Almost everything about Weapon X is shrouded in secrecy, even to readers, because Wolverine could not remember his past until the 2005 storyline House of M. That secrecy meant that information about Wolverine’s past was doled out in small, and often contradictory, chunks. For example, Wolverine has no real name for his first several appearances in Incredible Hulk and Uncanny X-Men, and even after a leprechaun calls him “Logan” in 1977’s Uncanny X-Men #103 (yes, you read that right), it takes a while for his teammates to find out this information and start using the name regularly. Likewise, Wolverine originally said that his claws were part of his costume, and then later says they were given to him with his adamantium skeleton, only to reveal that he has had bone claws he was a child.
All of that is a long way of saying that even though the original X-Men series did sometimes delve into the history of Weapon X, that history has changed a lot in the thirty years since the show ended.
One of the most important changes occurs in Assault on Weapon Plus, a four-part storyline by Grant Morrison and Chris Bachalo that appeared in New X-Men #142–145 (2003). The story begins with Cyclops in a bar, trying to shed his boy-scout persona and drown his sorrows after Jean Grey learned about his psychic affair with Emma Frost. He finds Wolverine sitting across the bar, who has come with a masked man called Fantomex to look for Cyclops. Wolverine needs Cyclops’ help to come with him and Fantomex and find Weapon Plus. The evolved version of Weapon X, Weapon Plus holds the files of its predecessor, and Wolverine wants to find what’s in them.
The quest takes the trio into the World, an advanced metauniverse (it is a Grant Morrison comic, after all) operated by Marvel superscientists. Within the World, Wolverine and we readers learn important information about Weapon X. First, it’s not “Weapon X,” it is “Weapon 10,” as in “the tenth version of the Weapon Plus program.” Fantomex comes from Weapon XIII, the storyline builds to a battle against the super-sentinal Ultimaton from Weapon XV, and several other characters have been retconned as projects of previous Weapon Plus Programs. For example, 2019’s Wolverine & Captain America: Weapon Plus reveals that Ted Sallis was turned into Man-Thing through Weapon IV and the procedure that gave Luke Cage his powers stems from Weapon VI.
But the biggest revelation points to the source of the whole debacle. Weapon I, the first of the Weapon Plus programs, was led by Dr. Abraham Erskine in World War II, and led to the transformation of Steve Rogers into Captain America. In that moment, we realize that all the lies, suffering, and destruction caused by the Weapon Plus program occurred because Captain America exists.
Of course, this is yet another retcon to the two characters’ pasts. But it’s one that deepens them both, in opposite directions. For Captain America, it reminds him that all the good he does carries the taint of governments willing to destroy people in pursuit of power. They made him to be a weapon, and he must continue to overcome that intention. Conversely, that same fact provides hope for Wolverine, who has always worried that he’s an irredeemable beast. If Captain America can transcend from a weapon into something good, maybe he can as well.