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A MCU tragedy is revisited in the first issue of Dark Ages, and the death of one of the Avengers happens in a way that is the opposite of the films.
WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Dark Ages #1, on sale now from Marvel Comics.
As the name implies, Marvel’s Dark Ages is both literally and metaphorically dark, taking place in a world without power after a number of heroes were slaughtered by the Unmaker. But before the lights went out, Dark Ages offered a total reversal of one of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s most tragic deaths to date.
Dark Ages #1, by Tom Taylor, Iban Coello, Brian Reber, and VC’s Joe Sabino, opens with every superhero with a spider-sense feeling a sudden and tremendous amount of pain, warning them about the coming threat. Uatu the Watcher visited the Fantastic Four and told them that the Unmaker, an incredibly powerful living machine created to protect the universe, had been awakened from his slumber at the Earth’s core and was trying to escape. The Earth’s smartest minds convened to form a plan to face the Unmaker and created a strike team consisting of Vision, Scarlet Witch, Doctor Strange, the Thing and the Invisible Woman. The team went to the Earth’s core to battle the machine, but it initially ignored them. The Unmaker tried to dig itself out, causing massive earthquakes around the world that destroyed several cities around the world, including the underwater city of Atlantis.
On the surface, most of Earth’s heroes banded together to stop the world from crumbling around them and save as many people as they could. The strike team continued to fight the Unmaker but they didn’t stand a chance. The first casualty was the Thing, who was vaporized almost instantly. Afterward, Scarlet Witch tried to reshape reality to destroy the Unmaker, but the powerful machine countered by unmaking her, vaporizing her right in front of the Vision in an inverted echo of Vision’s demise in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Enraged, Vision entered the Unmaker’s head in an attempt to deactivate it. Meanwhile, Doctor Strange opened a portal to a realm that constantly released EMP waves. The waves managed to shut down the Unmaker but not before he killed Strange, causing the portal to remain open and turn off every machine in the world.
While the strike team was ultimately successful in their mission, they birthed a threat arguably as dangerous as the Unmaker. At the end of the issue, it’s revealed that an older, slightly greyer Spider-Man is telling the story around a campfire seven years after the fact. He reveals that after the lights went out, the new world was attacked by Apocalypse and his new group of Horsemen.
The battle in the center of the Earth also reversed the most tragic MCU death with the Vision watching helplessly as Scarlet Witch died. Near the end of Avengers: Infinity War, the Avengers fought Thanos to stop him from assembling all of the Infinity Stones. Determined to steal the Mind Stone, the Mad Titan journeyed to Earth and plucked the stone from Vision’s forehead, essentially killing him. Meanwhile, Scarlet Witch was forced to watch helplessly, unable to do anything to help her love interest and teammate. Mimicking her death in “Dark Ages,” Scarlet Witch faded from existence when Thanos used the Infinity Stones to erase half the living beings in the universe. A further comparison between the two moments could be drawn when Scarlet Witch meets Thanos again in Avengers: Endgame. Much like Vision in Dark Ages, she becomes enraged and uses all her powers to try to kill Thanos but ultimately fails.
It’s currently unknown what happened to Vision after he entered the Unmaker’s head, especially since other artificial life forms did not survive. Vision’s spiral mimics Scarlet Witch’s descent into madness as a result of his death as chronicled in the Wandavision series. The fact that the duo’s deaths and reactions resemble each other so much shows how strong their relationship is throughout the Marvel Universe.
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