The X-Men are no strangers to time travel shenanigans. In fact, I’d say at least half of their most famous stories revolve around being in or averting some apocalyptic future. From the classic “Days of Future Past” to the “Age of Revelation” celebrating thirty years since the “Age of Apocalypse,” the X-Men have jumped through time and dealt with dark histories more so than most time-travel-focused heroes. Heck, Cable and Bishop alone are fantastic characters that wouldn’t exist without this style of story, and there’s way more where they came from. The X-Men have visited or been visited by so many dark timelines that it makes one wonder which of these end-of-times scenarios are the worst of the worst.
With all that said, today, we’re going to be taking a look at five of the X-Men’s worst potential futures and rank them based on how disastrous they are. For context, we’re only counting dark alternate futures, not What If stories or different worlds, although all of these become different worlds in the multiverse at some point. Also, we’re only looking at the future presented in its original story, as including every, often conflicting, addition done after the fact would needlessly bloat everything. Rules established, let’s dive into the worst futures the X-Men could face.
5) “Days of Future Past”
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It feels wrong to put the X-Men’s most classic and important alternate future in last place, especially considering how dark it is. The Sentinel Program, built to “protect” humans from mutants, inevitably led to the robots subjugating the entire United States, seeing mutants as their enemies and humans as potential mutants. It was averted on the eve of the rest of the world nuking the United States to prevent the Sentinels from spreading, and people were kept in concentration camps as slaves. However, as dark as this future is, it only affects the United States, whereas the rest of these realities have much larger reaches and much more death.
4) “Age of Apocalypse”
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After the insane Legion traveled back in time to kill Magneto but wound up murdering Professor Xavier, the world was altered. In this new reality, Apocalypse took over the entire North American continent. The mad mutant subjugated humanity, not only forcibly instilling a horrific caste system where mutants lorded as superior at birth, but also regularly holding cullings that murdered millions of people. This reality showed exactly how dark things could be without the guiding light of Professor X’s dream of a better tomorrow, and how brutal a monster like Apocalypse could be. Still, it takes fourth because there was a fighting chance that, ultimately, stood a good chance at winning.
3) “Here Comes Tomorrow”
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This averted future came as the conclusion to Grant Morrison’s legendary run on New X-Men. Set one hundred and fifty years from the present day, it saw the world in tatters. Humanity was all but extinct, and mutantkind wasn’t far behind, the few remaining dystopian countries constantly at war with one another. It was all orchestrated by Sublime, a hivemind of the first genetic, microscopic beings that evolved on Earth. They nearly succeeded in wiping out the Earth and remaking reality in their horrible image with the powers of the Phoenix, but were stopped by Jean Grey at the last second. Still, the damage was done, with most of the X-Men dead and life on planet Earth on its last legs.
2) “Age of Revelation”
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The newest dark future earned its place on this list because it’s one of the few realities where things never improve, but only get worse. Revelation, the heir of Apocalypse, gifted with the ability to alter reality with his words, started by taking over the United States and unleashing a gene bomb that either transformed people into mutants, murdered them, or left them as unrecognizable monsters. It only got worse when his master plan was revealed. He converted the entire world into an extension of himself, fusing every living thing and the planet itself into Revelation. In this future, Revelation won, and life as we know it ceased to be in every capacity. All that was left was Revelation’s twisted mind.
1) Powers of X
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Powers of X kickstarted the Krakoan Age of the X-Men by revealing that longtime ally Moira MacTaggert was actually a mutant with the power to restart her life whenever she died. She worked tirelessly to avoid the dark future depicted in her sixth life, where she learned what she saw as the inevitable future of mutants and humans coexisting. In an effort to stave off being replaced, humanity merged totally with machines, becoming something far more and far less than human. These techo-organic post-humans lost their emotion, only dedicated to collecting knowledge so that, one day, join the Phalanx, which is an intergalactic-sixed artificial intelligence.
If Moira had never died in this reality, then what remained of life on Earth would have been absorbed by the Phalanx. Humanity and all of its branches would have become things of the past. This reality, to me, is the darkest because it functioned under the idea that the only inevitability for mutants and humans is war until humanity loses its heart. Machines take over everything, wiping out all love and joy and everything that makes us human. The end result is information without feeling, living without life, forever.
So there we have the five darkest timelines that the X-Men have ever averted! Which of these horrible dystopias is your favorite, and which one do you think is the worst possible outcome? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!