Wolverine players in Marvel Rivals are as confident as the character, but not quite as skilled. Dozens of clips featuring Wolverine using his signature lunge ability are all over X (formerly Twitter) and TikTok, and most of them are embarrassing.
Even though the community has recently come around on Wolverine’s relative strength among the rest of the cast, his leap is notoriously hard to land. Ideally, you try to catch an enemy player in your claws, but a lot of Wolverines end up only catching air and frequently fall off the map. Set this to Maroon 5’s “Animals” — specifically the part where Adam Levine howls — and you have a powerful meme format.
The Maroon 5 bit was actually borrowed from a similar meme in the League of Legends community about Warwick players missing his ultimate, which also happens to be a lunge; proving that players of all types can be comically bad at the same things. Although, this clip of a Wolverine pulling it off successfully after slicing through a team in overtime makes it look like the best move in the game.
Most of the clips, however, are just Wolverine flying across the map as everyone else goes on with their day. Played right, the character can be a menace, especially for tanks. He can take an enormous amount of damage and keep fighting. But, as these clips show, his greatest enemy is himself.
There are plenty of Marvel Rivals memes to go around, as the free-to-play team shooter continues to thrive a month after its release. Wolverine players leaping themselves right back to the spawn room are competing with Iron Man players shooting nukes at cute little sharks and commanding Jarvis to “clip that.” Like the explosion of clips and memes at the height of Overwatch in 2016, Marvel Rivals is having its moment.
Nothing is more illustrative of a chaotic hero shooter than footage of people pulling off the greatest (and goofiest) plays. The third-person perspective and ability to rewatch matches has given people the tools to highlight and dramatize the kind of plays that might go unnoticed when the clock is ticking. I’ve probably spent more time watching Marvel Rivals videos than I’ve spent playing matches and it makes me want to try Wolverine myself, or do everything in my power to wipe that smirk off Tony Stark’s face.
With the Fantastic Four arriving alongside the first season on Jan. 10, there will surely be plenty more opportunities to watch people completely whiff it in Marvel Rivals.
