Warning: contains spoilers for Heroes Reborn #7!

The demonic villain Mephisto just resurrected the Sentry – Marvel’s most powerful hero, and an incredibly dangerous superhuman whose existence threatens the cosmos itself. The resurrection takes place in the warped reality of Heroes Reborn, but there’s reason to believe that even if the Avengers can defeat President Coulson’s Squadron Supreme and use the Pandemonium Cube to restore the universe’s natural timeline, Bob Reynolds, the godlike superhuman known as both the Sentry and the Void, will stick around.

Created by Jae Lee, Rick Veitch, and Paul Jenkins, the Sentry is a being of almost unimaginable power. Ostensibly created by a new, more extreme version of the Super Soldier Serum, it’s been theorized that Sentry is actually the earthly expression of interdimensional or even divine power. Though he presents with powers similar to Superman, Bob actually passively shapes reality around him, both deliberately and accidentally. Sentry has resurrected himself several times before, but after being killed by the King in Black – who had a supernatural connection to the darker aspects of his powers – his spirit was shown moving onto the afterlife, suggesting this time he was really gone for good.

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In Heroes Reborn #7 – from Jason Aaron, Aaron Kuder, Mark Morales, Matthew Wilson, and Dean White – the Sentry appears in flashback as part of this new reality’s Dark Squadron. With reality rewritten so that the Avengers never formed, Mephisto’s new world casts the Squadron Supreme of America as Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, complete with the extensive continuity they’d possess if they’d always been at the center of Marvel Comics. One such piece of history is a rewritten version of the Dark Reign era, during which Norman Osborn commanded the Dark Avengers. In Marvel’s regular timeline, Sentry was tricked into serving Osborn partly thanks to the machinations of the Void, a dark persona Bob subconsciously manifests in order to undo whatever positive change he achieves as the Sentry. In Heroes Reborn, Sentry is part of the Dark Squadron, playing out a different version of this pivotal Marvel event in a snazzy new costume.

It’s a brief moment in Heroes Reborn, but one which may have major consequences. The Sentry’s consciousness is key to his powers, and can warp reality to allow either his hero or villain personas to accomplish the impossible. Sentry has reconstituted his body before, and even overpowered the Molecule Man – a former villain who can control the building blocks of reality. The Sentry’s King in Black death seemed final precisely because he accepted it, “turning off” his consciousness in such a way that he couldn’t simply decide to reconstitute his body (a form it’s been suggested he doesn’t even need) and live again. Mephisto’s resurrection of the Sentry may have been a temporary whim in his new world, but it effectively reactivated Bob’s mind. Even if Mephisto’s reality is undone, Sentry doesn’t have to play by the rules of reality once he’s conscious, and it will likely be his choice whether he allows himself to be put back to sleep.

Bob Reynolds is a danger to the galaxy itself because he can’t control his powers. His mistakes occur on a cosmic scale, and he’s so powerful that even the nagging voice in his head manifests as one of Marvel’s most disturbing villains. Having used a hellish version of the Cosmic Cube to reshape reality, President Coulson and Mephisto have awoken a force which is far, far easier to bring back to life than it is to kill. If the Avengers can triumph, they’ll have to hope that Sentry chooses to return to his eternal rest, because if not, Mephisto‘s Heroes Reborn scheming will have unleashed a force more powerful and more unpredictable than the devil himself.

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Robert Wood
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Robert Wood is a comics editor for Screen Rant and the author of ‘The False Elephant (and 99 Other Unreasonably Short Stories).’ He received his Master’s in English Literature from Lancaster University, and now happily spends his days applying it to Daredevil and the Hulk.

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