “no place for a reckless young man,” especially one with the mutant ability to explode.
Explodey Boy promised to stay out of trouble and flew into the middle of the fight. It was then that he saw what he was looking for, landed on the ground by a zombie, and asked how he was doing. Explodey Boy was talking to himself — the dead zombie version of himself. The two made small talk for a while as the battle raged on around the,. Eventually, the now resurrected Explodey Boy explained what he had been up to since his resurrection.
Explodey Boy tells his zombie self that he has been dead for a while, and then he was somehow brought back to life. Then the resurrected Explodey Boy explained how he was there. He told his zombie self that mutants conquered death and figured out how to bring people back. After their talk, including talking about his first kiss and the fact that the mutant medical advances helped cure his dad’s arthritis, zombie Explodey Boy decided he needed to be a hero and blew up a Cotati plant monster.
When House of X started, mutants like Jean Grey, Cyclops, Angel, and more rose from the dead, resurrected with the new mutant knowledge of how to bring any mutant back from the dead thanks to the storage of their memories and personalities (with plenty of backups). The problem is, this never sounded like a real resurrection, and in this issue, there was one throwaway line spoken by Explodey Boy that supports this.
“You’ve been dead a little while — well, we — but specifically your body. Somehow you get brought back — we’re working out how — but even though you did get brought back, you’re not really us … Because you’re dead.”
This is where things get strange. If Explodey Boy is dead and this is his zombie-self, that could mean that the new body he is in is nothing more than a cloned body filled with memories and the powers of the former mutant. If this is true, then it means that these resurrected mutants do not have the souls of the originals, and they are nothing more than soulless reanimated clones.
For now, it seems that the real Cyclops, Jean Grey, and more are resurrected and were brought back to life. However, if it turns out that they are just cloned bodies filled with memories and powers, it means the original heroes may be dead or otherwise incapacitated, and all that remains are soulless husks that only look like the real X-Men.
