As reports emerge that Marvel Studios is putting together a project for Marvel’s Marvel Cinematic Universe, many Marvel fans will be left wondering just who the superhero secret society is. The Illuminati drew its ranks from the Marvel Universe’s greatest minds, wielded Thanos’s Infinity Gauntlet, and decided the fate of the multiverse together... but became something other than heroes along the way.
’Illuminati’ is a name with centuries of real-world history as a secretive order of enlightened (or ’illuminated’) individuals gathering in pursuit of secret truths. In the Marvel Universe, the Illuminati are a group of superheroes formed after the Kree/Skrull War by Iron Man, who realized that the top minds of Marvel’s superhero community each had knowledge that could have prevented the war if it had been organized and shared.
The initial roster included:
- Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, Avengers leader
- Reed Richards, aka Mr. Fantastic, scientific leader
- Namor, king of Atlantis
- Black Bolt, king of the Inhumans
- Doctor Stephen Strange, Sorcerer Supreme and mystic leader
- Professor Charles Xavier, extremely powerful psychic and mutant leader
Together, the group anticipated and worked to suppress potential threats to Earth. The Thor: Ragnarok was based on.
At one point, the Illuminati assembled the Infinity Gauntlet to prevent it from getting into the wrong hands. The group decided to divide the gems amongst themselves and never use them. Since Black Bolt was presumed dead, the sixth gem was given to Captain America, a more grounded hero who could serve as the group’s conscience. But that conscience didn’t last long. The society’s greatest challenge came in the 2013 series New Avengers: Illuminati. Black Panther discovered that parallel realities were colliding together, destroying both universes involved in each collision. He was folded into the Illuminati; together they determined the Marvel Universe would inevitably have these ’incursions’ and the only way to survive them was to destroy the parallel universe’s Earth before the collision.
Captain America reluctantly used the Infinity Gauntlet to save both universes, but the effort destroyed the gems entirely. This kicked off a shadow war between the Illuminati and other worlds, each either searching for a peaceful way out or trying to destroy the other’s world. Cap refused to participate in potential omnicide; the others wiped his mind to prevent interference. In the end, as New Avengers led into Secret Wars, the Illuminati the last survivors of the end of the multiverse, along with the Cabal. The Cabal was a parallel group of villains founded by Namor when the first group kicked him out for actually destroying another Earth. They consisted of Namor, Thanos, they were merely kings.
Many of these figures are dead, missing, or irrelevant to the current MCU. Still, fan theories suggest that we a Secret Wars adaptation. Whoever the MCU Illuminati is, they have difficult choices ahead... and their moral comes may not survive.
