Marvel's Illuminati Explained! [Doctor Strange]

the knights templar skull and bones the freemasons for centuries the world has been captivated by the alluring mystery of sacred societies but of them all there is one that's said to be the most powerful a sinister organization that's controlling the world from the shadows the illuminati any sane person should know that that's a whole load of crap but when it comes to the world of marvel comics the illuminati is a very real group that consists of some of the most powerful heroes in the marvel universe these are the world's best and brightest and they've taken it upon themselves to try and stop major conflicts before they really even have a chance to start and pretty much every time they've tried it it's blown up right in their faces hello and welcome to comic drake where i talk about comic books my name is drake let's talk about it now you might have noticed that one of the members of the illuminati is professor x and he's rather bald so if you want to try to prevent yourself from 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thank you very much keeps but now let's get back to the video marvel's illuminati made their first appearance in new avengers number 7 in 2005 was created by brian michael bendis and steve mcniven the issue opens up with iron man visiting one of his failed businesses meeting up with a group of some of the most important figures in the superhero community dr strange professor xavier mr fantastic black bolt and namor the submariner ordinarily this wouldn't be anything noteworthy i mean superheroes hang out all the time so outside of this gathering taking place in an obviously secret location there's nothing really suspicious going on stark tells the gang about an interesting situation the avengers had gotten themselves into see they discovered a guy in prison named bob reynolds aka the century he is a superhero of incredible strength and he voluntarily had himself locked up for murdering his wife the only problem though is that said wife was still alive and well and nobody seemed to remember that the century had ever existed including bob himself of course nobody in this gathering had any idea what tony was talking about but reed richards decided to humor him anyway and search his database for any record of this supposed century and to his surprise over 1200 results popped up professor rex immediately jumped into action and offered a thorough brain scan to uncover reed's suppressed memories deep within the recesses of richard's mind lied the truth the sentry was once one of the most well-respected and beloved superheroes of all time but something sinister lurked beneath the surface a monstrous alter-ego called the void in order to keep his power in check bob worked with mr fantastic and doctor strange to wipe the memory of his existence from the world but now that he was discovered bob's memories were starting to bubble to the surface and he was once again at risk of releasing the void the hero swiftly got in contact with the rest of the superhero community in order to contain bob with emma frost diving deep into his subconscious to sort his mind back in order which would in theory keep the void in check this effort was successful and the sentry was placed into the care of the avengers which is all well and good but many readers were left with a burning question what was with this secret meaning and why was everyone involved just so casual about it the answer would come just a few months later with the release of a book called new avengers illuminati which went into great detail about the group's origin decades ago there was a massive war between the cree and scroll empires and during the aftermath tony stark called the hero scene in the previous story to wakanda in addition to the black panther since he's you know the leader of the damn country in order to prevent something as massive as the pre-scroll war from ever happening again stark pitched the idea of pulling the resources and handling attacks in a more organized manner by uniting every corner of the superhero community into a single organization everyone hated the idea who would run it who would they answer to would they just get tied up in bureaucracy and never get anything done those are all valid concerns though mr fantastic piped up and commented that while a huge delegation wouldn't be practical there was definitely potential in secret meetings just like this one where these pillars of the superhero community could come together to exchange information and take matters into their own hands on some of the bigger issues often times before they could balloon into bigger problems although these get-togethers and what goes on inside of them would have to be a secret to everybody no teammates no best friends no family and to ensure that nobody leaked information the members would have to consent to professor rex scanning their minds black panther was disgusted yes they were leaders hell almost half of them were literally kings but putting themselves above others and deciding how to handle global affairs from the shadows he wanted no part of it everyone else that was on board they officially became the illuminati over the decades this group worked behind the scenes in the marvel universe secretly pulling the strings and although we aren't shown every single time that these guys met up over the years i have compiled a complete rundown of what we do know so basically as soon as the team was formed they decided to journey directly to the scroll home world to flex their muscles and intimidate them into never going near the earth again this backfired horrendously as they were captured tortured and experimented on thankfully the scrolls underestimated tony stark thinking that he wasn't much of a threat without his armor but thanks to some combat training from captain america tony was able to take down his guards and rescue the others allowing them to hijack a ship and escape destroying a large portion of the skrull's fleet in their wake though this only increased the skrull's hatred for humanity but unbeknownst to the illuminati the experiments that were done on them yielded some very valuable data more on that later after that the team made a very brief appearance in los angeles to fight a villainous organization called the pride which was then followed up by the whole century