Today we're answering a simple question that's been lingering in my head for a
while now. What is a god in the MCU? Yeah, it shouldn't be too hard right?
Okay, so Loki is a god.
Okay, so Asgardians are not gods. Someone might want to give that memo to Loki.
So, Asgardians are gods?
Oh, come on!
Hello internet! Welcome to Film Theory, the show that's genetically engineered to click that
subscribe button. Well, loyal theorists, after what could charitably be called a complicated
series of delays, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3 is finally here to help Marvel Studios kick
off the beginning of phase five. [M.O.D.O.K]: Surprised to see me?
No, no. You get out of here, M.O.D.O.K. You had your chance.
Yeah. So despite a challenging few years for Marvel Studios, they got a desperately needed
win with Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 3, allowing writer director James Gunn to
finish out his story with these characters with a genuinely heartfelt film. Before he
jumps over to his new job running Marvel's main rival DC Studios. Fun fact by the way, Gunn was
originally positioned to be sort of a mini Kevin Feige at Marvel, running the entire cosmic side
of their universe before Disney temporarily fired him on account of some old controversial tweets,
thereby allowing DC to swoop in and scoop him up. That drama resulted in the new Guardians movie
dropping three years after it was originally intended to release, which means that there's
a timeline out there in the multiverse where Endgame would have been followed by Spider-Man:
Far from Home, and then Guardians 3. It doesn't take a theorist brain to realize
that firing Gunn might just have been one of the biggest unforced errors in cinema history.
That right there. That's a discussion for another day. No, what I want to talk about
today is actually a question that I've seen floating around the Internet for a while now.
What even is a god in the Marvel Cinematic Universe these days? Between the Asgardians,
the celestials, multiversal time travelers, beings that seem to exist outside universes.
It’s not really clear what a god is anymore. And now, in this most recent Guardians film,
you have the main bad guy, the High Evolutionary, who's explicitly called out to be godlike.
Characters mention that several parts of the galaxy consider him to be a God. The golden people
from Guardians 2, The Sovereign. They were created by him and they treat him as their god. Even the
High Evolutionary himself straight up screams his thoughts on the matter at us with the very
subtle line: “There is no god! That's why I had to step in!” But for as on the nose as that line is,
is he wrong? I mean, he did create life after all. So is he or is he not a god. At this point
I'm not really sure if marvel themselves know the answer. And you know, that's kind of a big
deal when several of your latest films revolve around the god-tier characters.
Heck, the entire plot of Thor: Love and Thunder was about a villain who wanted to kill all gods.
Maybe the audience should have known what a god was before they ran with that story. Huh?
Hey, if you managed to figure out who's on that list, Gore, more power to you. You kind of earned
it at that point. So if Marvel isn't going to answer the question in their movies,
I thought we'd take a crack at it, loyal theorists. What exactly is a god in the MCU? Are
there any actual gods in the MCU? Well, I think I found the answer in a couple of places you might
never imagine. So open the frickin door and hop on in loyal theorists, it's time to get rolling.
When you start breaking the question down, you start to see some key groups forming. The
characters of stuff like Greek, Norse and Egyptian mythology. These tend to be very
powerful beings who hold domains over one specific aspect of the universe. It can either be tangible,
measurable stuff like: the moon, or thunder. Or more intangible concepts like: war, mischief.
The MCU has these sorts of characters in spades. As it seems like most major religions throughout
the history of Earth are based on them. Thor, Loki, Odin, all the other Asgardians, they're
picture perfect examples of this. As are the Olympians that we met during Love and Thunder like
Zeus and Hercules. There's the Egyptian gods of Moon Knight as well as Namor from Wakanda Forever,
who acts as a representative of Mesoamerican gods. Even characters like the Eternals seem to fit
into this category because apparently several of Earth's myths were based on their lives.
The Flying Superman Icarus evolved into the legend of the boy who flew too close to the
sun. And the legendary warrior Thena became Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare.
And yet, even at this lowest tier of godhood, things get confusing in a
hurry. Sprite in the Eternals claims that the Greek goddess Athena was inspired by
Thena. But then we see the Roman deity Minerva wandering around Omnipotent City
in Love and Thunder. Minerva is the Roman version of Athena. She's the same goddess,
she just has a different name. How's that work? And in general, the rest of the omnipotent crew
are inconsistent in the way that they choose to manifest. Sometimes these characters
are real physical beings that exist in the material universe who can feel pain and die.
