Since the early days of Marvel Comics, the creators behind the empire brought figures of myth and legend into their stories of modern heroes. The figures once worshipped as gods by thousands of real humans have been a part of genre entertainment since the beginning, but their role in modern blockbusters is more confused than ever.
The Norse andEgyptian gods are integral partsof the Marvel Cinematic Universe now, deities from whom we still get the names of the days of the week are now franchise mainstays on the big screen. But, in the overstuffed world ripped from the comic book pages, the figures of ancient myth get a raw deal, as do those who once worshipped them.
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In the canonical MCU, in 2011, theNorse deity Thor Odinsonand his hammer Mjolnir appeared on planet Earth. Most people wouldn’t have heard of that, except that the next year, Loki Laufeyson killed 80 people at a public event in Stuttgart. He then waged war on New York City with armies of inexplicable creatures, doing battle with Thor, and being taken into custody for his crimes. There are no Marvel Comics in the MCU’s Earth-19999, but worship of the Norse pantheon is a canonical fact. Everyone knewwho Loki and Thor werein the abstract before they appeared on Earth and started killing people. There are at least 7,000 practicings Norse Pagans in the United States and potentially tens or hundreds of thousands worldwide. This means, inarguably, a percentage of the human population saw deities that they spent their lives praying to do battle in manmade cities on international TV.
Events like this begin to occurwith exponentially increasing regularity over the years within the canon. A not-insignificant chunk of mankind saw their prayers answered with direct and literal divine intervention for the first and apparently only time in human history. A small but meaningful portion of the population saw the beginnings of what they could’ve only believed was the mythical end of days, then saw it stopped, in real-time, by their hero.
The world is irreparably changed by the reveal of superheroes, monsters, and aliens on the grand stage, but there’s a tiny piece of that shocked audience who gets to declare that they were right all along. They then got to see their chosen god fight against a mythical enemy in London a couple of years later. Then they got to see him do battle with the apex of man’s hubris, the machine facsimile ofa god called Ultron, and he won that battle too. Then, he disappeared. Then, three years passed, and he reappeared, in conflict with the most capable threat in all of known time. Then he lost.
Worshippers of the other major faiths outnumber Norse Pagans by a factor of hundreds of thousands, both in our reality and on Earth-19999.Steve Rogers is Christian, his dog tags mark him as Protestant, he even makes a comment questioning the godhood of his newfound Norse peers. Kamala Khan and her family are Muslim. The small percentage of people who were suddenly proven right find themselves surrounded on all sides by people confronted with the possibility that they might have been wrong. No monotheistic deity stepped from the clouds to take on the evils of the new world.
So, a few people saw their gods appear from the aether in what they could only describe as vindication, and everyone else saw the worst possible events unfold without divine intervention from their chosen faith. Which is worse? To be left in the same fundamentally agnostic but subjectively faithful limbo that is religion or to know for a fact that the prayers are being heard, only to watch god fail to answer them. How is either anything less than the complete annihilation of what we know as faith?
The MCU can’t depict how religion has changed by its events because doing so would be difficult and risk angering a fair percentage of their audience. The interesting thing is that Marvel has depicted that the deal isn’t much better for the gods themselves.Loki proclaims his godhoodwith the confidence that the title should confer. The less cocky deities typically still claim the title, though they may do so more tactfully. Those beings that claim godhood also claim worship, and it sometimes seems to offer some benefit to them. Some gods pick avatars, like how Bast created the Black Panther orKhonshu created Moon Knight. But, in a universe with seemingly infinite beings beyond comprehension, what does being a god mean? Where were the Greek and Egyptian pantheons when Thanos appeared? Did half of them turn to dust like the rest of us?
Godhood didn’t save Loki from having his neck snapped, nor did it save Khonshu from his exile. What is the point of being a god if a random monster from a distant moon can be born more powerful than the entire pantheon? Where do the Infinity Stones fit into the cosmology? Forged by Arishem, the existence of the Soul Stone necessitates the existence of the soul. Gods are like a middle-management position at their absolute peak.Steven Strange was a human manwho spent a few months studying under other human beings, and he became as capable as any god if not more so. The Incredible Hulk can compete with gods hand-to-hand, and he’s just an alter ego created by radiation. So, if what marks out a deity isn’t control, power, or station, what is it?
Thor: Love and Thunderis set to introduce thevillain Gorr the God Butcher, a villain who seeks to eliminate every god in creation. Not enough of the character is visible to answer any major questions about him, but one huge question that has implications for the rest of the universe is how he selects his targets. His one line makes clear that he hates gods for only thinking of themselves. Falligar the Behemoth, the dead dragon from the trailer is the only known victim so far, and he’s recognized as an alien god. He is, to some far outer planet what Zeus was here. Immortal, yet imminently killable. Powerful, yet possibly weaker than countless others.
The one thing that marks out a god as unique in the MCU is a culture of worship. Their lives are just like that of any other powerful being in the universe, with the added pressure of infinite lesser beings demanding their attention. The horror of the MCU’s godhood is the opposite of the classic Marvel axiom; all responsibility, never enough power.Now, one lapsed followerhas taken up the sword and sworn himself to be the hand of every worshiper who feels their prayers go unanswered, even when they know someone is out there to hear them.
Marvel has not delved into the psychological state of a god in their universe beyond the deeply personal circumstances of a couple of key cases. The current state of the MCU is a bad place to be a god.
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