The One X-Men Character Who Would Have Survived Thanos' Snap
The only X-Man to survive the Snap would've spelled big trouble for Thanos.
Speaking with IGN's Up at Noon show, Avengers: Endgame directors Joe and Anthony Russo revealed the one member of the team they would have left standing, had the X-Men been part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe — and they have some pretty solid reasoning behind their choice.
The Russos' conversation with IGN involved a little thought experiment in which the pair were asked about several groups, some fictional and some not, and which members — if any — would have survived the Snap (or "Decimation" as Mighty Marvel prefers to call it). When it came to the X-Men, they didn't hesitate to assert that only one mutant would have made it — Wolverine.
Handed a picture of the team (most of them, anyway) and asked to strike the fallen ones with a marker, Joe Russo said, "This is gonna be interesting. I'm going to do something very controversial." To the surprise of the hosts and encouragement from his brother, Russo began striking team members willy-nilly — taking the time to point out that even through Thanos wiped out half of all life in the universe, it doesn't necessarily mean that every specific group of people would have been halved.
"Listen, it's not like you take a group, and then like, randomly, that group loses half of its members," Russo said, "I mean, Hawkeye's entire family disappeared. So, any given group, you could lose almost everyone in that group. And that's what happens with the X-Men. The only one who's left..."
Russo then presented his handiwork, to gasps from the hosts. He then explained the thought process behind his choice: "I'd love to see a fiercely motivated Wolverine going up against Thanos."
Now that he mentions it, yes, so would we, and it stands to reason that nothing would motivate the near-indestructible hero quite like the only family he knows being wantonly wiped out by a genocidal intergalactic warlord. It would have been quite a contest; we know that Thanos' mighty sword is capable of damaging vibranium, since we all saw what it did to Captain America's shield. But since we haven't seen adamantium (the material which lends Wolvie's claws and skeleton their unbreakable quality) in the MCU yet, we don't know whether old Grimace would have had similar luck against Logan. (It should also be pointed out that, while there are few hand-to-hand combatants more formidable than Cap, there's something to be said for a good, old fashioned berserker rage.)
The Russos were then presented with a series of similar choices, revealing in each instance whom they would have chosen to dust if said choices existed in the MCU (which, hey, some of them might). Let's break them down:
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Joe Russo claimed to own a copy of the very first issue of TMNT, saying "I love these guys" — but that doesn't mean he would have spared them all. The choice was too tough, though, so he deferred to Anthony — who, what do you know, spared them all. Lest the hosts think him soft, though, Anthony deadpanned that they were "talking to the guys who iced Spider-Man and Black Panther." Yes, we remember. We remember all too well.
Scooby-Doo and the gang: Fred (whom Joe called "kind of worthless") and Shaggy both bit the dust, presumably leaving Scooby with an unstoppable thirst for vengeance. We must say that in contrast to Wolverine, though, we quite like the Mad Titan's chances against a weirdly verbose, food-obsessed dog who is literally scared of his own shadow.
The cast of Friends: Joe once again deferred to Anthony, although he took time to muse about the odds of an entire group having the misfortune to be wiped out (he is, presumably, not a fan). Joe proclaimed the odds to be too stacked against such an occurrence, then proved that he was basically full of it by dusting them all. ("This is happening right now on Netflix," he chuckled.)
The Backstreet Boys: After briefly misidentifying one of the group as Donnie Wahlberg (nope, that's NSYNC, Joe), the duo engaged in far too much contemplation before deciding to leave only one Backstreet Boy standing: Nick Carter. They didn't seem to have any particular reason for this; Nick just got lucky, we suppose.
The Bluths from Arrested Development: Having earned the attention of Marvel Studios partly due to their excellent work on the beloved series (they've even snuck a few Bluth-related Easter eggs into the MCU), this has to have been a tough choice for the brothers to make. But, choose they did: Maeby, Buster, and Tobias all bit the dust, with Joe explaining that Tobias had to go because he thought "it'd be really funny to hear what he said when he went... if he shot this with David Cross, we'd do about 40 variations [on his death scene]."
The cast of Community: Pierce Hawthorne (Chevy Chase) got dusted, with Joe noting that he "could use the five years." Joe then mused over what choices would be the "most heartbreaking" before settling on the obvious answer: he spared everyone else.
Well, it's always fun to think about what might have been, and it's indeed to bad that Disney's deal to acquire Fox didn't go through soon enough for the epic throwdown between Wolverine and Thanos to become a reality. Logan will be a part of the MCU at some point in the future, however, so we know this much: if Thanos ever manages to find a way back from wherever Tony Stark snapped him to, he'll want to leave the X-Men alone.