Warning! Spoilers for Excalibur #7 below.
Excalibur, Marvel's team of X-Men sworn to defend the new Captain Britain, face increasing tensions on all sides. The British people are increasingly resistant to the idea of the title Captain Britain belonging to a mutant who is loyal to both the UK and Krakoa. Team members are also uneasy about their most powerful member, Apocalypse, installing a madman to the throne of Avalon, the otherworldly land of Britain's magic, in order to enable himself becoming a master of sorcery. In Excalibur #7, an ally of the team betrays them by revealing that he thinks of mutants as the most dangerous game.
In the new issue, Apocalypse calls on Excalibur to retrieve a spell component he needs: the skulls of the "Warwolves", shapeshifting alien creatures that caused the formation of the original Excalibur team. The lupine creatures were placed in captivity at the London Zoo, firmly within Captain Britain's jurisdiction. But when the mutants arrive to gather them, the Warwolves are missing from their cage. The team exploits London's extensive surveillance apparatus to learn that the Warwolves were sold to a private collector: the wealthy and mysterious Cullen Bloodstone.
Cullen is part of Marvel's superheroic aristocracy. He's the youngest heir in the Bloodstone line of English monster hunters; specifically, he's the little brother to the notorious Elsa Bloodstone. As a child, a hunting trip went awry and caused Cullen to be infected with an extradimensional monster, similar to lycanthropy except replacing the werewolf with a massive indestructible tentacle creature. Cullen wears a ring made from the family's enchanted bloodstone to control his transformation, but he retains the ability to partially transform while remaining human-shaped. Cullen's only major appearance before now was in Avengers Arena, a Hunger Games-like miniseries that forced superpowered teens to fight each other to survive.
The Bloodstone kid tells Excalibur that he plans to hunt the Warwolves and that they're invited if they'd like to participate in the sport. The team agrees and meets with him at a Bloodstone estate, where he's dressed for a traditional foxhunt. Of course, hunting wild animals with a pack of dogs is illegal in England... which is why Cullen uses fiendish cats. Undeterred by this red flag, the team plays along, rooting out the shapeshifters with the help of their mutant powers.
Cullen reacts poorly to this, admitting his anti-mutant prejudice. He tells Rogue he thinks mutants "need a big loss" and leaves her to struggle hand-to-hand with a Warwolf. He tracks down the rest of Excalibur and lets them know that hunting with them was never the plan. Tentacles sprout from his back and his face contorts as he begins to capture them. The Warwolves are a gift to his guests, not his quarry; he's here to hunt mutants.
While this twist was telegraphed from the moment Cullen arrived and began to jab at Captain Britain about her loyalties, his exact motivation behind betraying the mutants is muddled and unclear. Is this his "inner monster" pressing him to murderous aggression? If this really is about asserting the status of humans as equal or superior to mutants, is Cullen really bigoted enough to accuse them of having "unfair advantage" when he can sprout a dozen tentacles at will? Excalibur #7's next-issue blurb is "Fighting Fair" in Krakoan, suggesting that this really is just a cruel game to him. Maybe being forced to compete in arena-based death battles has rubbed off on the young Bloodstone? The only way to find out is to stay tuned for what happens next issue.
Marvel's Excalibur #7 is on sale at your local comic book shop.