Who Are The Beyonders, Marvel’s Most Dangerous Villains?

From Thanos to Galactus, Marvel has a huge roster of villains powerful enough to make the universe shiver in fear, but even they don’t come close to the true powers of the Marvel universe. Thankfully, as godlike beings like the Celestials or the Phoenix Force increase in power, they tend to have little reason to cause trouble on Earth. But the same can’t be said for perhaps Marvel’s most powerful villains… The Beyonders.

The first Beyonder appeared in 1984’s Secret Wars #1, presenting itself as a unique power, earning the title of ‘the Beyonder’ (later revealed to be the equivalent of a child). After spiriting a group of major Marvel heroes and villains to the patchwork Battleworld, this Beyonder experimented with taking a human form. Though various stories have suggested that Beyonders are the adult form of Cosmic Cubes, there have also been suggestions that the Beyonders grow their young in pocket realities and even that they’re the result of an ultra-powerful Inhuman losing his grip on reality. So great is their mastery over the universe.

In more recent times, the Beyonders have taken their place as the biggest threat in the Marvel universe, destroying it completely in the run-up to 2015’s Secret Wars. Though the Beyonders remained as mysterious as ever, members of Marvel’s Illuminati team, aided by Doctor Doom, came to the conclusion that the Beyonders were simply wrapping up what they considered a failed experiment, hinting that they were perhaps the overall originators of Marvel’s reality.

While the Beyonders can seem like uncaring Gods, series like 2006’s Nextwave show that they have a keen interest in the Marvel universe. Nextwave takes place in a pocket reality seemingly intended to parody Marvel’s mainstream stories and populated with a string of bizarre villains all somehow associated with the mysterious Beyond Corporation. Later stories revealed that this reality was a playground for bored Beyonders, but the effects stuck. Characters like Machine Man, Elsa Bloodstone, and Captain Marvel‘s Monica Rambeau were forever changed in Marvel continuity, with their Nextwave depictions becoming the standard forms of the characters.

Sadly, the Beyond Corporation has also expressed interest in ‘playing’ within the mainstream Marvel universe. In Captain America and the Mighty Avengers, the Beyonders possess businessman Jason Quantrell to attack the Avengers with seemingly omnipotent power. Quantrell claims, “Outside EVERYTHING you can imagine, in the wild spaces beyond reality, there are others like us. … Some study you. Some want to preserve you. Some of us… PLAY with you.” While Quantrell is ultimately shunted out of reality, he was little more than a puppet, emphasizing the pure power of even a human body controlled by the Beyonders.

Sadly, it’s unlikely the Beyonders are done with their games. Old Man Quill #12 includes a mention of the Beyonder Wars, a future conflict which (in Old Man Quill‘s timeline) claimed the life of fan-favorite hero Groot. It’s even possible to interpret some depictions of Beyonders as the real-life writers of the Marvel universe – beings with power over all creation who put their characters through hell just for entertainment. If that’s the interpretation future writers choose to run with, The Beyonders will remain a power that Marvel’s heroes can sometimes endure but never ultimately defeat.

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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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