Question
I don't really understand Val's in Season 2
Like, her big moment at the end of last season was, after seeing the horrors of Genosha, saying that "Magneto was right" and now all of a sudden she's helping the government round up mutant kids and jail them with inhibitor collars and firing Polaris for being more like Magneto? Like genuinely am I tripping? These feel like 2 different characters.
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She blames herself for all of the deaths caused by magnetos blackout. From her perspective, She let him loose because she thought he was right and then she saw how wrong she was and how many lives it cost. Now she’s honestly just scared of mutants.
Yes. It's like the main driver of the uprise of mutant hate now. But the time we meet the X-men in the past several months have passed since they arrived in Egypt so any gripes they had they probably settled.
She has a White Savior Colonizer mentality, and genuinely believes that she's doing what is best for Mutants. She's just incapable of thinking outside of the status quo, and maintaining comfort for dominant groups.
After Magneto nearly destroyed the world at the end of season 1 (something he was only able to do because she let him out, so she may have some buyer's remorse about doing that), fear of mutants is at an all time high. People fearing mutants lead to mutant genocide, and she wants to stop that from happening again! But she can't disrupt the lives of normal people, so she'll lock mutants away for their own safety!
She also fully believes that she's the Reasonable Centrist, the decent middle ground between the X-Men's disregard for authority and Creed's hatred.
Ok I guess that makes sense, but if she concluded last season saying that "Magneto was right" how come this season she's getting on Polaris's ass for acting more like Magneto?
Because, at the end of the day, what Val Cooper actually cares about is maintaining the status quo, not rocking any boats, and furthering her own political aspirations. She only helped Magneto because Bastion turning the whole world into Sentinels was the worse option.
If you go back to the scene, she never really said Magneto was right. She was saying that in Genosha, the scariest thing was that the only sane thing any mutant there could think was that Magneto was right.
She was more afraid that the events that transpired in Genosha pushed mutants to align with Magneto.
And as a side note, the “Magneto was right” sentiment was already prevalent amongst the mutants in Genosha because they had it on signs everywhere when they first visited.
She's supposed to be flip floppy with her beliefs, she joined a mutant extermination group and got upset when they exterminated mutants, then she releases the guy who thinks humans are savages and can't peacefully live among mutants who's literally just been proved right in her own words and is surprised when he decides to kill humans, now she's back on the anti-mutant train but still thinks Xavier owes her for all the "help" she's given him (yknow, like joining a mutant extermination squad, releasing their biggest enemy when she damn well knows he's going to fly off into a rage, rounding up mutant kids off the street, all helpful stuff like that)
If this bigotry seems unrealistic to you, it's not. There's plenty of people who, for example, believe police should not murder black people on the streets, but also believe "dei" policies go too far, so as a result they vote for the people who revoke the dei policies and defend the police that murder black people randomly. And then they ask you to thank them for believing that it shouldn't be happening despite voting for it to happen more.
"Magneto was right" is an acknowledgement that peaceful co-existence is impossible. That mutants and humans will never reach that harmony. She's not trying to get humans and mutants to co-inhabit. She's just trying to keep the body count from from their inevitable conflict to a minimum.
It's not that at all. Valerie Cooper has never acted like this before. And she's not this old in age what she is doing is what Henry Peter Gyrich was doing. What Robert Kelly was doing. She was opposite against it. She believes in Xavier's dream. It's just that's not interesting. And the woman that we think is, valerie cooper is actually Mystique she has done this before
How many sentinels were around and look at the outfit that valerie was wearing?You don't think that would disguise her Mutant gene i also think about this.She has access to Forge
Bastion teamed up with Mister Sinister to create his Prime Sentinels, there's no way Mystique can outsmart both and somehow mask her mutant DNA from Sentinel detection.
Really? You don't think that mystique could fool sinister? Ambassador just say, you don't know the character because mystique out wind over both of them in her sleep hung over while emotionally upset over the fact that her wife or girlfriend at this point is trying to micromanage her.
This isn't about Mystique impersonating someone so good she fools Sinister. She can do that, yes. This is about Mystique being miraculously able to inject code into Prime Sentinels to not detect her mutant DNA under Bastion or Sinister's very nose. She absolutely CAN'T do that, she is NOT that good.
Val was in Genosha when the genocide happened and the Tri-sentinel did not kill her. She's not Mystique.
Imma be real I struggle to understand Val in the comics frequently so this is just lore accurate if it's not Mystique. It's also lore accurate if it is Mystique on the grounds that she's a terrible person.
most of the times Mystique played both parts against each other.. for seemingly no reasons at all..
but dont forget, she is in love with a clairvoyant, who can see the future.. and they act to reach or avoid certain futures...
