Its age is estimated to be around 4.7 million years and it is nearing the end of its life.

Within a few hundred thousand years, it is expected to explode as a supernova.

[4] WR 136 blew off a shell of material with a mass of around 5 M☉ when it became a red supergiant around 120,000–240,000 years ago and this is still expanding at 80 km/s.

Ultraviolet rays emitted from WR 136's hot surface cause the shell to glow.

Its companion would be a low-mass star of spectral classification K or M that would complete an orbit around the Wolf-Rayet star each 5.13 days, being the progenitor of a low-mass X-ray binary system.