When Wolverine and his X-Force came together to preemptively take out threats to mutants everywhere, their more ruthless methods almost resulted in the death of the Avengers when Earth’s Mightiest Heroes went up against the Apocalypse Twins. Children of the X-Force member Archangel, the current head of X-Corps, when these highly powered twins first appeared, they threatened the entire Earth as the Heirs of Apocalypse’s legacy. And while their overall goal was mutant survival, they weren’t afraid to wipe out the Avengers’ newly formed Unity Division to accomplish their mission.
The Unity Division first appeared in Rick Remender’s Uncanny Avengers. A follow-up series to both Avengers vs. X-Men and Remender’s Uncanny X-Force, this series featured the X-Men and the Avengers uniting to ensure peaceful coexistence between humans and mutants. But when the Apocalypse Twins threatened the entire world thanks to Wolverine’s X-Force, the Avengers’ Unity Division was anything but unified.
In their first mission, X-Force kills En Sabah Nur reborn in the form of a child, triggering the Apocalypse Seed within Archangel and evolving him into the new version of Apocalypse. During his time as Apocalypse’s heir in “the Dark Angel Saga,” Warren fathers twins named Eimin and Uriel with his Horseman Pestilence before he too is slain by his own teammates. Sometime after, these twins are stolen by none other than Kang the Conqueror and raised across different timelines to prevent them from supplanting Kang’s rule as Heirs of Apocalypse. The Twins’ time in the future subjects them to the Red Skull’s barbarous mutant camps, and they vow not only to destroy Kang, but to change mutantkind’s future. They make their way to the present and use Thor’s ancient weapon, Jarnbjorn, to murder one of the Celestials before framing the Earth for the crime in the eyes of Exitar the Executioner – a Celestial planet-killer – and revealing their origins to the Unity Division, with Captain America disgusted by Logan's actions.
This splits the team right down the middle between those who side with Logan and those who agree with Captain America’s assessment of the X-Man, and the group falls apart. With the Avengers shattered, Eimin and Uriel force the Scarlet Witch into servitude, ordering her to cast a spell that will bring every mutant remaining on Earth into their Ark where they can be shepherded to a world called Planet X and ensuring mutants’ survival after the humans are wiped out.
Their plan actually succeeds, but the surviving Avengers of the future travel back through time with the help of Kang to undo the Twins’ work. While Kang unsurprisingly betrays the Uncanny Avengers, the team manages to come back together again to take him down. But all of this destruction would’ve been avoided in the first place if not for X-Force’s brutal methods. Their actions – including the murder of a child – directly led to the Apocalypse Twins’ ascension and nearly got the planet wiped out by a Celestial. They were so concerned with keeping their people safe that they didn’t think far enough ahead about the price that safety would incur.
In trying to stop Apocalypse, X-Force not only created something far worse, but they inadvertently caused the deaths of every human on the planet. It took a squad of X-Men and Avengers from across the timeline to set things right, and even then, it left them with the burden of remembering the lives they’d led after failing to save humanity.
The Earth was saved, but only after its Mightiest Heroes failed. And while the intentions of Wolverine and X-Force were noble, their methods were quite the opposite. It’s well-known where good intentions lead, and Logan’s nearly brought the Avengers down with him.