WARNING: Spoilers ahead for X-Force #23!
The world-famous Danger Room is one of the most iconic parts of Marvel Comics’ X-Men universe, but its latest iteration is by far the most disgusting - and it’s potentially the most sinister as well. The Danger Room is undoubtedly a staple of X-Men lore, and because it gives the X-Men the chance to practice their teamwork and group dynamics, it’s a fan-favorite concept that readers always enjoy. But now X-Force has turned it into something else entirely.
X-Force #23 by Benjamin Percy and Martin Coccolo gives readers their first look at this upgraded Danger Room, also known as the Shadow Room. But with a name that dark, it may not be the same team-friendly training room that fans remember. And with the way X-Force’s Beast has been behaving, it wouldn’t be much of a surprise.
After Beast lets his thirst for knowledge get the better of him, Hank finds his body infiltrated by one of the same miniature Russian nesting doll agents that have recently invaded Krakoa. With the miniature murderer wreaking havoc on Hank’s insides, he has no choice but to call in his fellow X-Force member Black Tom Cassidy for help. To illustrate his issue, Hank brings Tom to a never-before-seen location he calls the Shadow Room. But when Cassidy balks at the name as “a place where some dark business gets sorted,” Beast confirms his suspicions with a casual, “Just so.” Using the Shadow Room’s holographic technology, Hank projects his inner workings in virtual reality, bringing Tom along for the ride. But while Cassidy agrees to help Hank, this whole encounter highlights a few interesting points.
While this isn’t the first time that fans have seen a Danger Room implement hard-light projection technology, this instance has to be one of the most disturbing. It makes total sense for Beast or anyone else on Krakoa to use this sort of tech for medical purposes, but his bringing someone else inside his internal organs goes a bit farther than a simple team-building exercise. However, if Beast’s recent actions are any indication, this probably isn’t the most disturbing thing to happen in the Shadow Room.
In the last few years, Beast has been heading down an increasingly dark path. Since being put in charge of the mutants' intelligence agency X-Force, he’s made plenty of morally gray decisions and even held the entire nation of Terra Verde hostage. With Hank taking Krakoa’s counterintelligence program to some pretty extreme places, it’s not a stretch to imagine Beast having used the Shadow Room as his own holographic torture chamber, and he practically tells Black Tom as much.
With such a dark perversion of such a beloved X-Men icon like the Danger Room, Hank McCoy continues to prove that X-Force is dragging him deeper down the ethical rabbit hole like Wolverine before him. The one-time Avenger may have once been a fan-favorite jokester but these days, he’s far from the happy-go-lucky hero he used to be. With everything he’s done in the name of Krakoa, it seems Marvel Comics’ Beast is really starting to live up to his namesake.