Oh mister imbalance himself! No thank you take it back.
My indecision and my hesitation I discarded long ago
So that I may obtain one singe thing
And yeah I guess that does sum him up pretty well.
The pose is frankly incredible, I don’t think he deserves it.
This is the giant oil painting of himself he hangs in the break room of his evil organisation. He has smaller poster versions he puts up in all the hallways. He also has bookmarks made as well. He loves this version of himself dearly. It’s the way he really sees himself. It’s the way he assumes he is.
And the moon he reaches towards is so beautiful, but I think there’s a little bit of actual moon nonsense I don’t quite get with him yet. The full moon appeared in the reflection of the water that one time, out of sync with the time around it, and I’m not sure if that’s if further significance to Evil Wolverine himself or if it was more of a warning of the time of his arrival.
But either way It’s so interesting that he could be just be standing by the moon, but instead he’s standing in front of a roughly hewn out poor imitation of the moon instead. It’s not even exactly the right shape, and you can see the broken base at the bottom, still jagged. And IS it the moon, or is it a leftover fragment of that statue Sakura that was praying at? Is it an echo of Evil Wolverine hacking away at the universe and taking the remnants proudly for himself?
Is it a continuation of how he hacks away at everything he touches in service of his own wish, leaving everything else around him a broken ruin that suits him perfectly? How he not only doesn’t care about the lives he ruins but ACTIVELY aims to do it in order to get what he wants?
Is it a peek into the fact that he wants "the moon", but all he’ll ever be able to achieve is an ugly simulacrum of it? How he’ll never get exactly what he wants, but thinks that ruining the universe until he can get something close enough is good enough for him? That it’s some incredible and worthy goal worth looking forward to, but in reality it's just a shambles of broken rock, battered and stolen and only a fraction of what it might have been without him?
Is the fact that it’s all Rock a sign that Evil Wolverine’s wish is essentially just a barren landscape, a lifeless universe that roughly looks almost like what he wants if you squint a bit?
And yet he thinks he’s pulling it off masterfully the entire time.
Also there's a JUICY, delicious morsel in the fact that the splash text refers to him leaving behind "hesitation" specifically - and it was Lava Lamp's hesitation that ultimately lead to him missing Sakura's hand and being unable to save her. It shows the parallel between the two (that Evil Wolverine himself is so thrilled by) and also demonstrates why Evil Wolverine thinks he's right. It's almost like he's experienced the exact same moment already, or something very similar to it. If he ever does hesitate he'll have the same result - he'll lose the person he's fighting to save. So he's decided to go Full Speed in the other direction and never hesitate or let anything else ever hold him back again, and this has lead to him full on slaughtering countless worlds without ever thinking twice.
It's a great reflection on what Lava Lamp's own dedication could turn into - and he's from the same bloodline, so the parallels write themselves. If pushed in the same directions WOULD Lava Lamp end up as the next Evil Wolverine, or will his heart let him grow in ways that Evil Wolverine cut out of himself a long time ago?
