An Original X-Men Hero Just Figured Out How to Beat Deadpool's Healing

Warning! This article contains spoilers for X-Force #42

Deadpool is effectively immortal within X-Men canon, however, there is one original X-Men hero who discovered that - while impressive - Deadpool’s healing isn’t totally unbeatable, as he finally figured out how to kill the seemingly unkillable Merc with a Mouth. That X-Men hero is none other than Beast.

Hank McCoy aka Beast was one of the founding members of the X-Men alongside Cyclops, Jean Grey, Angel, and Iceman under their leader, Charles Xavier. Beast began his Marvel Comics career as a hero, fighting alongside like-minded mutants who used their powers to do good for all humanity, while fighting back against dangerous mutants who wanted nothing more than to see human society crumble. However, in the current state of X-Men canon, Beast is far from the hero he used to be. Hank has grown obsessed with ensuring not only mutant survival, but mutant supremacy, and he’s using ‘clones’ of himself to do so. While some are biological, others are mechanical, like the Nimrod Beast fans are introduced to in the latest X-Force issue. And it is in that form that Beast discovered how to finally kill someone who can heal from practically any injury.

X-Men’s Beast Figured Out How To Finally Kill Deadpool

In X-Force #42 by Benjamin Percy and Paul Davidson, readers are shown the birth of a new Beast clone: Nimrod Beast. This one imbued Beast’s consciousness into a body modified to be identical to the Nimrod Sentinel - which, as shown in House of X/Powers of X, has the power to kill Apocalypse. Needless to say, this version of Beast is the strongest one yet, and its purpose is to ensure the survival and supremacy of mutantkind, even going so far as to eradicate Homo sapiens and keep the remaining mutant population under constant surveillance. Right now, X-Force is traversing the timeline, finding and defeating Beast clones that have been scattered throughout history. When they encounter this one, they find that Nimrod Beast has kept Deadpool as a personal jester, forcing him to make jokes for Nimrod Beast’s entertainment. While that may seem risky to keep a seemingly immortal assassin as little more than a pet (which actually ends up being Nimrod Beast’s undoing), Nimrod Beast is confident that he can keep Deadpool in line under constant threat of atomization.

One of Nimrod Beast’s powers is the ability to atomize people in an instant, and he claims that this process is enough to surpass Deadpool’s healing factor, killing him for good - and this may be something fans have seen before. By all counts, Nimrod Beast has all the same powers and capabilities as the original Nimrod, the same Nimrod who has killed Wolverine many times throughout the different alternate futures in which the Sentinels conquer the planet (most recently in Inferno). Could Nimrod have been using this atomization power on Wolverine just as Nimrod Beast threatened to do to Deadpool? If so, then fans won’t have to take Nimrod Beast’s word for it that this attack will work, even though it definitely seems like reducing Deadpool to atoms would do the trick, no exhibition necessary.

Nimrod Beast was defeated before fans got to see his allegedly Deadpool-killing weapon in action. However, the fact that the original Nimrod killed Wolverine over and over again in a nearly identical fashion, along with the fact that breaking someone apart at the atomic level is something seemingly no one could ever come back from (plus, simply taking Nimrod Beast’s word for it) is enough to assert that an original X-Men hero did, in fact, figure out how to beat Deadpool’s healing.

X-Force #42 by Marvel Comics is available now.