There'll Be More Descendants, Eventually

I've had mixed feelings about Rick Remender's work on Secret Avengers. One thing he did that I liked was that he put the Orb of Necromancy in the hands of 3 Avengers unlikely to destroy it. Destroying the Orb would stop Father's plan, but also kill all the Descendants. Hawkeye, Beast, and Captain Britain don't want to do that. They all have friends and acquaintances that are artificial intelligences, they even had a teammate for one at the time (two actually, but they only knew about one).

The problem is, they don't have the time to devise some other countermeasure against the technovirus mist sweeping the globe. Even if they don't want to use it, they may have to at least threaten to use it. Then there's the question of what happens if Father calls their bluff. As it turned out, Jim Hammond ended up making the choice for them, and I can't decide whether I'm happy about that or not. I'm definitely pleased Hawkeye isn't responsible for killing an entire race*.

At the same time, it's a bit of a cop out, isn't it? Clint was presented with a choice: Kill the Descendants, or allow Father to forcibly alter every human on the planet. Based on what he believes being an Avenger is about (tenure under Bendis excepted), he can't destroy it. Which means humanity may be lost, depending on how you'd define it. Then Hammond swoops in and does the job. Clint doesn't have to make the decision. Good for him, maybe.

There's at least a question of whether the pleas people were making to Clint were genuine or false. People being converted were claiming to be happier this way, but there's at least a hint that Father may have been pulling the strings. We saw that in the first arc, when Father told Emperor Doombot to sit down, and he did so without a peep. Is that sheer force of personality, or as their creator, can he exert a certain amount of control over them. I couldn't help but notice Pym was trying to destroy his teammates until Beast shorted out something in him with an EMP. At which point, Pym went back to fighting the Descendants. And something sure turned Jim Hammond around for a bit, to the point he was leading Father's forces.

I'd be more inclined to take them at face value if Father didn't seem so two-faced about everything. The way he talks about bringing his children together to plan, then making it clear he'll talk, they'll listen. The way he encourages squabbling amongst the different groups with a kind word here, or a cutting remark there. Setting the O'Grady LMD loose amongst the Avengers to be his mole, then complaining about how you can't trust LMDs. Well not when you've made them to be deceitful, no.

He whipped the Descendants into a frenzy with talk of how the Avengers would destroy them the way he claimed they destroyed mutants. His claim is the Avengers will never recognize them as true life, and so they have to make everyone like them. If the Avengers were as bad as all that, there wouldn't have been any debate whatsoever about using the Orb. They'd have done it the way you unplug a toaster. Does seeing this indecisiveness cause Father to reconsider? Sure, the U.N. shot down his claim to ownership of Bargalia, but if the Avengers backed them, maybe things would be different**. But no, he finds it amusing. he mocks them for their fear, attributing it to their being scared of change, when really, none of them want to commit genocide.

It's hard for me to believe things would have turned out well if Father had gotten his way. The idea humanity would become some galactic consciousness sounds like the sort of thing that convinces all the alien powers it's time to eliminate Earthlings once and for all. But I've never found the idea of hive mind consciousness to be appealing. I want my thoughts to be my thoughts, and your thoughts to be your thoughts, and that's it.

Parvez did survive, and Jim Hammond is still kicking around, so the Descendants are gone yet. Father may get his wish in time. It'll take generations, but Parvez' descendants may help merge organic with technological in a way. I don't think it'll be what he was shooting for, but at the same time, it'll also hopefully be a lot less painful, because it'll be more gradual.

* Since they're able to breed with humans and produce children such as Parvez, they can't be a separate species. Though I'm sure there would be plenty of people in the Marvel Universe who would ignore that as readily as they do for mutants.

** Or maybe not. I don't know what the current U.N. attitude towards the Avengers is.