The Greek myth of a serpent-like creature known as Hydra
helped inspire one of the most nefarious organizations in the Marvel Universe.
Clearly there's a lot of history behind this sinister, neo-fascist group,
but if you're feeling confused, don't worry. This is the history of Marvel's Hydra explained.
Although many believe that Hydra originated during World War II,
its tentacles actually stretch back much farther.
In the Marvel Universe, before the dawn of humanity, a group of immortal reptoids arrived on
Earth with the intention of spreading their evil across the land. Millions of years later, these
same creatures would corrupt an Eastern secret society called the Brotherhood of the Spear,
who worshiped the reptoids as "The Beast." The Brotherhood spread throughout the rest
of the world and integrated themselves into all aspects of human civilization. As time went on,
the society changed its name to Hydra, compromising the Cathari
sect of Christianity and the Thule Society, the latter of which evolved into the Nazi Party.
The Hydra timeline at the end of 2009's Secret Warriors 1 revealed that all mentions
of this ancient organization are absent in history books after the Renaissance,
which may explain how they stayed hidden for so long.
Hydra was never actually part of the Nazi Party in the Marvel Universe,
but would still go on to become a neo-Nazi organization.
Wolfgang von Strucker was a close confidante of Adolf Hitler who fought a losing battle
against the Allies and their forces, which included Captain America and the Invaders.
Hitler grew tired of Strucker's constant defeats and sentenced him to death.
Strucker escaped to Japan with the help of Hitler's second-in-command, Johann Schmidt,
a.k.a. Red Skull, who foresaw that the Nazis would lose World War II.
While in Japan, Strucker discovered a secret organization created — but no longer led — by
Red Skull, made up of fugitives from Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
After killing the organization's leader, Strucker renamed the group Hydra and restructured it with
an eye toward global domination, cementing it as a neo-Nazi terrorist organization.
In the comics, Strucker found a way to infiltrate the international peacekeeping organization SHIELD
shortly after its formation. Thomas Davidson, an early programmer at SHIELD,
defected to Hydra and created an entire system for Strucker that gave him unrestricted access
to SHIELD. Strucker then killed Davidson so no one else could have control of this
system — or so he thought. As Nick Fury later revealed to Strucker, the Davidson he killed was
actually a Life-Model Decoy. The real Davidson lived on, turning the tables against Hydra
without their knowledge. As Nick Fury put it to Strucker, "We were watching you watching us."
Hydra's secret remained hidden from the world until a month before the events
of Secret Warriors 1. Nick Fury, who'd lost his leadership position at SHIELD,
broke into a SHIELD Datacore Facility in Chicago called the Carousel. Fury accessed everything
there was to know about the organization and blew up the Carousel in order to cover his tracks,
but not before making a personal copy of all his findings. No one outside of Hydra knew
what he knew until the end of Secret Warriors 1, when Fury told fellow agent Daisy Johnson,
a.k.a. Quake, that Hydra had been hiding inside SHIELD for decades.
"Shield's been compromised,
you said so yourself. Hydra grew right under your nose and nobody noticed."
Following the events of the Secret Invasion storyline,
Nick Fury established the Secret Warriors as a team of relatively unknown superheroes to
fight against the Skrull Invasion. After the team discovered that Hydra was hiding inside SHIELD,
however, they found a new purpose: to take down Hydra — and SHIELD along with it.
Conversely, Strucker convened the High Council of Hydra after he learned that
Fury had discovered the truth about SHIELD. The council included Viper, Kraken, Madame Hydra,
Hive, and a newly resurrected Gorgon. Various battles ensued between the Secret Warriors and
Hydra up until Secret Warriors 25, when Kraken kidnapped Fury and Strucker. The following issue
revealed that Kraken was Fury's brother Jake, who was working as a double agent, and that Fury made
Strucker think he was controlling SHIELD when he was actually working for Fury the whole time.
After Fury executed Strucker in Secret Warriors 27, Gorgon and Viper allied with Norman Osborn
and his HAMMER organization in New Avengers 16.1 and 17, but they were all defeated. Viper then
used the remaining HAMMER troops to reinforce Hydra in Avengers 24, but that failed too.