situation that i mentioned at the top of the video but then we got a crazy important meetup you see she-hulk had gotten her hands on an infinity gym and she gave it to mr fantastic for safe keeping but having this object of immense power in his possession ignited an all-out obsession leading to him hunting down and obtaining two more of the gems and the infinity gauntlet a quick side note if you're a fan of the marvel cinematic universe then you might be typing out in um actually they're called the infinity stones not the infinity gems it's stupidly complicated but in the comics they are in fact referred to as gems and the color of them is also different than the ones that made it to the big screen now they did end up getting renamed and recolored to match the movies but how that happened is its own can of worms which i did cover in greater detail in a dedicated video about the stones i just wanted to clear that up before there was any more confusion about what i'm referring to anyway fearing that the completed infinity gauntlet would once again fall into the wrong hands richard tasked the illuminati with gathering the remaining gems which they're able to quickly do thanks to the power of montage [Music] no i'm being completely serious in just a few pages these guys are able to pull off some truly ludicrous feeds like journeying into the universal collective unconscious to find the mind gym and building a machine capable of tearing the fabric of reality to extract the reality gym but then of course the writers didn't want to jump the shark too much so they made it to where simply bringing the five gems together would summon the time gym thus completing the set with the completed infinity gauntlet now assembled richards nearly succumbed to the allure of infinite power but he overcame the urge and tried to use the gauntlet to will the gems out of existence but the whole bit of he used the stones to destroy the stones is something that's impossible in the marvel comics universe so when that didn't work reed entrusted one gem to each member of his team to protect just a few months later professor x felt the presence of the beyonder a cosmic entity that once created his own planet and kidnapped a bunch of heroes and villains from earth to fight for his curiosity and amusement the illuminati took preventative action by essentially telling him to fuck off which hurt his feelings so bad that he turned to dust yeah next the heroes met up with a member of the creed that declared war on earth and gave him a stern talking to which made him reconsider being a bad guy dude if being savage is this effective then why would they even bother holding on to the infinity stones in the first place but now that quick stuff is out of the way and we can finally talk about the real reason the team was created civil war after a group of young heroes accidentally caused an explosion that killed over 600 people a law was drafted that would require all superpowered individuals in the united states to register with the government stark was slipped an early copy of the bill which he brought before the illuminati explaining that it will come to pass and when it does they need to enthusiastically stand behind it or else the fallout within the superhero community would be catastrophic predictably though not everybody agreed with tony which led to massive tension within the group and doctor strange chose to stab the conflict entirely because let's be real whatever side of the superhuman civil war that had him would basically be guaranteed an automatic victory but you know what other character would do the same thing the incredible hulk so where was he during all the fighting much like how the writers used the group as an excuse to take doctor strange off the board before civil war the hulk got a similar treatment as a couple of months before tony brought the bill before the team they had decided to finally put an end to the jolly green giant's ultimate destruction no cure either scientific or mystical had worked in the past and it's not like bruce wanted to keep the hulk around as when professor rex looked inside of banner's mind his inner thoughts revealed that if he could have killed himself he would have done it a long time ago at stark's suggestion that they blasted the hulk into space aiming to land him on a deserted planet finally giving him the one thing that he's ever truly wanted solitude but of course this is comics we're talking about so naturally something went wrong with the ship and instead of landing on an empty world the hulk instead crash-landed on the war-torn planet of sakhar and went through hell over there the hulk became a revolutionary icon called the green scar and helped overthrow the planet's dictatorship ultimately becoming its new leader however devotees of the old king snuck under the hulk's crash-landed ship and tampered with it causing the ship to explode and kill most everyone around it including the hulk's queen and unborn child because of a misunderstanding the hulk was convinced that this was the illuminati's plan all along not to give him peace and isolation but to just straight up murder him angrier than ever before hulk rallied his war bound and went back to earth for revenge forcing the organization to put aside their fallout from the civil war and gather once again to stop their former friend but not even a year later earth would suffer yet another invasion so remember how earlier in the video i mentioned these guys were captured and experimented on when they went to go intimidate the scrolls yeah well for years after that these dudes have been kidnapping superheroes and replacing them by utilizing their shape-shifting powers and by using the information extracted from the illuminati these secret invaders were able to get by every kind of identification technique even blackbull got replaced that means that he was able to get past for fexrex's mind scans and he spied on the illuminati from the inside for how long we don't exactly know although the strolls were eventually defeated the illuminati was shattered and most of its members were dealing with their own more important personal stuff but they reformed when a villain named the hood started going around and stole their infinity gems iron man ditched the avengers to try and get a handle in the situation but captain america noting just how shady stark was