stephen strange the illuminati these are some of the smartest people in the universe but who looks at a team and decides illuminati is a good name i mean it's amazing but it's like they're asking to be looked at as slightly less than heroic with the most recent look at the illuminati from universe 838 we could be setting up for the introduction of a full-fledged illuminati in the main earth 616 or maybe even one in that paint universe the illuminati are a small group of powerful heroes and leaders who come together to try and prevent future
problems however in their search for peace they more often than not blur the lines between what is right and what is wrong what are some of their worst offenses that really earn them their name you gotta tell me well let's take a look right now what if i told you that your best friend the person you trusted the most and would do anything for and have fought side by side with for years decided to you know shoot you in the space yes the first little hiccup that the illuminati created is probably the most famous of
their blunders when they decided to shoot bruce banner off into space the hulk had recently done some damage to the city of las vegas in one of his temper tantrums making him a growing concern for the leaders of the world the illuminati decided that instead of working with bruce and using their collective intellect to get the hulk under control that it would simply be better if they made it someone else's problem we had no choice this action set up one of the most famous couple of storylines in comics when the group of six decided to
send the hulk off planet he landed on a gladiatorial planet and became its champion this is the famous planet hulk storyline from which many aspects of thor ragnarok adapted hulk eventually built a life for himself on his new planet of sikar but disastrous events led to the death of his new family and a really pissed off green giant not only was this just a mean thing to do to their friend but it would prove to have disastrous consequences the hulk eventually returned after becoming the champion gladiator and wanted revenge on the people who sent him
from his home the hulk returned to earth in a form that would come to be known as world breaker hulk he had never been this strong and powerful likely because he had never been this angry his strength was enough to literally destroy planets and he focused all of his energy at the illuminati the hulk easily defeated black bolt on the moon ran through the x-men and destroyed iron man's hulkbuster armor and stark tower doctor strange called on the spirit of a demon to help fight the hulk lost control and nearly killed innocent civilians himself hulk
went on such a rampage that he nearly destroyed the entire east coast had he not been stopped by the sentry hulk's final act of vengeance against the illuminati was forcing them to fight each other in a gladiatorial arena basically this whole incident is what we call a lack of foresight the illuminati has almost always consisted of the same members however there have been some shakeups here and there traditionally the six illuminati members are iron man doctor strange black bolt namor mr fantastic and professor x other members have included black panther beast and for the briefest
amount of time captain america when captain america learned that the infinity stones still existed and were being held by the illuminati he offered his assistance to the secret group in holding one of them he was basically one of the team but as his service to the team went on he realized his core beliefs did not align with theirs he wanted to leave the illuminati and i mean can you blame him we're literally talking about a list of bad things this group has done however in true illuminati fashion they believed that captain america now knew too
much about them nothing says trustworthy like a total lack of transparency the illuminati made the decision to wipe the memory of steve rogers and remove him from their group again a pretty not cool thing to do to someone they considered a friend and again it would have consequences eventually steve regained his memory thanks to the watcher and it led to a huge showdown as the avengers hunted the illuminati noticing a pattern yet the illuminati loved to do something wrong that they think is for the right reasons only for it to backfire completely if there's one
morally ambiguous thing the illuminati consistently do is lie to the heroes around them they see themselves as the only ones who are in the need to know meaning they withhold information and give false information to other groups of heroes all the time the whole point of the illuminati is to be a secret organization that operates in the shadows most people do not even know they exist and yet they drive the narrative and influence events in the world all the time they've made themselves an incredibly powerful governing body with zero transparency and absolute power corrupts absolutely
this secrecy and lack of communication with other heroes led to a great amount of mistrust when their existence was revealed to the rest of the world the entire superhero community was shocked and very upset with the people they trusted the illuminati then had to go into hiding in order to avoid being arrested and eventually would continue operating from the shadows once it all blew over they tend to put their own needs before the needs of other heroes and most importantly wind up sowing division amongst a group of people who are a lot stronger together than
they are part stop me when you've heard this one a person or team who believes themselves to be the moral arbiters of truth seek the infinity stones to enact their will on people now you don't know if i'm talking about thanos or the illuminati do you i'll do it myself when you can make apt comparisons between your team and the actions of one of the greatest villains in the marvel universe you should probably look at a rebrand the illuminati mess around with the infinity stones all the time the motivation for the team originally wanting the
infinity stones was of course to keep them out of the hands of the world's greatest supervillains given that they have the power to destroy the entire universe unfortunately in true illuminati fashion trying to do this is often laced with good intentions and terrible results the members of the illuminati have split the stones up amongst themselves each person being a protector of one and they've even attempted to destroy the infinity stones at one point in time even the watcher has confronted the illuminati about their use with such powerful objects as the infinity stones and the infinity
