Sentinels! The Menace of Mutants Everywhere

RJ Writing Ink’s Spotlight on the Racist Robots of the Marvel Universe

Skynet; Ultron; whatever we call the AI that runs The Matrix. Pop culture is filled with plenty of stories where robots and/or AI decided to go rogue and turn on humanity. But humanity is not always the only targets of renegade robots, and Marvel comics has some of the most dangerous, and dangerously understated, examples that I have ever seen. They are called the Sentinels, but in truth, they tend to be anything but that. Especially if you happen to be a Mutant.

I’m RJ Writing Ink, and after seeing the footage from Marvel’s Hall H panel at SDCC, I felt inspired to talk about the Sentinels. Because if the versions that Dr. Doom apparently controls are what I think they are, then they’re going to be a major pain for our heroes.

Origins of Ignorance and Hubris

The Sentinels first appeared back near the beginning of the X-Men, in The X-Men #14 in 1965, and their origin is a sad one. One rooted in the fear of a single man: Dr. Bolivar Trask. He was a brilliant scientist at the dawn of what we would know as the modern age of superheroes. So many people with powers were appearing, but it was the Mutants, those whose powers were genetic rather than the product of some science or otherworldly nature. Trask saw a future where Mutants would eventually overtake the normal Human population, like the world of My Hero Academia, and it freaked him out. Thus, to ensure humans could survive and level the playing field, he decided to create robot guardians for them: his Sentinels. Unfortunately, their robo-brains led them to conclude the best way to protect humanity was to conquer it, leading them to turn on Trask.

The Sentinels’ goal was to create an army of themselves to conquer the world. Ultimately, though, Trask had a change of heart. Between realizing he had created the bigger threat, and realizing the X-Men wanted to protect normal Humans as much as them, he gave his life to destroy his creations. That should have been the end of the Sentinels, but it wasn’t even close.

The Mk II Sentinels were A MENACE!

Trask had had kids, but the one that you need to care about is his son, Larry Trask. Larry blamed the X-Men for his father’s death, prompting him to pick up where Bolivar left off. Thus, the Sentinel Mk IIs were born, and they were easily the deadliest versions of the robots ever. Not only were they bigger and stronger than the originals, but they could physically adapt to any threats they faced. According to the Marvel Wiki, they could even adapt to things like Thor’s hammer or the Vision’s intangibility. They’re also the versions that we see in the nightmarish future from X-Men: Days of Futures Past.

The sad irony: Larry himself was a Mutant, and he didn’t even know it. His dad found out he had precognition as a child and kept it a secret from him using this medallion to suppress his powers. Once that was gone, the Sentinels once again turned on their creator. This time, though, the X-Men couldn’t stop them. Cyclops had to trick them into going after the source of all life, and thus mutation, on Earth: the Sun. It worked, for a time. But eventually, the MK II’s decided to return to Earth and just sterilize humanity instead. Ironically, the lead Sentinel got mutated by solar radiation, so his kind turned on him, with the rest being destroyed by the Avengers. And Larry died helping them (but I think he’s back now.)

Destroyers of Mutants

From then on, the Sentinels would pass between various masters, both Human and of their own kind. Sometimes they would be under the control of the government as part of their attempts to keep Mutants in check. Other times, they would be used by Mutant-hating extremists. In addition, there were numerous variants of them over the years, like the Prime Sentinels, which were humans turned into cyborgs. Sentinels that were basically used as mecha’s with Human pilots. Nano-Sentinels, which could attack a person’s cells from inside their body. And then there were the Wild Sentinels, these hideous amalgamations of whatever tech they could scavenge from their area.

The Sentinels may seem like these big, lumbering robots for the X-Men to smash, make no mistake, they’re dangerous. There are multiple alternate futures in which they turn the Earth into a dystopian wasteland, most notably the Days of Futures Past timeline. In addition, their body count is just as bad in the main universe. In the 2001 New X-Men comics, a pair of Kaiju-sized wild Sentinels proceeded to destroy the Mutant nation of Genosha. It took the Nazi’s their entire reign of terror to slaughter ten l million people. The Sentinels wiped out sixteen million, half the world’s Mutant population, in an afternoon. Let that sink in.

If those Sentinels that Dr Doom seems to control in that trailer are the MK. II’s, then Thor is right to be afraid of him. They are engines of death and destruction. Granted, there are examples where a Sentinel has grown to be a genuine force for good, but they’re too few and far between to make an impact. With the X-Men going to play a big role in Doomsday, you can bet that we will see either them or the Avengers doing battle with them. And they may not all survive.