As always, this is going to be full of spoilers, and I’ll be using the page numbers from the digital edition. But before we get to the detail, let’s look at the big picture for this issue.

After two issues following the same pattern – Year 1, Year 10, Year 100, Year 1000 – Powers of X breaks from that format entirely to give us an entire issue set in the Year 100 time frame. This issue has a straightforward plot: as promised last issue, the Year 100 “X-Men” embark on a heroic suicide mission to recover vitally important data, which turns out to be the details of when and how Nimrod came into existence. Moira is woken from suspended animation and given the data, and then she allows Wolverine to kill her. The narrator then reveals that this is Moira’s ninth life – the one before established continuity, where she was allied with Apocalypse.

So Moira had this information when she entered her (current) tenth life, and presumably she’s shared it with Magneto and Professor X, both of whom were rather preoccupied with the rise of Nimrod in the previous issue.

Are we finished with the Year 100 timeline already, less than halfway through the series? Probably not – not least because we don’t actually find out here how Nimrod was created in that version of history. Moira does, but we don’t. So all that is to come. Interestingly, when we see Moira in the womb for the start of her tenth life in House of X #2, the narrator says that she is “armed with the knowledge that all the old ways – and all the old ways of thinking – would never be enough to save her people.” Presumably that refers to whatever she learned about Nimrod, and it’s more than just a practical guide to where to go. And note that Moira clearly doesn’t attempt to repeat the history of her ninth life just so that she can exploit this information more easily. According to the House of X #2 timeline, Moira’s ninth life involved Apocalypse killing both Xavier and Magneto. The current timeline has been very different. But of course, the whole point of Moira’s recurring lives is that in very different versions of history, something always happens that always results in Nimrod – so it ought to be something that transcends the details of an individual timeline. (See also Magneto’s speech to the ambassadors in House of X #1, where he talks about “the finality of your situation – and the inevitability of ours”.  He seemed at the time to be bragging about mutant dominance, but maybe not.)

In this context, it’s maybe worth looking back at how Chris Claremont dealt with the repeated theme of Sentinel-dominated futures. Conventional Marvel Universe continuity says that you can’t alter history, you can only create a divergent timeline. But Claremont didn’t seem to agree – the plot of “Days of Futures Past” can be squared with conventional MU physics, but it reads more naturally if the X-Men are meant to be altering history. And the Kulan Gath storyline ended explicitly with a bunch of sorcerers bringing Nimrod back to the present day so that he could prevent the story from happening at all. In any event, a common theme in the 80s and 90s was that no matter what people did to alter the course of history, it always seemed to wind up heading towards a version of Days of Future Past – so the apparent inevitability of a Sentinel-based apocalypse is nothing new to the X-books.

With that, let’s turn to the details.

COVER (PAGE 1): Rasputin and Cardinal face off against the machines – entirely straightforward. In the solicitations, this cover had them coloured as Magik and Nightcrawler, presumably to avoid spoiling the plot.

PAGE 2: The epigraph bears to come from Apocalypse: “I am immortal, and I have no end.” In the context of this series, this seems more apposite for Moira. But see below regarding his fight with Nimrod.

PAGE 3-5.  The X-Men attack the Church of Ascendancy’s Temple of Concordance and break up what appears to be some sort of christening/baptism. The Church are humans who have accepted a slave role relative to the machines and hope to become as machine-like as possible themselves, while recognising that they will in fact spend their lives in some sort of in-between state. In previous issues, Nimrod made passing reference to the idea that the humans were notionally equals, but it’s clear in this issue that that’s not the case – the more human-like Omega, who was standing next to him in the past, turns out to be another robot.  The “Man-Machine Supremacy”’s name is evidently lip service.

Church of Ascendancy: This group are new, but in issue #1, there’s a mention of the Man-Machine Ascendancy, apparently as a precursor to the Man-Machine Supremacy.  It’s also obviously very close to “Ascension”, the term used in issue #2’s Year 1000 sequences in connection with a lesser species being absorbed into a greater one – which fits with what the Church members are hoping for here. The Church’s symbol seems to be a stylised trident, but the priest’s costume also has symbols on the shoulders that look like they belong on the data pages. The priest spends a bit of his time running down “human heretics”, “genetic manipulators” and “free thinkers”, which seems to be in reference to Apocalypse’s group – both he and Omega (later on) treat the mutants as simply part of humanity.

