'Wolverine: The Long Night' Has a Huge Revelation About the Mutant Timeline

The only thing more delightfully frustrating than the absence of Logan throughout most of Wolverine: The Long Night is how difficult it is to approximate when in the Marvel timeline this story takes place. There are fidget spinners and more advanced tech that places it squarely in the present day, but when people see a short guy with claws, they don’t immediately blurt out the word “mutant.” Is this before mutants go public when Logan is still one of the few active mutants? Is the greater public in the “know”? Episode 8 “The Red Sunset” finally has someone say the “m-word” mutant, which tells us even more about how this society relates to mutants.

Spoilers follow for Wolverine: The Long Night Episode 8: “The Red Sunset”

“The Red Sunset” was released Monday morning, and in it, Agents Marshall and Pierce get closer than ever to cracking the case. Of course, it’s more Langrock drama at the center of everything with the Aurora cult tangentially monitoring the whole thing and warning everyone about the impending Long Night. Agents Marshall and Pierce happen upon convincing evidence that the murderer has been Brent Langrock all along, and that he might even be the Sabretooth-looking “monster man”. When earnestly discussing whether or not Brent was possessed by some kind of “shadow spirit,” that’s when Agent Marshall drops the “mutant” word.

They’re discussing Brent and how he might be related to a creepy Satanic altar they found underground. Agent Pierce notes how the hunt possessed him in the canyon when Brent killed the bear with just a knife and traps. “Maybe he sees himself as a servant or weapon of the Taurek,” Agent Pierce says. “Maybe … maybe he’s a mutant?” Agent Marshall wonders.

They dismiss the premise outright, but it still makes you wonder why it’s taken this long for people to start talking about mutants. Supernatural things have been happening since the very beginning of the show, so it would almost make more sense for everyone to start accusing Logan of being a mutant and going on some kind of witch hunt.

Last week we learned that The Long Night rewrote Logan’s backstory for a more modern context, and that he was operating as part of a Weapon-X black ops team. Given this new information, it’s possible that high-ranking government agents like Tad Marshall and Sally Pierce know about mutants but the general public does not. Think about how Moira MacTaggert sort of knows about mutants in the X-Men movies long before the general public does. It’s probably a little bit like that.

The big revelation at the end of Episode 8, however, was that Hudson Langrock was the killer all along. Could that really be true? We’ll have to find out next week in the penultimate episode.

Wolverine: The Long Night releases every Monday morning on Stitcher Premium.