I have to wonder if that is a convenient coincidence, or there is a reason for that.
Unless there is a witness in protection in most small towns, the chances that she would pick one with them seem a bit small. Also Woo is not just a random agent, but one who has previously been tasked to watch over people with superpowers, or at least, that have used superpowers (Ant-man doesn’t really have powers of his own.)
So, the witness could be fairly key to what is going on here, one way or another.
Oh yes. I fully expect to see a lot of things I missed or things I didn’t put much thought into before clicking into place after it’s all over.
(The MCU in general is pretty re-watchable for me. Thor - Dark World excepted)
But this is literally how prejudice works. It’s arbitrary, nonsensical, and riddled with one-off exceptions and special cases. The X-Men need to exist in a world with other superheroes, because otherwise the prejudice against them makes perfect sense. Given their abilities, it’s completely rational to be terrified of Professor X and Magneto. It’s not rational to be terrified of them, but okay with Captain Marvel and Ben Grimm. If your superhero world only has mutants, being anti-mutant is a logical, defensible position - and therefore, a terrible analog for real world discrimination. You need a contrast to demonstrate that these people are being fearful and irrational: someone who is basically the same, but accepted.
[comic geek pedant hat]Well, ackshually, while he wasn’t Tony stark’s teenage protege, he did become Tony Stark’s 20-something protégé during the comic book “Civil War” story arc, including the Stark-tech “Iron Spider” outfit. It was a plot point in the comics, which Captain America called Tony Stark out on, that Tony was effectively making himself a surrogate father figure for Peter Parker, who Tony knew had serious father issues.[/comic geek pedant hat]
I agree with others upthread - if the X-Men are just regular superheroes and not members of a persecuted minority, there’s not much point to even using them. Their tagline for decades was “Sworn to protect a world that fears and hates them.” Without that, you might as well just use Alpha Flight or the Champions of Los Angeles.
Pursuant to the “mutants in the MCU” discussion, it’s worth noting how few people in the MCU actually have superpowers. The overwhelming majority of them are simply highly skilled, or get their “powers” from some sort of technology. In the original Avengers line-up, there’s only one genuine super-powered human, Hulk, and people are terrified of him. (Thor is super-powered, but not human.) Since then, we’ve gotten four new heroes who are unambiguously super-powered humans. One of them (Quicksilver) died in the movie he was introduced in, and the other two (Scarlet Witch and Spider-Man) are currently legal fugitives. The fourth, Captain Marvel, spends most of her time off-Earth. (Dr. Strange is a skilled/tech hero - magic is something he studied, like Tony studied engineering. Black Panther is mostly a tech hero - heart-shaped herb not withstanding, most of the crazy shit he can do is because of the vibranium suit. Star-Lord is technically super-powered, but his super power is basically, “Resistance to cosmic forces,” which is pretty non-obvious. Also, he’s almost never on Earth.)
I was actually thinking about that a bit ago. I was trying to think of any MCU supers who have actual inherent powers. (Other than non-humans, like Thor.)
It is worth noting that in your list of people with powers, none of them were born with them. All got their powers from some outside force, either technology, infinity stones, or a combination thereof.
The X-Men actually have powers of their own, that come from their own genetic mutations.
If we include The Defenders in this, it gets a bit murkier, as I’m not sure where they got their powers, and Agents of Shield adds in a whole new group of people.
And rightly so, as it wasn’t the green skin that they were terrified of, but the Hulk Smash! As Professor Hulk, people seemed much less scared of him, even letting their children take selfies with him.
agree -
That’s the (in my opinion, lame) argument for why people hate mutants and not supers. Because it’s a genetic condition, being a mutant threatens to make flatscans obsolete. It’s the end of the human race.
Jessica Jones and Daredevil got their powers through industrial accidents. (In the comics, it’s been suggested that it was the same industrial accident, but I don’t think this is hard canon.) Luke Cage volunteered for a scientific experiment while in prison. Danny Rand punched a dragon.
It’s worth noting that Daredevil is one of the few Marvel heroes that really does the “secret identity” thing, so he clearly feels there’s a consequence to people knowing he has powers. There was a whole episode in S1 of Jessica Jones where someone sets up a trap for her, just because they’ve got a resentment against people with powers. And Luke Cage is a black guy who is immune to bullets. Out of the Defenders, the only one whose got super powers who hasn’t dealt with some degree of social stigma as a result is the white billionaire.
So, that tracks.
Exactly so. Back in the '80s, when I played a lot of TSR’s Marvel Super Heroes role-playing game, they classified heroes (and villains) based on where their powers came from:
AIUI, due to the nature of the contract that Marvel had signed with Fox for the X-Men films, Fox had exclusive rights to the characters, as well as the concept of mutant heroes and villains. Thus, in the MCU, until now, there haven’t been any mutants, or even the idea that there could be mutants.
An idea Grant Morrison really leaned into on his run on New X-Men is that mutants like the OG X-Men and Magneto are the 1% of mutant kind: they got mutations that are not only highly useful, but they still look like normal, healthy humans. Mutants like Nightcrawler or Glob Herman, who have useful powers but also frightening, non-human appearances, are more common, but the vast majority of humans are like Beak or Ugly John: people whose mutations makes them look grotesque, but don’t provide them any useful abilities. Anti-mutant prejudice is mostly driven by the fact that most mutants look weird, and worrying over their powers is mostly a fig leaf to justify persecuting people who look different.
I loved that run.
Sounds like someone read Wild Cards.
The implication here is interesting, in that it’s possible to be a mutant, but not have the X-gene. I haven’t been following the comic, so I don’t know all the details, but apparently they recently retconned Franklin Richards - the mutant child of Sue and Reed Richards - into not being a mutant. I wonder if this is related? Reed and Sue got their powers from cosmic radiation, and apparently the changes in their body were passed on to their kid - but those changes wouldn’t be related to the X-gene. There have been alternate timelines that have featured the kids of Spider-Man, or the Hulk, as having innate super powers, who would also be non-X mutants.
I don’t know that it’s actually come up in those comics, but I love the idea of Spider-Girl being able to successfully deflect anti-mutant prejudice by pointing out that she gets her powers from her dad, Spider-Man. And everyone knows that Spider-Man isn’t a mutant. It’s almost a perfect mirror for someone in the 1950s deflecting race prejudice by pointing out that their darker skin comes from Italy.
And everyone knows that Italians are white.
It doesnt help that even the ‘good’ ones go around endlessly saying how they’re the next phase of humanity and humans may as well be Neanderthals…Hickman has lately turned that up to 11, with mutants who have lost their powers choosing death to be resurrected (And AGAIN its really fancy cloning) as if their powers define who they are.
Just what I was thinking
Don’t go chasing waterfall references.
Any thoughts on the tombstone marked “Dr Rivus” that Quicksilver gets thrown past? Apart from observing that “Rivus” is an anagram of “Virus” I got nothing. (The other tombstone is apparently a reference to Janell Sammelman, an assistant director on WandaVision.)
BTW, in a thread talking about altered reality I was disturbed to scroll past an ad for a company called “ForeverSpin” selling those Inception tops. 
I believe the common language in Marvel is “mutant” specifically refers to powers derived from the X-Gene while “mutate” means they were changed by something else.
I think “mutate” in Marvel comics is basically the same category as “Altered Humans” in kenobi’s post - people who got powers by exposure to something after they were born, as opposed to being born with it.
I don’t think there’s really a general term for non-Mutants born with powers (because there’s not that many in the Marvel universe). You need the X-Gene to be a Mutant.
