The Merc With The Mouth is back for a third installment! And with him … a brand new character! A brand new old character! Deadpool & Wolverine is going to feature one of Wolverine’s oldest nemeses. But who is this mysterious antagonist? Warning: spoilers ahead.
Who is this famous X-Men antagonist?
The answer: Sabertooth. As shown in the new one minute teaser trailer for Deadpool & Wolverine, Tyler Mane will be returning as Wolverine’s old foe from the original X-Men film. But who exactly is Sabertooth? What are his powers? And why can’t he and Wolverine just get along?
A new trailer gives a first look at the film’s take on the character:
Sabertooth: A Biography
Sabertooth, born Victor Creed, had a hard life growing up. He first manifested his powers as a small boy, when he accidentally killed his own brother over a piece of pie. Fearing his mutant son, Creed’s father locked the boy up in the basement and only visited him to pull out his “devil teeth,” the fangs that Creed grew due to his mutation, only for those teeth to continue to grow back.
After years of this torture, the young Victor Creed finally freed himself by chewing through his own chained up hand like a coyote. It grew back, due to his healing factor. He then proceeded to murder his father. After that? He murdered a lot of other people. Creed spent most of his teenage years on living on the lam across Canada. He laid railroad tracks for a while, then quit that job after murdering his boss with one of his retractable claws.
Despite his tragic backstory, Sabertooth is hardly a sympathetic character. He kept up a yearly tradition of visiting his younger brother Saul on the latter’s birthday to torture him. One day, he gave his brother a choice: suffer another birthday beating or mutilate his beloved sister Clara with a jar of acid. Sabertooth’s brother chose the latter, ruining he and his sister’s formerly close relationship like he ruined her face. Awful.
So how did Sabertooth and Wolverine become nemeses? Surprisingly, it wasn’t the classic “villain hurts hero” story. It was the other way around. Sabertooth found out from his sister Clara that his little brother Saul had been murdered at the clawed hands of Wolverine. Saul started it by trying to wipe Wolverine’s mind. Long story. Unable to provide his little brother with birthday beatings any longer, Sabertooth swore revenge against Wolverine. Thus, an arch-nemesis relationship was born.
What are Sabertooth’s powers?
Sabertooth has a very similar set of abilities to Wolverine, chief of which is his healing factor. Like Wolverine, Sabertooth is able to quickly heal from virtually any wound. The more severe the wound, the quicker the healing process. This healing factor comes with other perks, such as resistance to most poisons and diseases, along with decelerated aging. Sabertooth was born sometime in the late 19th century. He’s over 100 years old.
Like Wolverine, Sabertooth also has a set of retractable claws in his hands, but a lot of them—one on each finger. He also has a retractable claw on each one of his little toesies! While they were originally bone, his claws were augmented to become incredibly sharp and durable. Sabertooth also has a mouth full of fangs, which are capable of chewing through bones—even his own bones.
Sabertooth also possesses heightened animal instincts. He possesses night vision, like a wolf. He is also able to see infrared light. He might be colorblind because of this, but we don’t know for sure. He can hear people breathing as far as 200 feet away. His sense of taste allows him to detect 1 part in 10,000, and his sense of smell? He’s a bloodhound, able to detect a scent 8 hours old with a concentration of 20 parts per million—not to mention his animalistic speed, reflexes, agility, strength, and stamina. He’s practically unstoppable.
And those are just his POWERS. We haven’t even begun to cover his SKILLS. He’s a hand-to-hand combat expert. A master tracker. A covert ops specialist. An expert marksman. And despite his brutish vibe, he’s actually really smart, or should I say experienced. He’s got centuries worth of combat experience and was trained by some of the top special ops agencies in existence. The CIA. Hydra. Weapon X. The man has quite the resume.
Long story short, Wade and Logan are gonna have their hands full with this guy.
