Sentinel Backstory: What are X-Men’s Mutant Hunters?

Mutants Are Terminated

Unit-1965 deployed to the site of reported Mutant activity.
Targets identified: one male adult with steel skin, one female juvenile with wings.
Warning issued to surrounding humans.
Five humans attempting to aid Mutants.
Second warning issued.
Result: attacks with rocks and a handgun.
Attackers deemed traitors to humanity.
Eliminated.
Mutants cornered.
Charging plasma cannon.

ALERT! Energy discharge has damaged chassis.
Multiple attackers identified – Mutant paramilitary organization “X-Men.”
Combat data relayed to Master Mold.
Additional Sentinel units will not arrive in time.
Unit-1965 critically damaged.
Initiating power core self destruct protocol.
Estimated blast radius: 100 meters.
ALERT! Mutant combatant “Wolverine” approaching at high velocity!
Sentinel Unit-1965 irreparably damaged.
Insufficient power to self destruct.
Shutting doo0o00owwnnn…

The Sentinels are Mutantkind’s greatest threat. These giant killer robots are equipped to handle any mutant and will not stop until their targets have been exterminated. So who made them? Where did they come from? Why haven’t the X-Men scrapped these killer robots? Let’s find out.

Night of the Sentinels: The Sentinel’s Backstory

The Sentinels debuted in X-Men #14 in 1965. They were created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

Anthropologist Bolivar Trask learned about the Mutant race and feared that they would take over the world. He worked with like-minded scientists to create giant robots meant to detect and capture Mutants. Trask was challenged to a debate by Professor X and unveiled his Sentinels on live television.

The Sentinels had developed sentience and chose to conquer humanity so that they could protect humans from Mutants. They kidnapped Trask and held him in a secret facility to build more of them. The X-Men fought the Sentinels, but were outnumbered and outgunned.

Trask couldn’t convince Master Mold, the living control center of the Sentinels, that they were working from flawed instructions. He realized that his fear had caused this disaster and sacrificed himself to destroy his creations. Bolivar Trask’s repentance was never discovered, making him a martyr for the anti-Mutant cause.

Days of Future Past: The Sentinel’s History

Sentinels became a recurring threat to the X-Men. They were always being built by Trask’s relatives, the U.S. government wanting anti-Mutant weapons, and hidden Master Molds. Sentinels killed scores of Mutants and destroyed the Mutant-led nation Genosha, murdering sixteen million people in minutes.

In one possible future, Sentinels were mass-produced after Mutants assassinated a senator. They killed almost every superpowered being and conquered America. The remaining X-Men died protecting Shadowcat while she mentally traveled back to the modern day to stop the assassination.

Shadowcat’s actions prevented that timeline from happening in the main universe, but the Sentinel-controlled timeline branched off and continued to exist. A mutant escaped to the modern day timeline and was followed by Nimrod: the Ultimate Sentinel.

Nimrod’s Bastion: The Sentinel’s Modern Stories

Nimrod was cut off from its controllers and studied the world while disguised as a human. New perspectives led to Nimrod deciding that only Mutant criminals should be killed. It slowly learned empathy and compassion, even being mistaken for a superhero by the public. In many ways, Nimrod was evolving into that hero.

A Master Mold hacked Nimrod to use against the X-Men. Both were thrown into a magical portal and fused together. The hybrid Sentinel was made partially human by magic and became an amnesiac named Bastion. He later regained his memories and acted as a vanguard for all anti-Mutant forces.

X-Men adversary Moira MacTaggart recently revealed that the Sentinels are destined to exist. Across nine alternate lifetimes, she saw that Mutants always evolve and that the Sentinels are created to hunt them, even after she killed everyone involved in their creation. 

That bombshell was punctuated by an anti-Mutant coalition creating the main timeline’s Nimrod, a Sentinel even more powerful than the one that became Bastion. The ultimate Mutant killer was born.

X-Termination: The Sentinels Powers and Personality

Sentinels are giant robots with all the strength and durability that implies. All of them come with mutation detectors, rocket boots, and energy blasters. Later models include search lights, tasers, self-repair capabilities, and many weapons to counteract mutations.

Nimrod has all of the standard Sentinel weapons and is made of liquid metal, allowing it to shapeshift and self-repair like Terminator’s T-1000. That shapeshifting enables it to adapt to Mutant powers in real time. Bastion has all of those powers, plus a cybernetic virus that can resurrect the dead as his cyborg slaves.

Each Sentinel generation builds upon the previous foundation as it expands its capabilities. Sentinels follow their programming because they aren’t self-aware. Master Molds act superior to humans, but lack personality. Nimrod slowly learned nuance and empathy. Given a bit more time, it may have become the hero it was mistaken for. Finally, Bastion has none of Nimrod’s compassion and views himself as a dark messiah.

The Actors Who Play Sentinels

David Fox – X-Men: the Animated Series, Spider-Man the Animated Series
Jim Ward – Wolverine and the X-Men
Tom Kenny – The Super Hero Squad Show
Eric Bauza and Jennifer Hale – X-Men ‘97
Theo James and Kari Wahlgren – X-Men ‘97 (as Bastion)

Didya Get All That?

The Ultimate Mutant Hunters

Image: Scene from Marvel Animation’s X-MEN ’97. Photo courtesy of Marvel Animation. © 2024 MARVEL.

Jared Bounacos

Jared Bounacos has written for Movie Rewind since 2016.