1 MCU Hero Is Officially as Powerful as Thanos (According to Marvel) (2024)

When it comes to power in the Marvel Universe, there are few mortals who even come close to the Mad Titan Thanos. However, there is one Avengers hero - familiar to fans of the MCU - who is officially the Infinity Saga villain's equal. While this hero has only had a minor movie appearance so far, Marvel's recent clarification of their power level tells movie fans to expect big things in the future.

The hero in question is Eros, aka the Avenger Starfox, who is played by Harry Styles in the MCU. Starfox is the younger brother of Thanos - the son of Mentor and Sui-San - and a cosmic adventurer who has worked with the Avengers on several occasions. While Starfox has long been considered a minor power next to his brother, the recent A.X.E.: Judgment Day #4 (from Kieron Gillen and Valerio Schiti) set the record straight. That comic revealed that, fearing his own potential, Starfox has always limited his powers, but he is actually "the equal and opposite of Thanos" on a genetic level.

During the event, Starfox is able to use his empathy and emotional manipulation powers to essentially achieve world peace within a day, as part of an effort to appease the event's Celestial villain, which is intent on judging and potentially destroying the planet. However, the retcon of Starfox's power level has far larger implications, especially as it relates to their shared origin.

Starfox Is Officially Thanos' Equal (& Opposite)

Even Alongside the Avengers, Starfox Has Been Holding Back

In Marvel lore, the Eternals were created by the Celestials as part of their plan to turn Earth into a spawning ground for ultra-powerful beings. The intent was that the genetically diverse Deviants would interbreed with normal humanity, leading to the creation of offshoot subspecies like X-Men's mutants. Meanwhile, the Eternals were charged with correcting any excess deviation resulting from this process, essentially safeguarding the larger project from its most extreme results. The Celestials created 100 Eternals, establishing a permanent and unbreakable hierarchy - while some Eternals are 'related,' this is a status decided by the Celestials, and they can't actually reproduce.

This limitation chafed at the influential Eternals Sui-San and A'lars (aka Mentor), who were allowed to set up an experimental colony on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. There, they experimented with the creation of new Eternal life. In a desperate bid to create a truly new Eternal, Sui-San and A'lars combined Eternal and Deviant genetics, creating the abomination who would later be named Thanos - something Thanos learned in Kieron Gillen and Esad Ribić's Eternals #12. Experiencing a vision of all the evil Thanos would do in adulthood, Sui-San attempted to kill her own son.

However, after a period of convalescence, Sui-San persuaded A'lars to try again, and the two created Starfox. As shown in Gillen and Daniele DI Nicuolo's A.X.E.: Starfox #1, Eros was a success. Sui-San was even able to link Eros to the complex biological computer built into Earth by the Celestials, officially making him the previously-thought-impossible 101st Eternal. However, when Sui-San laid out how Eros must become a great force of life and justify his parents' experiments, the young Eternal balked, fleeing to become an adventurer under the codname 'Starfox,' continually delaying his grand cosmic destiny (and full power) for another day.

Starfox's Powers Are the Most Misunderstood in Marvel History

Starfox Doesn't Force People to Love Him - He's the Ultimate Empath

That day came during the Judgment Day event, when Eros unleashed the full level of his empathy to bind the world together like never before. Indeed, Eros and Sersi confirmed that Starfox could broadcast peace and love across the entire world, forcibly turning it into a utopia, however he refuses to do so on ethical grounds. Starfox limits his influence over emotions to what he considers lesser suggestion - offering people an empathic look at what they could be feeling and allowing them to choose that instead, for example calming those panicking during a disaster and offering peace to the dying. In a wild twist, his control over 'love' even extends to chemical processes - Starfox can use his inherent power to create nuclear fusion by 'persuading' hydrogen atoms to bond.

Eros has long been depicted as essentially a hypnotic being, with an unsavory suggestion that he uses his powers to force others to feel attracted to him. This was refuted in Dan Slott and Will Conrad's She-Hulk volume 2 #7, where She-Hulk came to believe that her earlier romance with Starfox was actually due to his powers. This was eventually disproved, though it was revealed that Thanos implanting a false memory in Eros' mindhad caused him to misuse his powers just once - pushing She-Hulk to accept the proposal of her boyfriend John Jameson. This showed Eros the risk inherent to his abilities, and he had the powerful psychic Moondragon suppress this use of his powers.

Today, Eros possesses the ability to influence the entire planet, as well as having the enhanced intellect, physiology, and suite of powers granted to all Eternals (including being resurrected upon death.) He also has a healing factor in excess of other Eternals and psionic abilities which are particularly in-tune with empathy and emotion. Starfox can experience the emotions of others and create emotional 'bridges,' allowing total understanding of emotional state and perspective. So far, fans haven't seen Eros demonstrate the exact same cosmic might as Thanos, however Judgment Day did showcase him negotiating world peace, becoming the Prime Eternal, and carrying out nuclear fusion as an act of will, all in the same day. As Thanos' equal and opposite, it's possible that Eros equals his brother in his ability to bind others together, rather than being able to wreak the same level of destruction.

Eros Is the Perfect Outcome of the Experiment That Created Thanos

Starfox Is a True Eternal, While Thanos Is a Failed Hybrid

While Eros has spent most of his time in Marvel Comics hiding his true potential, he is exactly what Sui-San and Mentor were trying to create in the experiments that resulted in the monstrous Thanos. Sadly, because Thanos was such a disastrous force of evil and Eros never lived up to his potential, the Eternals declared the experiments a mistake and imprisoned the brothers' parents. However, even in this failure, there have been glimpses of Eros' power ever since - indeed, when Thanos arranged to be resurrected following his execution by Gamora, he chose to seize the body of his brother, apparently understanding Eros' untapped potential.

Now, thanks to Judgment Day, Eros is finally done hiding his powers. In A.X.E.: Starfox, he made a very clear distinction between his two names - 'Starfox' as the cosmic adventurer fleeing his destiny, and 'Eros' as the equal and opposite force to Thanos. As ever, the proximity of such a major change to Starfox's MCU debut in 2021's Eternals (Judgment Day was published in 2022) has fans speculating that Marvel is altering its comic lore to match its upcoming movie plans. If so, then Eros/Starfox may have an incredibly prominent role in the MCU as the "equal and opposite" of Thanos - a position he spent the majority of his life running from in the comics.