acting had the team follow him to the secret meeting finally exposing the group's existence well i mean the hulk had already told the world the illuminati existed when they invaded the earth but steve basically forced tony's hand into admitting they had been meeting in secret ever since the cree scroll war all those years ago the combined forces of the avengers and the illuminati were enough to strip the hood of the infinity gems and defeat him culminating with iron man assembling the infinity gauntlet and pretending to wish it away which we all know wouldn't work since they had literally tried that once before in reality tony had just teleported the gems to a secret location where the crew met back up and divided them amongst themselves again but this time a new member joined their ranks captain america as an official part of the squad it was steve who called up the next meeting during the avengers versus x-men event hoping to talk cincinnati namor who had just been super powered by the phoenix force that didn't work out though and neymar used his newfound power to drown the capital city of wakanda followed by his teammate cyclops straight up killing professor x that incredibly bleak note brings us to the longest and most important storyline that the illuminati ever participated in buckle up because this one is about to get really complicated really fast the entire multiverse was on the path of destruction because of events called incursions essentially parallel earths would suddenly exist within the same space and in only a matter of hours they would collide causing both universes to be obliterated entirely the only solution would be to destroy one of the two earths which would save one planet and both of the universes black panther witnessed this event firsthand when an incursion appeared above wakanda and a woman leapt off the looming planet only to blow it up behind her after subduing the culprit t'challa assembled the illuminati which included namor the guy responsible for the mass murder of his people by flooding his nation's capital city though he put that aside for the greater good and the group interrogated the prisoner and came up with a rather simple plan since they already had the infinity gauntlet they should just take the earth and push it somewhere else before his death professor x entrusted beast with the location of his gem and he was thus brought into the fold where he helped create devices for each of the members to implant in their palms which would serve as early warning devices for the impending incursions when the moment arrived captain america wielded the gauntlet and successfully used all of its might to push the incursion back but at an immense cost the infinity gems shattered the team was back to square one without even the slightest lead on new solutions it became clear that unless they found another way out they would have to be prepared to do the unthinkable and destroy other worlds but captain america refused to give up hope though worried that he might stand in their way if annihilation was the only answer the illuminati ejected c from the group complete with a mind wipe from doctor strange the scientists of the team quickly got to work building doomsday bombs but luckily for them every incursion that came their way brought them in contact with either dead or dying worlds so eliminating them wasn't really a big problem but when a villain called the orb used an object to reveal hidden secrets within multiple heroes captain america stolen memories of his time in the illuminati returned steve exposed the team existence to the rest of the superhero community along with their intention of killing planets forcing them to work in like even more secret and split their efforts between solving the incursions and running away from their friends the team simply needed more help so to bolster both their brains and brawn dr bruce banner was brought on board and just in time too because the next incursion was going to be their biggest challenge yet this world was guarded by a super team called the great society a clear stand-in for the justice league contrasting just how far the marvel heroes had fallen in the name of saving their universe see although dc comics has a reputation of being dark and edgy because of batman and well batman the dc universe has always been one that revolves around hope regardless of what zack snyder says the big dc heroes are almost always paragons and they don't give up easily when it comes to finding peaceful solutions that's why the great society met with the illuminati when their universe is aligned they want to work together in the name of peace but black panther decided that in order to do so all their cards needed to be on the table and he revealed his team had a bomb capable of destroying a planet that obviously caught the society off guard and created instant tension between the two groups so instead of wanting to wait around for the inevitable fight to break out namor struck first the difference between marvel and dc heroes can be summed up in one sentence marvel heroes are men trying to be gods and dc heroes are gods trying to be men so when it comes to raw strength the great society far outclassed the illuminati and wiped the floor at them and they could only be stopped by doctor strange giving up his humanity in order to channel an absurdly powerful dark entity luckily for his allies strange was focusing all of his power and attention on the distinguished competition which left an opening for his teammates to knock him out before he killed them as well when the dust settled the heroes set their bomb but this time things were different this earth wasn't dead or even dying this was a fully populated planet and someone was going to have to pull the trigger no one stepped up to the plate but once again namor was tired of waiting for the inevitable so he took matters into his own hands grabbing the detonator and obliterating the world above them the rest looked on in horror they knew this was going to happen one day but no one was prepared for the reality of the situation on top of that name war used this as an opportunity to tell black panther that when thanos invaded earth a few months back he told them to go after wakanda instead of atlantis leading to even more death and destruction of his people while they were still rebuilding after neymar's last