Other times, they need people in order to harness their power. Where gods like Khonshu
in Moon Knight and Bast in Black Panther have to act through a human representative.
Sort of like an avatar system.
And while the human avatar can die, the god remains. And the only way to get rid of them is
to imprison them in little idols for thousands of years. In every single one of these cases,
they all seem to just be highly advanced creatures that our lowly
human meat brains confuse for gods. Jane Foster really sums this up best in Thor 1.
In general, these groups are classified as gods by the humans in the MCU, but they're not
actual gods. While sure, sometimes they'll call themselves gods like Loki in Avengers or Hela
in Ragnarok. That's just them flexing their might relative to their audience. When push truly comes
to shove and when they're honest with themselves, they know deep down that they're not actual gods.
Asgardians and Olympians are basically just long lived, very human looking aliens. Namor is just a
mutant. The Eternals are weird flesh robots. The closest thing I think we have to actual gods in
this category are the Egyptian pantheon because they do seem to have some outright control over
souls and afterlives. But even then I'm not convinced that they don't have themselves a
physical form hidden out there somewhere in the MCU that can eventually be killed.
For instance, we know Bast from Black Panther has control over the afterlife
and acts through a human avatar. Just like Khonshu in Moon Knight. And yet we also see
her physical form manifested in Omnipotent City during Thor: Love and Thunder. She's
there hanging out with a bunch of other powerful but ultimately killable beings. Because of that,
I think we can confidently conclude that none of these characters are
actually gods. They're just super powerful, mortal beings. So what's next then? Well,
the second archetype that I can think here is your classic creators; characters who are
said to have crafted entire worlds simply because they wanted to. Interestingly,
the High Evolutionary thinks that he fits into this category, having created creatures like
Rocket and The Sovereign. But when you actually stop and look at who else is here, it seems like
Herbert might be a bit out of his league. It's here that you find characters like
the Celestials, those giant alien robot gods that use infinity stones like they're nothing.
Ego, the living planet from guardians 2, a celestial, literally wanted to transform every
planet he visited into another version of himself. The other celestials. They've just been seeding
worlds with life in an effort to get themselves to reproduce. There's also Dormammu, the big bad evil
guy from the first Doctor Strange. He's ruler of the dark dimension. He eats realities to combine
them with himself. Seems awfully godlike. And when Galactus is eventually added to the universe in
the Fantastic Four movie, I'd expect him to fall into this category as well. But here's the thing,
these guys aren't really gods either. And again, we know this based on their own admission.
While to lesser beings, these creatures would be considered gods. Again, they recognize that there
are higher powers than even themselves. They live. They have a need to reproduce and they can die.
Heck, the Guardians team spends a lot of time in Knowhere, which is the head of yet another dead
celestial. As for Dormammu, we see that he's able to be affected by the Infinity Stones,
which suggests that he's bound by the physical limitations of the world.
As Ego says:
The celestials and Dormammu are powerful and are certainly more powerful than the
base level of gods that we talked about before. But they're only one rung up on this overall
power totem pole. What about something more metaphysical? Characters that exist more like
ideas who are said to have created literally everything in existence. In the context of
the MCU we've only really met one of these so far, the cosmic being Eternity in Thor:
Love and Thunder, who had the ability to literally alter reality by granting any wish put before it.
Based on the statues that we see at Eternity's altar, there are at least seven of these sorts
of entities in the universe. Altering entire universes on a whim seems like something a true
god could do right? Well yeah, in reality. But in the MCU, it's not quite godlike enough. Look
at Kang and his variants. They've spent eons going throughout the multiverse,
erasing entire realities, and presumably those realities’ versions of Eternity and
the other gods. Sure, in Love and Thunder Gore's problem is ultimately solved by making a wish to
Eternity, but it seems like it could also have been solved by just finding another reality
where his daughter didn't die, implying to me that eternity is limited to a single universe.
Listen again to where they have to find Eternity in Love and Thunder: “The center of the universe”,
not the center of the multiverse. So is Kang then the one in control of the multiverse a god? Nope.
I don't think you can really call any of the Kang variants gods either. He who remains gets killed
in his first appearance. Kang the Conqueror gets defeated by large ants. Not very impressive for a
god. So even though they have the most multiversal power of any of the creations we've seen yet, even
they aren't at the top of this heap. Honestly, when you look up and down the whole hierarchy of
power here in the MCU, none of the characters we meet really seem to match up with the true idea
of what a god should be. In one way or another something always cancels them out. Something can
destroy them. Something can make them mortal. And if we'd gone into this theory a year ago,
I'd leave it there. There are no true gods in the MCU because ultimately there is no higher
power. But I'm not convinced that that's the case anymore. One of the most heart wrenching scenes
in Guardians Volume 3 sees Rocket Raccoon's consciousness wake up in a misty white room.
