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One member of the Avengers is entirely too powerful and unstable to be a good fit for the MCU’s version of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
Ever since he debuted in the early 2000s, The Sentry has been one of Marvel’s most controversial characters. Known for his immense power level and his retroactive premise, the hero completely upended the status quo of the Marvel Universe. This saw him become fairly ubiquitous in the publisher’s books and teams such as the Avengers, for better or worse.
The Sentry’s powers and his almost meta nature have made him problematic in Marvel Comics, and the same could be said if he were to be introduced in the MCU. Here’s just how powerful Marvel’s “first” superhero truly is, as well as how his potential introduction into the movies could become as disastrous as the comic books.
Who Is The Sentry?
The Sentry, a.k.a. Robert Reynolds debuted in The Sentry #1 by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee. The character was envisioned by Rick Veitch, who had previously worked on dark superhero deconstructions such as Miracleman and The Maximortal. These characters were both in many ways based off of Superman and DC’s Captain Marvel, so it makes sense that Veitch’s ideas for The Sentry were pretty similar as well.
The Sentry was a superhero who had had once been central in the Marvel Universe, with his borderline ridiculous superhuman feats, such as being able to calm down the Hulk, taking him directly into Gary Stu territory. Despite this huge impact on the world around him, The Sentry’s feud with the evil Void saw the entire Marvel Universe forget his existence. Later, as a middle aged married man, Reynolds remembers his past (not unlike what happened to Miracleman) and becomes The Sentry.
This universal amnesia was a retcon that allowed the writers to inject The Sentry into key moments of Marvel continuity, something which many longtime fans despised. This was only made worse by the hoax that the character in real life supposedly was the first Silver Age Marvel hero and was based off of a rejected concept from before Stan Lee concocted the Fantastic Four. This Silver Age element extends to his powers, which many saw as a bit too “out there.”
What are The Sentry’s Powers?
The Sentry gained his powers through a serum that was even more powerful than the one used on Captain America, with the result being that his molecules are now an instant ahead in time. The biggest manifestation of this is that his raw strength is almost unbelievable, allowing him to not only toss around cosmic powered heralds of Galactus, but also apparently fight the Devourer of Worlds to a stalemate.
Not only is the Sentry highly resistant to most people’s brute force attacks, but even potentially lethal toxins such as those of Spider-Woman have no affect on him. He can regenerate any damage he does sustain, and he can likewise project his consciousness and memories into the minds of others.
As Marvel’s Superman, he also has flight and vision and sensory powers as well as a whole host of other powers including energy manipulation and astral projection that make him a walking deus ex machina. The character was essentially a plot device, leading to even more contrived stories explaining why he was unable to simply stop a particular threat. These usually involve his mirror image, The Void, who commits an act of malevolence for every good deed The Sentry does. Ironically, this idea doesn’t balance out just how broken and utterly ridiculous The Sentry is in the Marvel Universe.
How The Sentry Could Ruin the MCU
For as much as The Sentry threw logic out of the window with his comic book introduction, he would be an even bigger debacle in the MCU. The movies have, at strongest, featured threats as tough as the Mad Titan Thanos with the Infinity Gauntlet. The Sentry, if he were anything like his comic counterpart, would likely easily have ended this threat. Characters like Carol Danvers have already been criticized for being plot devices, and such a status is baked into The Sentry’s DNA.
Likewise, his presence might be another media example of an “evil” Superman, of which there are a few in movies alone. Some might even take it as a sort of a slap in the face to Zack Snyder’s take on Superman and the DCEU in general, which might not be the wisest road to take. The Sentry’s “origin,” however could be a change of pace and make for a much darker movie in the MCU.
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