(upbeat rock music)
Marvel's time-traveling,
cybernetically enhanced mutant Cable's
about to kick Deadpool's ass six ways from Sunday,
but who is Cable, where does he come from,
and why should you care?
Well, here's everything you need to know
about Cable in Deadpool 2.
As is the case with most Marvel characters,
Cable's backstory has shifted
and changed a bit over the years,
especially because time travel's involved,
but here's an overview on how he became
the surly, cyborgy X-Man we know and love,
and in classic X-Men fashion,
Cable's origin story is more confusing
than trying to use Wingdings
to decode the Zodiac Killer's letters.
The character of Cable as we know him today
first appeared in the 1990s in New Mutants Number 87.
Created by Rob Liefeld and Louise Simonson,
Cable was born from editor Bob Harris' instructions
that his team needed to shake things up a little bit
with New Mutants and create a brand new team leader
that was drastically different than Professor X,
maybe like a roller blade with arms or something.
I don't know.
It was the '90s.
After kicking around names like
Commander X, Cyber, and Quinn,
they settled on Cable, a time-traveler from the future
with a metal arm, a glowing cybernetic eye,
and a perpetual frown
that not even Photoshop could turn upside down.
Your move, Snapchat filters.
The result was kind of like what would happen
if Deviant Art's Sonic the Hedgehog fandom
were asked to make an original character
inspired by the Terminator.
A lot of pouches in places you don't expect,
kind of like on a hedgehog.
In his debut, Cable helped the New Mutants battle
against the sinister terrorist organization
the Mutant Liberation Front,
who were led by a mysterious armored man
named Stryfe with a Y,
a character whose backstory would intertwine with Cable's
in a truly preposterous way,
but we'll get there in just a moment.
While New Mutants Number 87
was the first time we met Cable the man,
the character actually made an appearance
in 1986's Uncanny X-Men Number 201 as a little baby
named Nathan Christopher Charles Summers,
specifically the son of Cyclops himself, Scott Summers,
and Madelyne Pryor, who was later revealed
to be a clone of Jean Grey
created by one of the X-Men's villains Mister Sinister,
who hoped to use their powerful mutant baby
to defeat Apocalypse.
You know, because comics.
Scott and Madelyne's happy marriage
would come to a brutal end though.
Madelyne was driven mad
by Cyclops abandoning her and their son
when Jean Grey came back from the dead,
as well as learning the truth of her own creation.
Madelyne snapped and tried to sacrifice young Nathan
as well as several other babies
to demonic entities from the realm of Limbo.
Yikes!
Fortunately, Cyclops, Jean Grey,
X-Factor, and members of the X-Men
stepped in to save the day.
Scott and the newly reborn Jean Grey
received custody of the child,
but things went from bad to worse
when Apocalypse kidnapped the wee baby Nathan
and infected the child with the Techno-Organic Virus.
It's a virus that is deadly
and slowly turns its host's genetic material into machinery.
It was also Apocalypse's insurance policy
against Mister Sinister,
and in a deeply strange plot twist,
we would later learn that this virus was first given
to Apocalypse by an older Cable
who traveled back in time under the moniker of The Traveler,
and Apocalypse then gave it
to a young Cable many years later,
thus creating this self-fulfilling
Ouroboros bull (bleep) prophecy of sorts.
I don't know.
Time travel gets real wonky, real quick.
To protect his son, Cyclops gave Nathan
to a woman from 2000 years in the future
from something called Clan Askani,
a sisterhood dedicated to defeating Apocalypse.
She claimed the boy would become a savior in her time period
and that she could cure him of his disease.
Unfortunately, this was going
to be a one-way trip for Nathan.
So Cyclops did what any good father would do,
gave his baby to a stranger
and sent him to the 39th century.
Nathan was raised by Mother Askani in the far-flung future
who was actually, wait for it, his half-sister.
Oh my God, who could've expected?
Rachel Summers, his half-sister,
who was displaced from her own time period,
the Days of Future Past timeline.
While trying to cure his Techno-Organic Virus,
Rachel took some precautionary measures,
cloning Nate just in case things went south,
which obviously they did 'cause it's the X-Men,
and so Apocalypse's cronies kidnapped the clone baby,
gave it to Apocalypse, who then raised the child as his son,
a man who, you got this,
would grow up to become Stryfe with a Y.
(gasps) Gasp, you should!
That's right, because the mysterious armored terrorist
who Cable went toe-to-toe with
was his brother from another test tube,
and Stryfe is someone who Cable
would go up against time and time again.
It really makes me glad I'm an only child,
unless I have a clone out there.
I don't.
As he grew up, Cable was raised
by psychic projections of his parents,
Scott Summers and Jean Grey, inhabiting cloned bodies
and living as Redd and Slym Dayspring.
Dumbass names.
They never told Nathan they were his real parents though
and did their best to train their son to fulfill his destiny
as the one who would eventually overthrow Apocalypse.
While the Techno-Organic Virus
had spread across the left side of Nathan's body,
Redd taught Nathan how to use his telekinetic abilities
to prevent the virus from spreading
to the rest of his meaty bits,
and yes, that's what they're called.