It's here that he speaks with the spirits of his lost friends. They tell him that they're
flying through the forever sky and that he's welcome to join them, but just not yet. Rocket
still has a purpose in the world. Rocket then asks: “A purpose for what? They made us for
nothing.” And his friend disagrees, saying: “There are the hands that make us, and then
there are the hands that guide the hands.” Now, this could all just be happening in
Rocket's head. This could just be the brain of a dying animal trying to make sense of
their life. A dramatic moment to add weight to a climactic scene. But to me, I think this
confirms that the MCU has an afterlife, one beyond the astral planes of Black Panther,
one beyond the field of reeds in Moon Knight. This feels like absolute confirmation that
there is some sort of all powerful force; the hands behind the hands. A god figure running
everything behind the scenes. And you won't believe where we really get that answer from.
Yeah, I got to be honest with you, I didn't really expect to get a whole lot
of universe altering knowledge from She-Hulk, Attorney at Law. But I think K.E.V.I.N. here,
this robot insert for Marvel Studios head honcho Kevin Feige is literally one of if not the only
true god. One of the canonical creators of this universe. Firstly, this is how Marvel
has tended to do it in the past, several times throughout Marvel's 60 plus year comic run,
many of their characters have encountered a being simply known as The One Above All. He
most famously met the Fantastic Four, using the form of a man who looked an awful lot like Jack
Kirby, a man who channeled his immense power through something that looked an awful lot like
a pencil. Now, if you don't know, Jack Kirby was the comic book writer and artist who had
just as much of a hand in the creation of the Marvel Universe as Stan Lee did, if not more.
He co-created dozens of the most popular characters: Captain America, Fantastic Four,
the X-Men, Black Panther, Thor, the Eternals, The Celestials, just to name a few. The choice
to depict the one above all is Jack Kirby, and his power as a pencil was not only a sign
of respect towards him, but also it was just accurate. He was the one calling the shots,
he was the one deciding who lived and who died. He was the one creating the rules of this universe.
But now we're in the MCU and the hands that guide the hands, it’s not the creators anymore. It's
the K.E.V.I.N.s of the world. In James Gunn's original vision of the Guardians trilogy the
original Gamora was never set to die. She had to die because the hands that guide the hands
dictated that it had to happen in Infinity War. Now think about what they have to say to Rocket
in the new movie. “You have more purpose here”. I suspect if this was just James Gunn's story,
if he were truly the god of this world, Rocket's narrative would have ended here. But the true
gods, the K.E.V.I.N.s, or whoever is above him, they're the ones deciding
that Rocket has more franchise potential. He has more to do. His narrative isn't over,
and so he must live on. Now, you might love that this is a really meta answer,
or you might absolutely hate it. I'm just here to tell you what the films themselves are saying,
or at least what I suspect James Gunn here seems to be saying in Guardians of the Galaxy 3. I feel
like a lot of this is actually just commentary for him having to deal with a killed off Gamroa,
but maybe I'm just reading too much into it. That said, there is one force that's even more
powerful than K.E.V.I.N., and that's us, you, the audience. In a lot of ways, we are the real gods
of the MCU here. As long as we keep watching the movies, the characters will continue to
live on. And once we stop watching, well, that's when the K.E.V.I.N.sof the world start to panic.
It was our indifference and disappointment towards Phase 4 that got K.E.V.I.N. to slow down releases.
At the end of the day, the K.E.V.I.N.s of the world are ultimately serving us and we are in
the position of power deciding whether or not we approve of the offerings they give. They
toil so we can consume. And if that's not a godlike relationship, I don't know what is.
So while they might be the hands that are guiding the hands, we are the eyes watching it all happen,
deciding whether or not we approve of their work. Here is the moral of the story, friends and you
best listen up, Marvel. If you can't answer important questions about your own universe, if
you keep putting out stories that no one wants, if you can't get your act together and actually put
out films that have heart and soul, the audience is going to lose interest. They're going to leave
these characters behind for something better. And the likes of Star-Lord and Captain America
and Iron Man, all of them will join the ranks of the pantheons long past; stories we remember, but
ones we just don't tell anymore. But hey, that's just a theory. A FILM THEORY! aaaaaaand cut.