Which Marvel Characters Will Remember Secret Wars?
By Nick Tylwalk
(Note: This article contains spoilers for the conclusion of Secret Wars #9, on sale now. We’re going to assume that you’ve either read it already or are just one of those types who doesn’t
Now that Secret Wars #9 has brought the awesome but long-running mini-series to an end, it’s time to consider a question brought on by a tradition as old as event comics themselves: which heroes and villains are actually going to remember all that happened?
And when I say a tradition, I mean it goes all the way back to DC’s Crisis on Infinite Earths, where only the characters who took part in the battle with the Anti-Monitor at the dawn of time (a handful relative to all the characters featured during the whole series) could recall that there was a previous reality and that things after the event were different. Secret Wars struck me the same way, in that only a small fraction of the people involved are likely to remember the prior multiverse or the events on Battleworld.
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Let’s start with the broader, more general assumptions. It’s likely that no one killed off prior to the event or during its early stages (other than a few exceptions we’ll get to in a moment) will remember a thing. That means heroes like Thor Odinson and Hyperion, who went down swinging against the Beyonders, or the people who were sacrificed to ensure the life raft got off okay, including Black Widow and others. They’ve all been through enough weird stuff that they might know “something” went down, but not the end and restoration of all that is.
That leaves us with the major players in issue #9, and the thought here is that some of them will live on with memories of Secret Wars and some won’t. Let’s run them all down.
Reed Richards, the Richards family and the Future Foundation
Since they’re busy creating new universes to repopulate the multiverse, they pretty clearly remember what happened and their previous reality. There are clues in the dialogue too, especially Franklin Richards asking Reed, “Are we not super heroes anymore?” and Sue talking about how the life raft broke.
Molecule Man
Given Owen Reece’s central role in the story and his virtually limitless power, it’s a safe bet that he is well aware of everything that got us to the new Marvel Universe. He also did a favor for one character in particular, which we’ll get to in a minute.
Doctor Doom
It’s trickier to say with Doom, since he lost the struggle with Reed, but since he’s been trying to reform in the pages of Invincible Iron Man and appears to have learned a lesson of some sort on the final page of Secret Wars, I’m going to say he retains his memory of what took place. It would make his apparent redemption a lot less meaningful if he didn’t.
Black Panther
After going toe-to-toe with God Doom, I was surprised T’Challa was still in one piece, even armed with the Infinity Gauntlet. However, before everything gets blown up, the Panther has the wherewithal to use one of the Infinity Gems to escape destruction — though amusingly, not even writer Jonathan Hickman remembers which one it’s supposed to be. Regardless, since T’Challa is another character who learns something about himself during the story, I’m guessing he will have full comprehension of what got him to his current state of mind.
Miles Morales
The first time I read the scene with Miles and Peter Parker that is set on the Prime Earth eight months later, I thought it meant that he would remember the previous reality as well. After discussing it with my fellow fans, I’ve since come around to the idea that it was just an explanation of Molecule Man salvaging Morales and his mom from the Earth-1610 universe, and that the new reality is probably all he knows. I could be wrong, and maybe we’ll learn that Miles (and Peter, for that matter) has memories of his old universe, but I suspect we’ll have to wait until the Spider-Man series kicks off to know for sure.
This isn’t an exhaustive list, by any means, but it covers the main players. Think we’re crazy or there’s someone obvious we forgot (besides Namor, ’cause well, he’s already dead in the new MU)? Leave us a comment or give us a shout on Twitter.