There are some match-ups across the comic book, video game, fantasy and sci-fi universes that leave fans angry and disappointed. That was one such case with the recent alternate take on the Wolverine versus Wonder Woman death battle by YouTube outlet BatintheSun.

After fans were left asking who would win in a fight to the death between Wonder Woman and Wolverine, BatintheSun satisfied that question with a dynamic, well directed fight.

The original fight ended the way you may have imagined it would, with Wonder Woman unable to beat Wolverine with mere slashes, swipes and sword stabs, so she opts to use the Lasso of Truth to throw him into the lava pit, inside of a volcano. We’re left to assume that was the end of Wolverine… except in an alternate take that wasn’t quite the end of the indestructible one. Check out the video below.

The ending here is what got a lot of people riled up… not that Wolverine was finally able to get in more than “just the tip”, penetrating Wonder Woman for the finale, but it was the last few frames after that. You see a lot of people were dissatisfied with seeing Wolverine split in half. He makes a smarmy remark about his predicament, but fans didn’t understand how it happened.

At the end of the fight when Wonder Woman throws Wolverine into the lava pit, the first thing most people questioned was “How did Wolverine lose his lower half if he’s made out of adamantium?”

It was a good question that Batinthesun replied to personally, mentioning in their reply…

“Actually it is how it works, his bones are indestructible, but the ligaments that hold his bones together are still human tissue, so the lava would melt them away, disconnecting his bones from his body. Also, Hulk has ripped him in half before as well. If you are looking for comic book facts, there they are.”

It is true that the Hulk ripped Wolverine in half, but he didn’t die. He crawled back to the mountain, put himself back together and tried fighting the Hulk again, this time returning with his head on a platter.

But that doesn’t explain how Wolverine’s lower half was disassembled here.

Batinthesun argued that his ligaments aren’t indestructible and that’s how everything below the spinal tip was severed. Except that’s now how the human anatomy works. The lumbar vertebrae at the lower end of the spinal cord attaches directly to the pelvis’ ilium, fitting snugly in place like two homoerotic Lego pieces, which you can clearly see in the diagram below.

So there’s no way that even with the loss of his ligaments that Wolverine’s lower skeletal half should have been severed.

However… some fans argued that the 1,200 degree Celsius temperatures from the lava pit would have been enough to melt the adamantium as if Wolverine was put into a smithing forge. That theory would have worked out, but then the question arises: how did only Wolverine’s lower half get severed and why didn’t his upper body melt?

Some argued that due to the natural state of lava it would boil and vaporize the tissue and water in his body so he wouldn’t have any muscle mass to move his body out of the lava after being submerged. Others argued that lava is too dense and that his body would have rested on top of the lava not submerge underneath it. A few more argued that the weight of his adamantium would have caused him to sink, thus explaining how his lower half could be burned off.

One person hypothesized that the volcano was likely an Olympian volcano with special properties, and could have belonged to Hephaestus, allowing it to smelt metals and ore that would otherwise be indestructible, thus if Wolverine’s lower half was submerged into the lava, it would explain how the lava was hot enough to melt away both the tissue and the adamantium bones.

Nevertheless, fans weren’t intent on letting BattintheSun off the hook with their original explanation, and so they delved even deeper into the fictional science of the X-Men universe. One thing they mentioned was that adamantium becomes indestructible once it solidifies. I’m not fond of quoting Wikipedia, but in this case a lack of sourcing (other than the comic books themselves) renders us in a state of servitude for their description of the fictional allow, in which they state…

“Marvel Comics’ adamantium has an extremely stable molecular structure which prevents it from being further molded even if the temperature is high enough to keep it in its liquefied form. In its solid form, it is described as a dark, shiny gray like high-grade steel or titanium. It is almost impossible to destroy or fracture in this state,”

That quote references the comic Avengers (vol. 1) #201-202.

So just to clarify, once adamantium is no longer liquefied it’s nearly impossible to destroy or fracture, and even in its liquid state before cooling it can’t be further molded.

So essentially, Wolverine’s lower half would not melt away since that would require it to be reshaped on a molecular level — unless we go with the hypothesis that the lava in the volcano is magical, and hot enough to reshape something as dense as adamantium. However, they didn’t clarify in the video if that volcano was magical.

Essentially, there is no other reasonable explanation within the confines of the X-Men and DC universe that would aptly explain why only Wolverine’s lower half would be severed by the end of the video, and that has fans in a tizzy.

So… what’s your take on the fight?