Judgment Day Officially Confirmed Marvel’s Oldest Mutant

The X-Men and the other mutants of the Marvel Universe have long been struggling against the concept that they are interlopers, here to take the Earth away from humans. But on top of being a fundamentally wrong assumption about the X-Men, it’s also false from a historical perspective — as mutants have actually been around much longer than most people realize.

A final goodbye from the Machine plays out in A.X.E.: Judgment Day: Omega #1 (by Kieron Gillen, Guiu Vilanova, Andres Mossa, and VC’s Travis Lanham). And the issue also confirms just how important Krakoa is to the history of the entire Marvel Universe.

How the X-Men and Eternals are Connected

While the events of A.X.E.: Judgment Day were largely reversed — resulting in the resurrections of most people lost in the event — there were still some notably permanent casualties. For the X-Men, this included Magneto — whose decision to remove himself from the resurrection protocols meant that his demise fighting Uranos is permanent. For the Eternals, the greatest loss was the Machine (the consciousness within the Earth itself). As part of the plan to stop the Celestial Progenitor from destroying the Earth, Phastos was forced to go through with a hard reset of the planet. While this did help save the Earth — it also effectively killed the Machine.

In the aftermath of the conflict, Phastos teleports to Krakoa as part of a final tribute to the Machine. Despite the mutant race’s conflicted views on the Eternals, Phastos is allowed to speak with Krakoa and Cypher. It turns out that before it allowed itself to be rewritten, the Machine had left a message for Krakoa. The living island is one of the oldest beings on the planet and had a mysterious but deep connection with the planet. But according to Phastos, it goes further than that. When the Celestials first came to Earth over a million years ago, they created the Eternals, the Deviants and the Machine itself. Looking for inspiration to design the living conscious, they came across a living island that could serve as a template for what the Machine became. This technically makes Krakoa a parent to the Machine.

The X-Men’s Krakoa is Marvel’s Oldest Living Mutant

It had been established earlier in Judgment Day that the Machine and Krakoa were linked, to the point where the Machine wouldn’t allow Krakoa to be destroyed. But this revelation suggests the world as it currently is in the Marvel Universe stems directly from Krakoa — a mutant. This likely makes it one of the oldest mutants in existence, and easily the oldest mutant that’s still alive. It further solidifies the connection between the X-Men and the Eternals, as their living worlds were connected on a fundamental level that’s remained largely mysterious up until this point. This also means that Krakoa easily outdated other “oldest” mutants, like Apocalypse, by likely centuries.

Marvel has recently been focused on exploring the true history of its Universe, exploring the long-standing conflict between Mephisto and generations of Avengers stretching back to the planet’s ancient past. This revelation about Krakoa adds another layer to those revelations — and undercuts much of the rhetoric spouted by anti-mutant supporters across the Marvel Universe. A common refrain is that mutants are replacing humanity, spurring hate groups like Orchis to take action. But this revelation — along with similar revelations in Marauders about a long-lost continent of mutants — confirm that mutants have been a part of the Marvel Universe as long as anyone else, and have long been a major part of the history of the planet as a whole.