Contains spoilers for Guardians (2024) #1! X-Men The newest team of complex villains has made it their mission to capture the worst of mutantkind, but they may just have bitten off more than they can handle with the return of one of the franchise’s most powerful villains, who once defeated, among others, the Hulk. If the Avengers had to risk their lives to win the first time, do these traumatized soldiers stand a chance?
New X-Men book Guardians (2024) has just revealed the terrifying villain they’ll have to face, as seen by new team member Drumfire Onslaught after the first activation of their new abilities.
Onslaught, perhaps the ultimate comic book villain of the 1990s, is a psychic created from all of Professor X’s worst thoughts and impulses, crossed with Magneto’s own evil. In the famous Onslaught saga, only the apparent sacrifice of all the Avengers and the Fantastic Four were able to stop it, meaning the new cyborg Guardians will have to do the job.
Connected
Sentinels marks the return of Onslaught, the main X-Men villain of the 1990s.
Guardians follows the adventures of the titular team of cyborg soldiers who are supposedly the successors to the classic mutant-hunting robots Sentinel. Led by Lawrence Trask, son of original Sentinel creator Bolivar Trask, the team works to capture the deadliest mutants and bring them to Graymalkin Prison; the former X-Mansion turned into a prison for mutants. After escaping in Graymalkin, Drumfire activates her energy redirection powers to kill Omega Red, but instead of a charred skeleton, she sees Onslaught standing among the wreckage of Red’s body.
Onslaught most recently appeared in a miniseries. Path X and its one-time output, X-Men: Onslaught Revelation #1where he was infiltrated into the mutant nation of Krakoa by the anti-mutant coalition Orchis to destroy the island from within. IN Path X, The onslaught was hidden through attachment to emotions hate the very hatred that the mutant Lost feels for Fabien Cortez. Onslaught could do the same to Drumfire in Guardians by using one of her emotions to survive. The onslaught was defeated in Onslaught Revelation from Krakoan Unity, but this new team is anything but unified.
Onslaught’s apparent reappearance may be a little more complicated than it first appears.
It’s also possible that Onslaught isn’t Really there. One of the core ideas of Guardians is that its actors are traumatized survivors of various Marvel events. including the original Onslaught crossover. Drumfire’s mother was killed in the original Onslaught event, so she may have traumatic memories. It is also possible that this is a side effect of her cyborg augmentations. The issue highlights the sensory side effects of augments several times, and the appearance of Onslaught may be a new manifestation of these side effects, but that does not mean that this manifestation is not dangerous.
Just because Onslaught may be imaginary does not mean it is not real. Onslaught is created from pure thought, and is resilient enough to survive within the emotions themselves. Normal rules don’t apply to people like Onslaught, whose powers and true nature essentially make up every story. Why couldn’t he create or recreate himself using a traumatized cyborg whose own brain was being experimented on? The new Sentinel program aims to create soldiers strong enough to stop X-Menor they could just redo something much, much worse.
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