“Better to serve in heaven than rule in human hell”: Obviously, referring to Lucifer’s line in John Milton’s Paradise Lost, “Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.” The Church of Ascendancy don’t place much stock in autonomy, but then that’s kind of their point.

PAGE 6: The contents.  The title is “This is What You Do”; this is a line of dialogue from the closing pages, and refers to the old line about Wolverine being the best there is at what he does (and what he does not being very nice).

PAGES 7-8: Two data pages headed “Surviving Sol Mutants”.  All ten characters are marked with two Krakoa letters, but you’re not missing much if you can’t read them – the first one is always “M” (presumably for “mutant”), and the other is the first letter of the word in brackets beneath (“E” for External, “P” for Pureblood, and so on).

Apocalypse: He’s listed as an “External”, a sub-category of immortal mutants introduced in Rob Liefeld’s X-Force run. This is well established continuity, but it’s interesting that Hickman feels the urge to bring it up. As we’ll see later, he seems to be tinkering with Apocalypse’s back story.

The Four Horsemen: Apocalypse has had a liking for theming his henchmen after the Four Horsemen, and giving them power-ups, ever since his early days as an X-Factor villain. House of X #2’s timeline says that Apocalypse did found a version of the X-Men, and Wolverine still wears the X-Men symbol on his belt (it’s not very visible in this issue, but you can see it on page 20). But this group is apparently the last Horsemen.

The HoX #2 timeline also establishes that Moira and Apocalypse rescued the original Horsemen in Year 24, while this issue’s timeline says that they died at the fall of Krakoa in Year 98. The Horsemen are Wolverine, Xorn, North (the green Magneto guy) and Krakoa/Cypher; this was previous implied from their number and from Apocalypse’s comment in the last issue that Wolverine’s attitude might be affected by the War seed. Apparently he uses Apocalypse seeds to power-up his Horsemen. This is presumably why Xorn – Death – is such a nihilist in this timeline. But Wolverine/War doesn’t seem particularly different from our Wolverine, and we don’t see enough of North or Krakoa to get a sense of their Pestilence and Famine personae. Wolverine and Xorn are apparently both the originals, listed as “purebloods” (to distinguish them from Sinister’s hybrid mutants).

Xorn: There are two Xorns, and we saw them both in House of X #1, but the graphic identifies this one as Kuan-Yin Xorn. That means he’s the one from Grant Morrison’s New X-Men run, who Morrison intended to be a disguised Magneto.

North: North is the man in a green Magneto costume, and he’s identified as a chimera of “Dane/Frost”.  The “Dane” part is obvious – that’s Magneto’s daughter Lorna Dane (Polaris), and he’s wearing her signature colour. “Frost” is most likely Emma Frost, but technically it could also be any of her siblings Adrienne, Cordelia or Christian, all of whom were also mutants. North doesn’t show any particular sign of his Frost component – but then he doesn’t do much, really.

Mother: The next page lists “Mother”, with the four non-Horsemen shown linked to her. It’s pretty obvious that this is Moira, and that’s confirmed later in the issue. Quite why she’s being called “mother” here is unclear, unless she had something to do with Sinister’s clone lines. In the mainstream Marvel Universe, Moira had one actual child (Proteus) and was also viewed as a foster mother by Wolfsbane.

The four “children” are Cylobel, Rasputin, Cardinal and Percival. We don’t learn anything new about Cylobel or Rasputin here (other than the implication that Moira is their “mother”, of course).

Akkaba: “Mother”’s explanatory text includes the word “Akkaba”, without telling us its significance.  In established Marvel history, Akkaba is the place in ancient Egypt where Apocalypse was born, all as shown in some detail in 1996’s Rise of Apocalypse miniseries – but more on that below. The timeline at the back of this issue also establishes that Akkaba was the name of one of three capital cities established by mutants in Asia.

(When Akkaba was first introduced, it may have been intended as a reference to modern-day Aqaba in Jordan, but its history just doesn’t fit with the real-world place – for a start, Aqaba wasn’t called that until the medieval period.)

Cardinal: His DNA components are listed as “Wagner/Grey/Freeman”. Wagner is obviously Nightcrawler, and Grey is most likely Jean Grey. But there’s no obvious candidate for “Freeman” – as far as I can see, the only “Freeman” in X-books history is X-Statix supporting character Spike Freeman, and it’s hardly likely to be him.