attack so obviously they kicked him out but namor went back to their base freed all their prisoners and united them into a group called the cabal in order to step up and keep destroying planets since the illuminati didn't have the stomach for it what then follows is an eight-month time skip and a ton of stuff changed in the marvel universe here's the cliff notes so try to stay with me iron man's morality got inverted because of an event called axis and he was taken prisoner by the cabal the hulk evolved merging all the strength and intelligence into one super being that now goes by doc green doctor strange left both the team and conventional reality itself to try and find a solution to the incursions through magic in the doctor's absence three new members were brought on board boy genius amadeus cho captain britain and hank pym aka yellowjacket the latter of whom was sent on a recon mission to the farthest depths of the multiverse to try and find the source of the incursions shield took over the avengers and under the leadership of steve rogers their sole mission was to hunt down the illuminati and bring them to justice something that made many of its members extremely uncomfortable causing them to break away and form their own team avengers idea mechanics wondering why steve is so old here well that's because he got drained of the super soldier serum and he passed the mantle of captain america to sam wilson okay i know there was a lot so quick recap at this point there are three heroic factions that are all fighting with each other the illuminati is trying to stop the incursions shields avengers want them to be brought to justice and aim just wants everybody to get along and work together meanwhile the cabal went to the united nations and revealed the incursions to the world managing to convince the world's leaders to look the other way while they eliminated planets after all even though they've been killing billions of innocents the cabal was the only group that was really getting results and saving the planet i mean the illuminati tried to use an object called a cosmic cube to create a new world they could move humanity to thus allowing them to blow up their earth with zero casualties but they lost the cube in the process reid tried to harness his son's seemingly endless powers to create a pocket dimension that they could move the earth into but that didn't work either they even tried enlisting the help of the celestials but these god-like beings straight up vanished with the blessing of the world's leaders the cabal faced minimal opposition and relished the destruction of worlds they wouldn't just cleanly detonate their bombs these dudes inflicted misery and chaos torturing and tormenting each planet's inhabitants until they begged for death a display that disgusted namor to his very core causing him to betray the group and work with his former teammates once again behind his new team's back but t'challa could never forget the atrocities that name war inflicted upon his people time after time so during a plan to trap the cabal on a dead incursion planet and blow them up with it t'challa and black bolt teamed up to leave namor stranded there as well letting him die with the scum and villainy that he had once called allies at this point yellowjacket returned from his journey across the multiverse revealing that he had discovered a race of cosmic beings called the beyonders who were hellbent on eliminating all of existence and because of separate forces working behind the scenes the number of universes left in the multiverse dropped from hundreds of thousands to less than two dozen in the blink of an eye even universes that were previously saved by killing earth's got wiped out so all of this has kind of been for naught although they possessed great powers the heroes were just mere mortals and the beyonders were well beyond being stopped so instead of trying to win and beat the incursions the three heroic factions finally started to work together to simply not lose the best they could come up with was to build a life raft that would be able to survive the impending incursions and save the human species by selecting just a few humans that were able to rebuild society if anything was actually on the other side of the collapsing multiverse in the end only two universes remained the mainstream marvel comics universe earth 616 the ultimate universe earth 1610 but at the end of the day the worlds collided and the multiverse was destroyed what follows is the 2015 event secret wars an epic tale that ends with the recreation of the multiverse it's a good book and you should totally read it but since the final incursion also marked the end of the illuminati as we know them today i'm obviously not going to cover it in this video now there was a new illuminati group led by the hood that emerged after the multiverse was reconstructed but that was just a short-lived villain team that only lasted for seven issues it wasn't interesting and reeked of marvel just trying to coast off of the name appeal as far as we know the illuminati never reformed after secret wars but that's the thing isn't it who's to say that they're not still meeting in the shadows see that's why i really like this concept we as readers never really quite know if they're gone for good and if they'll show up again but if they do i bet it'll be pretty hype hey thank you very much for watching if you enjoyed deep dives like these then maybe consider subscribing because i have a ton of fun content in the works if you're looking for something else to watch then maybe consider checking out my video on the many many super hero and villain personas that hawkeye has taken up over the years including captain america it's a fascinating video that didn't get many views so i'd appreciate it if you at least gave it a shot but anyway i hope you learned at least a little something new and hopefully i'll see you next time

Channel: Comic Drake

Views: 135,691

Keywords: ComicDrake, Comic Drake, Comics, Comic Books, Marvel, Marvel Comics, Illuminati, Marvel Illuminati, Comicstorian Illuminati, Comics Explained Illuminati, Mr. Fantastic, Iron Man, Professor X, black bolt, doctor strange 2, multiverse of madness, mcu illuminati, tony stark, dr strange, patrick stewart

Id: jXG0ZrPfEpA

Length: 23min 50sec (1430 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 09 2022