Much like in Marvel vs. Capcom 2,
Cable is incredibly overpowered.
As the son of Scott Summers and Madelyne Pryor,
or Clone Grey, whatever you wanna call her,
Cable was born with powerful mutant abilities.
In particular, he's a gifted psionic
with the powers of telepathy and telekinesis.
He possesses super-human endurance and mental endurance,
which sounds like they might come in handy
in the nightmarish future he calls home,
and he has a degree of super-human strength as well,
thanks to his telekinetic training,
which he used to reinforce his body on a cellular level.
His cybernetic eye lets him see light
on spectrums not visible to the human eye.
A gifted warrior trained
in advanced weaponry and hand-to-hand combat,
Cable is a natural-born leader
with a real knack for battle strategy.
According to Marvel's website, Cable is so powerful,
he can use telekinetic barriers to protect himself
from a ground zero detonation
of a 1-kiloton nuclear warhead,
which would instantly vaporize you
if you didn't have Cable's skillset.
Also, Cable apparently has a law degree from Harvard?
Why?
In case a loved one gets mesothelioma in the future?!
In other words, he's incredibly powerful,
definite Chosen One material.
Case in point, during his teenage years,
he managed to defeat Apocalypse once and for all
by preventing the mutant
from transferring his essence into a new body.
When Oscar Isaac went from an Oscar Old-saac
to an Oscar New-saac in X-Men: Apocalypse, yeah,
he put the kibosh on that.
So how did Cable wind up back in the 20th century
with everyone's favorite X-Men?
Well, that's thanks in no small part
to Stryfe, his evil clone.
Despite living in a futuristic nightmare,
Cable found love in a hopeless place,
marrying an Askani sister named Aliya
and having a son named Tyler,
or I guess at least a presumed son.
He might be Stryfe's kid,
which I guess would make Cable his uncle, which is...
Anyway, I don't know.
Unfortunately, Aliya was murdered by Stryfe,
and Tyler was kidnapped and brainwashed
by his dad's evil clone,
and if that wasn't bad enough,
Cable was forced to shoot his son
to save his friend Dawnsilk's life.
Naturally, after all of this,
when Stryfe traveled back through time to the 20th century,
Cable followed suit, arriving in Scotland,
where he encountered everyone's
favorite geneticist Moira MacTaggert,
who took him under her wing.
Adopting the name Cable, meant to symbolize his link
between the present and the future,
he traveled to America where he helped Professor X
implement highly advanced security measures
in the X-Mansion in exchange for lessons
on how to live in the 20th century,
which is a scene that I very much
hope we get to see in Deadpool 2.
Cable went on to reshape the New Mutants into X-Force,
a more militant, dangerous version of the X-Men,
who we're going to see in Deadpool 2,
and together, they sought to stop Stryfe's sinister plans
and prevent Apocalypse from becoming too powerful.
Using a ship known as the Graymalkin,
named for the street where the X-Mansion is located,
Cable traversed the time stream
between the 1990s and the future,
aided by his trusty A.I. named the Professor.
But how exactly is Cable connected
to Marvel's Merc with a Mouth?
Well, Cable and Deadpool first crossed paths
in New Mutants Number 98, when a man named Tolliver
hired the motormouthed assassin to kill Cable.
Now, unbeknownst to Cable,
Tolliver was secretly his son or nephew Tyler Dayspring
who had also traveled back in time from the 39th century.
You know, that old chestnut.
That old this is why you never have kids chestnut,
especially when they're just gonna be a constant thorn
in your side after you shoot them,
and they're gonna try to turn Wolverine
into a Horseman of Apocalypse,
and we talked about this, Cable, but I digress.
The unlikely allies, Cable and Deadpool,
starred in a 50-issue series in the mid-2000s,
which proved to be a hit,
thanks to Cable's gruff take-no-prisoners attitude
and Deadpool's fourth-wall-breaking quippy antics.
It's a little unclear if Cable and Deadpool
will see eye to eye in this film,
but at least we'll always have Wade
demonstrating his sweet katana skills.
Spoiler alert,
Cable's bullets are really fast, like, too fast.
Is it scientifically possible?
Ask Kyle.
He did an episode on it.
And that is a brief overview
of everything you need to know about Cable.
There are so many more Cable stories to tell,
but that's a story for another video,
or else this would be like three hours long.
If you wanna know more about Deadpool
or his weird love triangle with Thanos,
be sure to check out previous episodes
of The Dan Cave that I've done.
But tell me.
What's your favorite Cable story?
What do you hope to see
from Josh Brolin's portrayal in Deadpool 2?
Let me know in the comments below
and give me a body-sliding thumbs up while you're there.
That's right.
Cable can teleport, and he calls it body-sliding.
Fact after the fact.
Now, be sure to like, subscribe,
and hit that notification bell,
or else you might miss next week's episode
about a disfigured organist living in a labyrinth
beneath a French opera house
and the new girl in school who becomes obsessed with him
and his sick butterfly stroke in Swimfantom of the Opera.
Until next time, keep on digging.