Percival: He’s identified as “Emanuel Cortez”, a “ghost” and a “pureblood” mutant – was he a survivor of some sort from the present day, or simply one of the surviving mutants whose numbers were bolstered by the chimeras?  The “ghost” reference previously cropped up in issue #2, and if it’s taken literally, it begs the question of how he managed to die.  At any rate, Hickman seems very keen to keep giving us information about Percival, a character who died in his first panel.

PAGES 9-11: Nimrod and Omega discuss the attack; Omega is interested, but Nimrod isn’t.

Omega: Despite her relatively human appearance, and the fact that she has normal human speech balloons (as opposed to the rectangular balloons used by Nimrod and other machines), Omega is apparently a machine – or at least, that’s how Nimrod and Omega both speak about her.  The implication seems to be that she’s Karima Shapandar, the former Omega Sentinel seen working with Orchis in House of X #1 (and thus, if Xavier and Magneto are right, involved in some way in the creation of Nimrod). She was talking about herself as a machine in that issue, referring to the other (absent) machines as her brothers and sisters.

Incursions: Nimrod isn’t too bothered about the Horsemen’s attack because “I’m busy disassembling the variables of our recent incursion”. Incursions were a big part of Jonathan Hickman’s Avengers run, building up to Secret Wars, and basically involved different Earths merging with one another and destroying each other until only one was left. Am I going to have to brush up on my Hickman Avengers? Then again, since the timeline at the end of his book shows that the Avengers were wiped out in year 45, and also lists the mutants dealing with the second Annihilation Wave (a bad guy threat from the cosmic books), Hickman may just be confirming that the machines and the mutants between them have been heading off the cosmic threats that would have come for Earth regardless.

“The inevitability of, well… me.”  It’s not just Moira who speaks of Sentinels as inevitable – Nimrod thinks so too. But why? Moira has the perspective of repeated lifetimes to draw on. Nimrod might just be arrogant, but maybe he knows something. And again, note Magneto’s “inevitability” comment in HoX #1.

“We do not dream.”  Given how keen Moira was to talk about dreams with Xavier – and how loaded the term has always been in X-Men stories – it seems notable that Omega singles out the machines’ lack of dreaming as the mutants’ main objection to them.

PAGES 12-13. The X-Men are still attacking the church. Of note here: Cardinal has eaten “a terminal apocalypse seed to overcome my genetic predisposition to nonviolence”, which seems to have turned him dark blue – in other words, Nightcrawler’s conventional colour scheme, except with red eyes instead of yellow.  This wasn’t obvious in the previous scene where he appeared – maybe he’s only just taken it, or maybe he was lit by the firelight in the previous scene  Conceivably it’s meant to be a lighting issue in this scene, but it doesn’t look like it. It’s worth noting that even though this is a relatively heroic incarnation of Apocalypse and the Horsemen, their idea of a good distraction is to storm a christening and start killing people.

Also, the priest identifies his god, “the Great Machine”, as Omega, not Nimrod.  If Omega is indeed Karima – a human who is accepted as a machine – then you can see why she would be important to him.

PAGE 14.  Apocalypse, Wolverine and Krakoa sneak into the data archive. Apocalypse says he is “older than even the idea of machines”, which on his established history, isn’t true – the ancient Egyptians very much had machines. But as we’ll see, this doesn’t seem to be a mistake.

PAGES 15-25.  Mainly action. Nimrod finally takes an interest when he sees Apocalypse is involved – he evidently sees some significance in this, and there’s at least a strong implication that Nimrod knows what Apocalypse is looking for. Cardinal is possibly killed in the battle, and at least gets knocked out (he also seems to go back to red again, so maybe the seed wore off). Rasputin and Xorn take out Omega by suicidally removing the helmet that contains Xorn’s black hole. Apocalypse heroically (?) holds Nimrod at bay while Wolverine gets the data to Moira, then kills her so that she can start her next life.

Singularity: Rasputin refers to Xorn’s black hole as a “singularity”, a term also sometimes used to describe a tipping point where things go horribly wrong with AI – probably not a coincidence. Perhaps more to the point, we don’t actually see Rasputin, Xorn or Omega killed – we just see them sucked into the black hole, following an exchange of dialogue between Rasputin and Omega that at least hints at the possibility that they’re actually transported somewhere. EDIT: As pointed out in the comments, the original Kuan-Yin Xorn had a sun in his head; it was his brother that had a black hole. But if Xorn’s been affected by a Death seed (as his behaviour would suggest) then that might explain the change.