gauntlet i know they think they're great but the teacher basically just yelled at them for playing with rocks they were also extremely dishonest about the status of the infinity stones and the gauntlet the team convinced heroes like captain america that the stones have been destroyed and the gauntlet along with them in truth the illuminati were the only ones at one point who knew that the stones still existed and split them among themselves again this offense is truly just them playing with fire and eventually they got burned this next little mishap is going to be the
subject of an upcoming disney plus show which could theoretically tell us that the illuminati are closer to being in the mcu for real than we think and wanda is supposedly gone now so maybe they'll be around a little longer essentially the illuminati are responsible for the event known as secret invasion the original formation of the team happened after the kree skrull war and the newly formed six basically just wanted to show off they traveled to the scroll homeworld in order to give a threatening warning to their leader promising that any further conflict would result in
the illuminati responding black bolt even used his power during this confrontation to destroy an entire warship he may as well then folded his arms and winked at the scrolls because it's a little laughable as to what happened next the skrulls then kidnapped the members of the illuminati meaning that the skrulls now had everything they needed to analyze how heroes work and take their place several years later tony stark discovered that the hero elektra had actually been a skrull all this time since the illuminati's warning skrulls had been invading earth taking the places of heroes and
infiltrating the highest levels of power it then became a war and invasion that no one even knew was happening this large conflict was all due to the fact that the illuminati felt the need to show off their power and were subsequently the reason for the infiltration the illuminati eventually learned that black bolt had also been a scroll this whole time meaning that the secret meetings of the illuminati were basically published in the scroll newsletter every week the illuminati just wanted to show off their might but at the end of the day they wound up being
the cause of one of the greatest and most terrifying conflicts in marvel history where no one could be trusted because it was just impossible to know if everyone was who they said they were hey i hope your mission is going well we gave the glasses to parker there are times where it seems like the illuminati are just straight-up villains the line isn't even blurry anymore they do things that are very despicable and morally objectionable at least with doctor strange and the multiverse of manus we got to learn all about incursions which present a serious moral
dilemma essentially when two worlds start to collide the people of one world have to make a choice because either one will destroy the other or both worlds will come to an end we saw in the multiverse of madness that that version of the illuminati had to destroy another world thanks to the meddlings of dr strange obviously they knew it was not an easy choice and they took no pleasure in destroying another world but they had to do it in order to save theirs the illuminati in the comics have done this very same thing iron man
has even created a weapon called saul's hammer with the help of mr fantastic this was an overwhelmingly devastating machine that had the power to wipe out an entire world the illuminati used this weapon during an incursion with the earth 616 in another world they even confronted the great society and instead of trying to work with them to stop the incursion the illuminati took out every single one of them so like yeah they're great but there's definitely times where they're not am i right one of my favorite comic stories is civil war now if you know
the story well you know that the illuminati do not necessarily play a large role in it in fact the entire event fractures them as a team with some members in favor of the superhero registration act and others against it however something the illuminati could have done if they functioned properly was to stop the civil war before it began breaking the laws of nature i know tony stark initially brought the superhero registration act before the illuminati believing it to be the lesser of two evils should the government ever introduce an even stricter bill what if you
recall and why now why not before despite some hesitations from illuminati members who would wind up leaving the team and opposing iron man tony stark and mr fantastic along with the government pushed the registration act through reed richards even though it was a good idea to build a robotic clone of thor that wound up killing bill foster obviously we know what this led to an incident with the new warriors kicked off marvel's civil war with the introduction of this act now granted most of this decision was on tony and not necessarily the illuminati but their
entire purpose is to foresee problems that will happen in the future and the fact that this would cause just about every hero to pick a side in an extremely casualty heavy war really shows you how good they are at doing what they say their job is nothing says your superhero team is noble and true more than teaming up with villains let me get my emails right that's right the illuminati the all-knowing morally fantastic heroes have on a number of occasions teamed up with some of marvel's worst villains in order to accomplish their goals inevitable oftentimes
we say how the line between hero and villain is actually very thin and they are more alike than they are not however i think throwing in your lot with them is a pretty clear sign which side of the line you tend to fall on tony stark once convinced the group to let him handle thanos after his defeat and kept him lock away in the illuminati secret lair until he needed him i know just where to put it perhaps the worst offender of the illuminati when it comes to teaming up with villains is namor the submariner
this guy probably perfectly represents the illuminati as a definite anti-hero with the mind of a leader namor joined a parallel version of the illuminati after he left the earth 616 version essentially an incursion was occurring and namor joined the cabal led by norman osborne this cabal has had members that include thanos corvus glaive proxima midnight and maximus the mad yeah we've gone beyond anti-hero and crossed over into straight-up villainy the fact that the illuminati are willing to use villains at their disposal to get what they want shows that they have no boundaries or moral sense
and how does that make them any different from some of the villains they are trying to protect against whether they're saving the world or actively putting it in danger the illuminati have a storied rollercoaster of a history what do you think is the worst thing the illuminati has ever done and who do you think will make up the mcu illuminati you
