Warning: contains spoilers for Weapon X-Men #4!!The Marvel Universe is filled to bursting with timelines where all manner of terrible things befall its heroes, from zombie invasions to heroes-turned-supervillains. Despite all the horror and tragedy, there is a pocket of pure good out there in the multiverse. But now that Old Man Logan has discovered the “place of happy endings”, others may seek to destroy everything it has built, turning the best timeline to rubble.
In Weapon X-Men #4, by Christos Gage, Yıldıray Çınar, Nolan Woodard, and Clayton Cowles, multiple incarnations of Wolverine and Onslaught track Old Man Logan to a new timeline, where he engineers a confrontation between Onslaught and the Phoenix. In an attempt to best Phoenix, Onslaught threatens to destroy this reality, telling her it offers happy endings to all the X-Men’s friends and allies, stating, “You might call this world a place of happy endings.”
Not only does the revelation give Phoenix pause, but it opens up a whole host of possibilities. Happiness is a tenuous thing. Now that the contented timeline has been found, discovery could yield danger. After all, Marvel has always loved to bring its heroes’ contentment crashing to the ground.
It’s comforting to think of long-suffering characters living their days in peace and contentment, but doing so leaves them susceptible to the horrors lurking in the multiverse. Marvel has a tendency to blow up its characters’ happy endings, and not just because their mainstream stories need to be ongoing. Destroying a world or beloved location is an effective way to set up a big bad, and now that the perfect world exists, it will be tempting for future creative teams to use it as fodder for establishing the power level of some future cosmic villain.
Moreover, the timeline itself is an easy target. Many heroes are much older, suggesting the usual teams are in their golden years. They have no reason to fight, begging the question of whether they still can. Their resilience and skill were born of adversity; if everyone gets a happy ending, that drive has effectively been removed. It remains unclear who stepped up in their place, or if there is anything left to save the world from, but it is likely not a place of soldiers and active heroes. Fortunately, it gains two defenders as Old Man Logan and Jean ‘Old Lady Phoenix’ Grey choose to stay.
With Logan and Jean electing to explore the world, positioning them to stave off possible attacks, there is hope for its preservation. While its destruction would be dramatic, the intact timeline would be an even more novel concept in a multiverse full of suffering. In world after world, the X-Men, Avengers, and other heroes take on the unimaginable. They’ve more than earned happiness, and there are too many other timelines where they’re robbed of it. With the discovery of Marvel’s happiest timeline, its days could be numbered, but the multiverse is better off with one bright spot.
Weapon X-Men #4 is available now from Marvel Comics.