Strucker was a dominant force in the Marvel Universe
starting with his first appearance in 1964's Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos 5,
but the Supreme Hydra would eventually meet his demise in 1967's Strange Tales 158.
In that comic, Fury confronted Strucker on his personal base of operations,
Hydra Island. During one of their encounters, Fury used Hydra's "epiderm-mask machine" to
change Strucker's face into Fury's. The real Fury then made two different Strucker masks. When Hydra
guards saw two Struckers fighting, they unmasked one of them to reveal Fury when, in actuality,
it was Strucker wearing a Fury mask. Nevertheless, Strucker panicked and indiscriminately jumped into
an "Alpha-Particle Reactor Cube," where he was incinerated. Meanwhile, the disguised
Fury escaped Hydra Island and detonated Strucker's "Death Spore" bio-weapon inside the domed island.
According to the "DataCORE & Fury Files" in Secret Warriors 1, Strucker's influence still
loomed large as his supposed death caused Hydra to split into three factions: the leading Hydra
council of THEM, the terrorist organization known as AIM, and the Hydra subsidiary Secret Empire.
After Strucker was resurrected in Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD 21, he started killing off
leaders of several splinter groups in order to unite them under a new Hydra regime.
Unfortunately for Strucker, this reorganization did not stop a civil war from erupting,
pitting him against the combined allied forces of his wife Elsbeth and her lover Gorgon.
While Baron Helmut Zemo placed Strucker in stasis for his own nefarious purposes,
Gorgon and Elsbeth hatched a plot to seize control of Hydra. In Wolverine 22, they
created a clone of Strucker for a ritual sacrifice that occurred three issues later. Thankfully, the
formerly brainwashed Wolverine killed the two and stopped them from carrying out their evil plans.
Flash forward to 2006 in New Thunderbolts 17 where the real Strucker, awoken from stasis,
teamed up with Zemo to take over the world,
much to the dismay of his son Andreas von Strucker, a.k.a. Swordsman.
Issues 519 through 524 of The Amazing Spider-Man reveal that pharmaceutical manufacturer Edgar
Lascombe replaced Gorgon as the new Supreme Hydra while Strucker was still in stasis.
Lascombe believed that Hydra had become weak under its current leadership,
devolving into yet another crime syndicate focused on drug running and money laundering.
As such, he had the leaders killed and seized control of the organization.
Lascombe used a group of genetically altered Hydra agents called the Hydra Four, whose
powers and abilities were all based around Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, and Hawkeye, to distract
the New Avengers while Hydra smuggled missiles and bacteria into New York. This was part of a
larger plan to launch a bio-weapon attack on the Ogallala Aquifer and bring America to its knees.
Fortunately, Spider-Man figured out this plan and, with the help of the New Avengers,
stopped Lascombe — but not before he and the Hydra Four escaped their now-defunct secret
base. As of this video, neither Lascombe nor the Hydra Four has appeared in another Marvel comic.
In the midst of the Marvel's Avengers: Standoff comic event from 2016,
the sentient Cosmic Cube child known as Kobik decided to look for Red Skull. In Captain America:
Steve Rogers 2, Red Skull manipulated Kobik into creating an alternate timeline where
Steve Rogers was a Hydra agent, replacing the real Steve with his fascist iteration.
After Red Skull turned his greatest enemy into a valuable asset, he created a new Hydra from
the ground up. With the help of various Neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups,
Red Skull returned Hydra to its Nazi roots. This "Neo-Hydra" recruited political extremists,
used guerrilla tactics, and carried out terrorist attacks against civilians in America
and Western Europe. Neo-Hydra is very evocative of the real-life
alt-right movement, which was in the news when this comic was released.
Unfortunately for Red Skull,
his reign as Hydra's leader came to an end in Captain America: Steve Rogers 15.
In the controversial Secret Empire event, Captain America became Hydra Supreme,
exiling several heroes and taking over the United States. Many Americans became used
to this fascist regime, mainly because Hydra put mind-altering substances in water supplies
to increase obedience. The new regime also displaced all mutants to a sovereign region
called New Tian and deported all Inhumans to detention centers.