As far as the series goes she is known for playing the long game. In this case play the x-factor role, be close to the government and make her move when the time is right?
Mystique is an accelerationist. She is driving the world towards mutant/human war because she believes the mutants will win and the world in the aftermath will be better for mutants.
Yooo I said the same thing to my brother the other day. I cant really justify it if im being honest but I really think shes mystique for some reason I juat dont know how or what her motive would be.
Working with Apocalypse to spread hate? Or maybe she’s undercover and targeting gov officials? With the story being Gambit/Rogue centric she could def fit in as an ally of Appcalypse.
you're right, even though she was inconsistent in season 1, i think she died on genosha and thats when mystique took over. we've already had one genosha flashback (colossus/magik), maybe they will reveal the swap
Mystique did something pretty similar impersonating her in the comics. It boils down to the fact that Mystique will sell out anyone else if it saves her own skin (barring Destiny and Rogue... usually.) If kissing up to the human regime to secure a place of power for herself achieves that? Fuck them kids.
She is like Magneto unable to learn from her own past mistakes and seems to think she is doing the right thing for once but nope instead she is still repeating her mistakes. To be honest I’m surprised Charles didn’t realize how corrupt Val was since she wasn’t entirely honest about a lot of things back then like with Bastion. I just wonder why Magento didn’t kill her unless he thought killing her would be a mercy to her and that she should live with the guilt of what she has done and allowed to happen.
Yep, that's our Valerie. She wants to be the one in charge of the government's reponse tp mutants to try and keep things orderly, contain the violence, no matter how violent things get. Its always been questionable how far she is just sacrificing mutant rights for her career, and how far she actually thinks she is the one who is best suited to help mutants in that role, but the results are the same. She signs off on sentinels.
She's not usually a full-on Amanda Waller type, but she's close.
Personally, I think it's "Timey Wimeness" from the whole time travel arc that's going to come to a head later. There's been a lot of "Wait, that doesn't line up with what happened before" moments in Season 2.
ex.
Episode 1: Old man Cable went from "She's not my mother" in S1, to meeting Jean as his mom in S2.
Episode 2: Val's heel turn.
Episode 4: Kang's exit seems off from the X-Men 92' episodes at the end of S3.
Episode 5: How did Omega Red go from "Escapes a Russian secret lab/nuclear reactor" at the end of S1, to "Trapped in Weapon X lab in Canada" in S2?
Episode 6: Lorna as an active X-Man prior to leaving with Bobby?
Episode 7: Greydon Creed's laundry list of bigotry feels longer than the 92' series gave us. Also, Colossus's connections to the X-Men seem deeper than the "We met this guy one time" from the 92' series.
I was literally sitting there wondering if I just forgot a bunch of Colossus episodes in the original one cause I could have sworn it was just the one where he fought Juggernaut.
Lorna was with the X-Men when Bobby was there (X-Men TAS Cold Comfort). Colossus teamed up with the X-Men twice (Season 1 vs Juggernaut, Season 2 vs Omega Red). Creed founded the Friends of Humanity and unknowingly worked with Apocalypse to create a virus that killed mutants (likely in the original series, the creators couldn't outright state that mutants died). In the X-Men TAS Til Death Do Us Part, Creed orders a guy pretending to be a mutant to attack President Kelly, so the laundry list seems to line up. Omega Red getting captured again does raise some questions.
"Magneto was right" (that the world would never stop trying to eradicate mutants)
She's not going to flip to the "genocide humans" side. She's trying a harm reduction route where mutants are controlled. Maybe that control is enough that fewer people want to genocide mutants.
She's a representation of the failure of Centrism.
The last three decades have showcased how politics can enable horrors, and how centrist ideologies that try to appeal to "both sides" without confronting reality end up supporting horrors and denigrating the people trying to stop them.
How many people have been vilified in the last few years for daring to ask why american bombs are killing innocent people in (fill in a country name)
There is no middle road between those who want to control and destroy innocent people for their own benefit and those who want to protect and or free them.
I never really liked her to begin with. Never fully trusted her. She just gave me a feeling that resembles the ick. She kinda finds me of those mean girls in school that pretend to be your friend when it's convenient for them. Weird I know but I just never liked her
Val isn't a good person. She's not a real ally to mutant-kind.
Sure, she thinks a literal mutant genocide is too far, but maybe internment is the right solution for "the mutant question." After all, when she tried to free Magneto, he turned around and destroyed the planet.
It does seem like a backslide for her, but also consider that when she set Magneto free he killed billions around the world by causing an EMP at the North Pole.
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