Wolverine Has the Opposite of Winter Soldier’s MCU Activation Words

Warning: spoilers for Wolverine #9!

Wolverine and Winter Soldier have both experienced great tragedy, having been used as brainwashed weapons. The MCU’s Captain America: Civil War goes into detail on the Winter Soldier’s past with Hydra, showing how his mind was altered. When spoken in Russian, the words, “Longing, rusted, seventeen, daybreak, furnace, nine, benign, homecoming, one, freight car,” are able to turn Bucky Barnes into a mindless killer who will obey the speaker’s commands. These activation words caused the Winter Soldier to commit some heinous crimes and even fight against his best friend. Thankfully, though Hydra spent years molding Bucky into their perfect assassin, the hero eventually found a way to resist this influence.

Just like Sebastian Stan’s Winter Soldier, Wolverine spent much of his life killing for others. During his time in Team X and the Weapon X Program, he was experimented on, he was mindwiped countless times, and he was forced to commit innumerable senseless murders. Through much of this torture, however, the hero was surrounded by other mutants who were in the same situation. Despite the constant loss of their memories, they were each able to recall fragments of their past missions through a similar code phrase with the exact opposite effect.

Benjamin Percy, Adam Kubert, and Frank Martin’s Wolverine #9 gives readers fresh insight into Wolverine’s bond with his former Team X teammate, Maverick. Back when the two were fighting side by side, they watched as their fellow mutant, Sabretooth, expressed joy in taking human lives. This caused Wolverine and Maverick to make a pact to never let one another turn into such bloodthirsty animals. In order to help with this, the two began repeating a phrase to cement a sense of self that could survive Weapon X’s tampering. Using a quote from The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi, the two would repeat, “Today is a victory over yourself of yesterday,” as a reminder that they were not weapons to be owned and had thoughts and aspirations outside Weapon X, even as their handlers tried to excise these completely.

This comes into play later in the book, while Wolverine is attending an auction in the present day. Originally on the mission to investigate what the auctioneers are selling, Wolverine finds his mind-controlled friend, Maverick, on the list of items. After blowing his cover and being taken onto the stage to be sold as well, Wolverine makes one last attempt at freeing his friend by repeating their shared code. With that, Maverick snaps out of his brainwashed state and prepares for a fight, knowing that, at the very least, he can rely on the X-Man to have his back.

Despite similar methods of delivery, Wolverine and Winter Soldier’s override codes achieve vastly different results. While one turns the listener into a brutal assassin, the other prevents the listener from losing their humanity. What’s great about this new detail is that it underlines how heroic Logan was in escaping Weapon X – rather than just a berserker who busted loose, Wolverine is someone who found a way to safeguard his humanity until such a time as he was free to express it. Hopefully, he can help Maverick do the same as the series continues.

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