A superhero resistance group called the Underground hatched a plan to bring back the
original Captain America and stop Hydra Supreme. In the final issue of Secret Empire, Sam Wilson,
a.k.a. the new Captain America, surrendered his fragment of the Cosmic Cube to Hydra Supreme.
What Hydra Supreme didn't realize, however, was that Ant-Man shrunk Bucky Barnes so he could
travel into the Cube and pull out Kobik and the real Captain America. Both Captain America and
Hydra Supreme fought until the latter tried to lift Thor's hammer and failed, which prompted
Captain America to break Hydra Supreme's armor with the hammer and defeat him once and for all.
Although the scars of this event never healed,
the United States returned to normal in the following weeks.
The Winter Soldier revelation that Hydra infiltrated SHIELD also had
major effects on the ABC series Agents of SHIELD.
Captain America: The First Avenger introduced Hydra as the Nazis' science division,
but Agents of SHIELD season 3 revealed that Hydra started out as a fanatical cult that worshipped
the ancient Inhuman known as Hive. A member of that cult, Wilfred Malick, remained connected
to the WWII-era Hydra, and in the season 7 episode "Know Your Onions," he gave them a key ingredient
of the Super Soldier Serum, which Johann Schmidt later used to turn himself into Red Skull.
Season 5 sees U.S. Air Force General Hale as the last known high-ranking leader of Hydra
in the MCU. Hale tries to form a deal with an intergalactic alliance called the Confederacy
to protect them from Thanos, but they ultimately side with the Gravitonium-infused Glenn Talbot,
who later kills Hale. Hydra has not reappeared in the MCU since,
except for in Avengers: Endgame when the Avengers travel back in time.
"Hail Hydra."
MCU fans last saw Arnim Zola as a complex computer system in Captain America:
The Winter Soldier, but he actually has a much bigger role in the comics.
Dr. Arnim Zola, who first appeared in Captain America 208, was a Swiss scientist who worked
for the Nazis during World War II. He became the lead scientist of Project: Nietzche,
where he created super soldiers to serve the Nazis' quest for world domination. At some point,
Zola created a robot body for himself to replace his frail human body and survive into modern
times. This robotic figure allowed bipedal movement and projected an image of Zola's
face on a screen located on its chest. If one of these robots were destroyed, Zola could simply
transfer himself into another. In short, Zola is one of Captain America's more durable villains.
Baron Helmut Zemo is one of the most memorable villains in the Marvel Universe.
Helmut is the son of Nazi scientist Heinrich Zemo, who launched the plane that froze Captain America
in ice for decades. After Heinrich died in a rock slide during a fight with the Sentinel of Liberty,
Helmut wanted to avenge his father's death and became the supervillain known as the Phoenix.
In Captain America 168, Zemo captured Cap and held him over a vat of Adhesive X. Unfortunately for
Helmut, his plan backfired and he fell into the vat instead. Although he was thought to be dead,
Helmut returned in 1982's Captain America 275. Helmut has appeared frequently
throughout Marvel comics as Baron Zemo and at one point he was the leader of Hydra.
Actor Daniel Bruhl portrayed Zemo in Captain America:
Civil War and reprises his role in the Disney+ miniseries The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
Hydra henchmen wear green jumpsuits that make them indistinguishable from one another,
but one henchman has risen above the rest, and his name is Bob.
Bob first appeared in 2007's Cable and Deadpool 38, and he only joined Hydra
because his wife nagged him to find a steady job. In that issue,
Deadpool infiltrated a Hydra base in Pakistan along with Weasel to save their friend Agent X.
He coerced Bob into helping him, and told Bob to steal a jet to fly them out.
Since his introduction, Bob has been featured regularly as Deadpool's sidekick. Although
he shows extreme cowardice, he's saved Deadpool on several occasions.
Rob Hayter cameoed as Bob in the Deadpool film,
appearing as one of Ajax's henchmen who Deadpool spared during the movie's climax.
"Bob?" "Wade?" "Oh my go- I haven't seen you since-" "Jacksonville." "TGI Friday's!"
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