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Topic: Et tu, Moira!? Or...what makes a mutant - SPOILERS Post Reply | Post New Topic
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Eric Sofer
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Joined: 31 January 2014
Location: United States
Posts: 4789
Posted: 09 August 2019 at 8:21am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

I just got it. I know what this story is.

Moira MacTaggert is caught in "Groundhog Day", except that her day is the day of her birth.

Which means that she's probably a genius in 'most every field, and as wealthy as anyone could be (as being reborn with full life knowledge would tell one when to invest in IBM, Xerox, Starbucks, Google, etc.)
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John Byrne

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Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132132
Posted: 09 August 2019 at 9:45am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

I find myself wondering how much free will Moira has in this. Bill Murray and Tom Cruise were able to make changes to their timelines. Can Moira? And if so, does this mean she allowed Xavier to go off on the adventure that cost him the use of his legs? She chose not to forewarn the team of any of Magneto’s plans, or what the Sentinels were planning, or the events that lead to “Days of Future Past”?

Bitch.

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Dale E Ingram
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Joined: 01 July 2015
Location: United States
Posts: 75
Posted: 09 August 2019 at 10:28am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Yes, in this story, Moira has free will and is able to make changes in her timeline. She even observes that by just observing and not trying to change things, she is changing things. 

She's not omnipotent, can't predict what effect her decisions will make, and each timeline ends up unfolding in radically different ways. So different, in fact, that things like "Days of Future Past", she might not have actually had knowledge of when that timeline was unfolding. 

In Xavier's case, she meets him at different points in her lives each time, so it's possible that she didn't know about the accident that cost him the use of his legs in this timeline beforehand.
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Bill Collins
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Joined: 26 May 2005
Location: England
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 10:34am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

Whatever the merits or not of such powers, why not give
them to a new character instead of Moira?
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John Byrne

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Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 12:18pm | IP Logged | 5 post reply

For Moira to meet Xavier (or anyone else, for that matter) at different points in each timeline sounds incredibly complex. There are so many “streams” winding thru time.

(I suspect doing this to/with Moira springs from some lingering vestige of the old “I’m not going to give them the next Spider-Man” mentality.)

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Steve De Young
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 12:46pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

I think this is kind of clever.  It may end up all turning to crap, but for now, its kind of clever. 

- Hickman noticed that X-Men continuity at Marvel is an unbelievable mess.  (As did pretty much everyone else.)

- He also noticed that Moira had been killed off repeatedly in the books and then brought back, sometimes inexplicably.

- He made Moira the groundhog mutant to use all of those deaths to prune X-continuity.  Each time she reincarnates, the timeline is readjusted.  So he can take anything stupid that occurred before her most recent death in the books and say, "That was part of one of the previous timelines...she fixed it this time through."  

Also, as a note, they've established that Days of Future Past was at the end of one of her lives, so that remains an alternate timeline and implies that she took action the next time through to make sure it didn't happen.
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Steve De Young
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 12:48pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

Which means that she's probably a genius in 'most every field, and as wealthy as anyone could be (as being reborn with full life knowledge would tell one when to invest in IBM, Xerox, Starbucks, Google, etc.)
------------------------------------------------------------ ----

Isn't this pretty much how she was already portrayed in the comics before this change? 
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Mark McKay
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Joined: 16 April 2004
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Posted: 09 August 2019 at 12:57pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

Each time she reincarnates, the timeline is readjusted.  So he can take anything stupid that occurred before her most recent death in the books and say, "That was part of one of the previous timelines...she fixed it this time through."  

---

Does this make sense though? We the viewers have only ever been looking at the one timeline, right? At no point have we been jumping from one timeline to another throughout the history of the publication. (Except for stories like DOFP). Seems like a stretch to tell the readers that at any point, we may have been seeing one timeline or another.
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Eric Ladd
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Joined: 16 August 2004
Location: Canada
Posts: 4506
Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

I'm all for suspending disbelief in comic books and allowing certain things to just happen because considering them is stupid, but I can't see how this "power" is anything other than someone trying to write a particular time travel story and needing a character's conscious to travel back in time. I can't explain the need for a mutant whose powers really take off when they die in any other way. Get ready for some mutant time traveling tales that span 12+ issues and multiple books.
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Adam Schulman
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Joined: 22 July 2017
Posts: 1717
Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:04pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply


I find myself wondering how much free will Moira has in this. Bill Murray and Tom Cruise were able to make changes to their timelines. Can Moira?

***

She does. And an alternate timeline branches out as a result. But things always end up in tragedy anyway. (Note: it isn't clear to me that her reincarnation always happens in the same year in the past, in yet another timeline.)

Anyway, the reviews are in, and people are LOVING what Hickman has done to Moira. Examples:



BTW, this is a great explanation of how the Marvel Multiverse (as opposed the DC Multiverse) works:

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John Byrne

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Joined: 11 May 2005
Posts: 132132
Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:09pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Marvel got along for decades without a "multiverse". Now, something to create ever more "alternates".

De-uniquing gone mad.

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Dale E Ingram
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Joined: 01 July 2015
Location: United States
Posts: 75
Posted: 09 August 2019 at 1:10pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

No, I don't think that's what's happening in the book. To me, it seems like she lives her life through to it's end, and at the point of her death, her consciousness and memories are somehow transmitted back through time to her infant self, in utero. She is born with all of those memories of what happened.

This creates an alternate timeline, in which she lives through that life to its end, at which time the process repeats itself.

We are shown nine of ten timelines, some of which bear a resemblance to things like DOFP or Age of Apocalypse. But it is not explicitly stated that they are those timelines. The most current one, Moira's tenth life, is the only one in which we are told that she meets Joseph MacTaggert and has Proteus, so that is the main timeline that the X-Men comics have taken place in so far. Everything else is an alternate timeline.
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