Apocalypse: His heroic last stand here is very out of character, so evidently Moira has had an improving effect on him in some regards. Normally he’s obsessed with survival of the fittest, and Nimrod still uses that sort of language when describing him.  But Apocalypse can be hypocritical about survival of the fittest when it looks as though the fittest might turn out to be somebody other than him. Or maybe he just doesn’t think machines count as part of natural selection.

Nimrod describes him as “older than the world”, which is absolutely not established continuity. But given Apocalypse’s comment earlier that he was created before machines were thought of, it looks as though there’s a retcon afoot here. (Moira’s lives only differ from the point of her birth, so this would apply to “our” Apocalypse too.)

We don’t actually see Apocalypse die in battle with Nimrod (and see the opening quote).  Instead, Nimrod puts his hands on Apocalypse’s head – is he trying to download data? In issue #1, we were told that the Man-Machine Supremacy has this technology, and the only reason it doesn’t normally work on captured mutants is because they have “some kind of mnemonic trigger” which wipes their memories “when they start to flatline.” That wouldn’t be much of a defence for an immortal…

PAGE 26. A closing quotation, also from Apocalypse, referring to his eternal life ending in battle. Again, the potential parallel to Moira is obvious.

PAGES 27-29. A revised version of the Moira X timeline, this time zooming in on life 9 and on the deaths of the other Moiras.  Once again, life six is missing.  Since this is “the ninth life of Moira X”, the X evidently isn’t to do with numbering her lives.

Information about the deaths of Moiras 1-5, 7 and 8 is simply repeated from the timeline in House of X #2.  For Moira 9, her timeline went up as far as the start of the Apocalypse War in Year 42, and then became a dotted line.  While that was used in life 5 to signify a coma, for life 9 it seems to mean simply “to be continued”, as this issue gives a detailed chronology of what follows.  In fact, it turns out that Moira remains active in this timeline until Year 107, when she’s left comatose after a failed assassination attempt on Apocalypse.

Avengers World: Defeated in Year 45, this version of the Avengers comes from Hickman’s own Avengers run.

Akkaba, Kyr and Tian: The three mutant capital cities established in year 49 when mutants overrun Asia. See above for Akkaba.  I’ve no idea about the significance of Kyr (there was a character of that name in Savage She-Hulk #24-25 but Hickman is very unlikely to have him in mind). Tian is a Chinese word for “heaven”, but here it refers to New Tian, the mutant puppet state from the 2017 crossover Secret Empire. EDIT: As pointed out in the comments, Tian has also been used as the name of an Asian mutant city in two other Hickman stories set on alternate Earths: New Avengers and Ultimate Comics Hawkeye. There’s also a Marvel Universe precedent in Astonishing X-Men #27 (from the Warren Ellis run), though it was already in ruins when it appeared.

Year 50: According to this issue’s timeline, Nimrod came online in Year 50 of Moira’s ninth life. The same timeline also lists the Genoshan genocide taking place in Year 49 of her tenth life, repeating the error in House of X #2 (where, according to Hickman, that entry was wrongly swapped with the Year 50 entry for Moira faking her own death). That Year 50 entry isn’t repeated in this issue and it’s a little unclear which of the two events Hickman actually intended to be contemporaneous with Nimrod’s creation in Life 9 – if indeed it matters. But the idea of Moira faking her death and going underground at the point in time where she expects Nimrod to appear seems somewhat sensible.

In year 98, Krakoa fell, and the first Horsemen died – House of X #2 had Moira and Apocalypse recruiting the first Horsemen back in Year 24, so they must have been very long-lived. Moira and Apocalypse formulate a plan to eliminate Nimrod in year 104, which evidently goes rather badly, since Moira winds up being injured and placed in stasis in year 107.  And this issue’s story takes place in year 123 – this isn’t obvious the 100th anniversary of anything in Moira 9’s timeline, which tends to confirm that the “Year 1”, “Year 10”, “Year 100” stuff is symbolic.

Moira 10: Her life is shown extending into the future in a dotted line – but only up to a point somewhere between Years 73 and 88.

PAGES 30-32. The reading order again, followed by the trailers: NEXT: ONCE MORE UNTO THE BREACH and THEN: IT WILL BE DONE.