This entire series has been a mess, so it's no surprise that it ends the same way.
Cameron decides to kill Kelly given his (Cameron's) decision that mutants should all die, but Chrissie stops him and saves Kelly. She eventually kills Cameron, since she realizes that he'd never stop until Kelly is killed and mutants exterminated. The X-Men flee to Nightcrawler's church where they gather the remaining 100 or so mutants. They hear sirens coming in their direction. They assume that it's the authorities, but it could be ambulances, since the reader saw Kelly tells his troops not to kill Kitty when they had the chance. The End.
Bennett tries to get philosophical here, ending the issue with Kitty contemplating one of the tigers that we've learned have taken over the city after the zoos were destroyed. Cameron had used them as a metaphor, noting that they returned from the brink of extinction but did so as monsters. Norton portrays them almost as zombies in terms of their thirst for blood, but their revival as a species has nothing to do with some sort of virus. It's just part of their nature. In that way, Cameron misses the most obvious metaphor. Rather than arguing that mutants will return from extinction as "monsters," he could argue that mutants have always been monsters. Just like the tigers, they will only engage in battle, so why resurrect them as a species? In other words, Bennett failed even at using this metaphor in the most obvious way.
In other words, it was all simply a mess. This issue was marginally better than the previous ones, mostly because it is the only one without a rambling monologue and excessive moralization. But, the sins of the convoluted plot remain. I could continue (particularly about everyone's bizarre motivations, like Cameron's sudden genocidal rage) but I won't. Let's just forget about this one when we talk about "Secret Wars" in the future, shall we?
** (two of five stars)
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