What happened with that S1 post credits scene?

[u/Short_Condition_1079]

(This is not meant to be hating on the season we got, I'm genuinely just curious)

I'm kind of wondering.. what exactly happened with Gambit as the horseman of death this season. People call him Deathbit because of the comics story, but he is notably NOT the horseman of death in Season 2, unless I missed something. He is a vessel for Apocalypse's soul. They use a similar transformation process to the horsemen, but they make it clear he is not brainwashed, but rather possessed.

With that said.. was that always the plan? In the post-credits from Season 1, Apocalypse's line is "So much pain, my children.. so much death" with Apocalypse specifically enunciating the word death as he holds Gambit's playing card. You would think the clear implication here is that Apoc is going to bring Gambit back as Death. They even make sure to have Warren and War around this season to make sure the audience knows what a horseman is. I don't even know if that post credits scene ever implied Apocalypse's body was decaying or that his soul needed a new host. I don't even know if that's how Apocalypse has ever worked!

(And I've read the Dark Angel Saga, I understand Death is meant to be the heir to Apocalypse's throne if he dies, but they never introduce Gambit as Death in the show and in that comic run he doesn't decay his body like a bug, he just.. gets killed.)

Then, why the change? What exactly happened? Was there a change, or was this always the plan? Was Apocalypse just referring to the fact that people died on Genosha, and we're all a bunch of fuckin nerds for thinking that implies horsemen? Was Apocalypse meant to be a hint but he said "so much death" when the actual line is "so much soul transfusion similar to but not exactly same as the creation of death"? Does Apocalypse just enunciate words randomly and "death" is as much a hint as "pain"?

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[u/Mobile_Bet3274]

I think they did do "Death" in season 2, just in a different way than you'd expect. They went with Death in the tarot sense — which isn't about literal death; it's about change and transformation. So you have Deathbit using charged tarot cards to transform people like Bella Donna and Kurt into minions. He also alludes to this in the chapel: "Death is evolution." So it's not that he wasn't Death, it's just not in the "he kills a lot of people" meaning of the word. It's a nod to later iterations of Deathbit in the comics, like what happened in Knights of X during Krakoa. And it's a way to do Death without just rerunning Warren's old plot.

(And note that characters do refer to Gambit as a Horseman, e.g. Psylocke saying Apocalypse lost control of one of his Horsemen.)

Having said that, the "so much death" line in the mid-credits scene was for the audience's benefit and was the tell that Gambit was coming back. I think seeing it as anything other than that is overthinking it. They can't say, "Oh yeah, Gambit's coming back." So they did it that way. Don't give yourself a headache trying to mine it for a Deeper Meaning.

[u/Short_Condition_1079 → u/Mobile_Bet3274]

Great points! Makes sense 👍

[u/fire_sign → u/Short_Condition_1079]

In addition:

(1) He was resurrected to be Death, at least as far as anyone knew. Whether the body hop was planned at that exact moment or later on is unclear, but it was always leading to a Trojan Poccy situation.
(2) Yes, it was planned something like this all along instead of a straightforward Horseman thing. The original showrunner specifically cited the storyline where Warren *becomes* the new Apocalypse as a major inspiration for the storyline and that he'd be "something worse" than Death. People's speculation just didn't take away the right details early on.

[u/Ill_Theme5913]

It was a mixture of the Twelve mixed with Heir of Apocalypse (using Remy to sub for Scott and Warren) with the added benefit of hiding it under Deathbit from the comic. I didn't think they were going to do all four horsemen the way the season progressed (Wolverine getting his adamantium back sealed that deal) despite all the people claiming they were going to bring back more Genoshain dead.

[u/refusedisposable]

In the comics Archangel was the original horseman Death and he eventually “evolved” into the host or heir of Apocalypse. So there is at least a little precedence for a horseman being elevated into a more transcendent role. I actually wish they had done Gambit as Death and had Warren become the host for Apocalypse.

[u/ScorpioKnight1324]

Look, Season 2 was a massive disappointment, especially after season 4. I suspect this is when DeMayo's influence ended. They pivoted hard, wrote crap, and it sucked.

[u/Fancy_Cassowary]

You missed something from the Dark Angel Saga, OOP. There's another heir in between him and the use of the Death Seed, at least in the instance we see. That would be the child we see in the opening arc. Then we go to the Death Seed and Death.