Eidos-Montreal’sMarvel’s Guardians of the Galaxylaunches the iconic team of rogues to the deepest quadrants of space, during what turns out to be a substantial sci-fi and rock-infused singleplayer narrative. As a result, Star-Lord and the gang end up consistently rubbing shoulders with some of the comic book publisher’s most intriguing cosmic forces, factions, and people. BetweenCosmo the psychic Spacedogand characters like Lady Hellbender, players are left with a sense that anyone or anything could show up at any moment. One entity that plays a constant antagonistic role in driving the story forward from its beginning, though, ultimately reveals itself to also be the game’s final boss battle.
Spoken about between the cast as more of a soulless entity, rather than an individual person in a traditional sense, the Magus and its relationship with the golden Adam Warlock have a complicated history to say the least. Thanks to the significant part it plays within the game, getting to grips with that dynamic is an important part of processing Eidos-Montreal’s first Marvel adventure. In a lot of literal and conceptual ways, Magus represents the dark and corrupted side of Warlock’s alliterative otherworldly personality. It’s this uniquely turbulent dynamic that not only ends up drivingMarvel’s Guardians of the Galaxyforward, but also serves as a comparison to the rocky relationships and bonds that the team of heroes forge between themselves.
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The Origins of the Magus
To fully understand the power dynamic and complicated relationship betweenthe Magus and Adam Warlock, it’s important to set the scene through an examination of the latter’s early off-screen adventures within Eidos-Montreal’s version of the Marvel universe. Having been brought to life by a process that’s never really explored within the game, fueled in-part by the Soul Stone, Warlock was imbued with miraculous deity-like healing powers. During one particular encounter with a group of sick people stranded on a spaceship, the golden character’s ability to save the otherwise doomed passengers subsequently prompted them to declare him to be a god.
Being one of the most powerful figures within the Marvel universe, capable oftaking on Thanos alonewithin the comic book publisher’s main reality, Adam Warlock’s subconscious started to not only buy into these assertions, but also actively crave them. In partnership, and with altruistic intentions in mind initially, Warlock subsequently formed the Church of Universal Truth alongside the ship’s leader Raker. However, around this time the golden god realized that his delusions were starting to grow beyond his own control, thanks presumably to the reality-bending powers of the Soul Stone. Naming the now sentient parasitic entity he’d accidentally birthed within him as the Magus, Warlock sought to separate himself from the stone that had allowed the dark presence to fester.
Following a seemingly botched separation experiment conducted in conjunction with Raker, the Church was devastated by the apparent death of the golden man that they had worshiped. However, split from the dark thoughts that had taken hold of his life, shame had actually prompted the liberated Warlock to fake his own death. Having left the Soul Stone that Magus was now a disembodied-prisoner within atthe Nova Corps Quarantine Zone, Warlock then promptly ran away into isolation so as to prevent his delusions and powers from growing out of control again. Fueled by its unfulfilled and insatiable hunger for admiration, in addition to a new resentment for its former host and creator, the Magus bided it’s time for the moment that it could return and feast once more.
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The Magus’ Powers and Motivations
Being born from the corruption of Adam Warlock’s desire to heal the universe, it’s little surprise that the Magus withinMarvel’s Guardians of the Galaxyis his polar opposite. Defined by a parasitic nature, the corrupted entity exhibits all of the darker aspects of Warlock’s personality and is essentially his evil thoughts given independence. Their relationship is therefore defined by the fact that they were once one, before they were forcibly split into variants somewhat reminiscent of theconcept’s recent MCU debut. Instead of being capable of healing those that it comes into contact with, the Magus also subsequently exhibits an ability and desire to consume all through subjugation. While Warlock utilizes cosmic energy from the universe directly, the Magus instead consumes and corrupts it.
Having sat within the Nova Corps Quarantine Zone, the Magus was eventually awoken when it came into unfortunate contact withPeter Quill and Rocketat the start ofMarvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. Freed from its confines and reunited with Raker, the corrupted entity was then able to set about its plan to enslave and feed off the universe’s forced belief in it, once it had regained its physical form. Again, this sits in direct contrast to Adam Warlock’s once altruistic desire to spread peace and wellbeing freely to anyone he came into contact with. The methods in which the Magus was able to almost achieve this also further reinforce the idea that the two’s relationship is defined by the fact that they are different sides of the same coin. The Magus’ offers of impossible promises, that open a person up to subjugation, also stands in direct opposition to the miraculous feats that Warlock once enacted without a desire to be repaid.
The Magus and Adam Further Afield
Having teased Adam Warlock’s eventual arrival within theMCUduring the closing moments of the secondGuardians of the Galaxymovie,it’s interesting that Eidos-Montreal’s gamehas effectively beaten Hollywood to the headline-seizing punch. What’s equally surprising is just how different the video game incarnation of the character seemingly is from both his Soul Stone-less on-screen doppelganger, and his comic book-based inspiration. As a natural result of this, the relationship that the video game version has with the Magus is familiar yet still unique at the same time. Most of the prominent paper-based incarnations of the Magus, for example, depict Adam Warlock’s evil alter-ego as heralding from a distant point in the future of the main Marvel universe.
Later depictions admittedly played on this idea to explain that, following the defeat of Thanos, Warlock was able to achieve a state of being that accidentally allowed him to purge good and evil from his body. Whilethe comic book and Eidos’ versionsshare some definite similarities here, the relationship between Warlock and the Magus stands out as being different in-game due to the way in which the former was seduced by power before actively rejecting it. Unlike the showdown that sees the video game Guardians entrap the monstrous version of the Magus back within the Soul Stone, once it has claimed Adam Warlock’s body for itself in a funny twist on Marvel’s post-credit scene trope, the comic book version is often simply sent back to the future following its defeat. This ensures that the threat of the Magus’ return still looms directly over the virtual Adam Warlock.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxyis out now on PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X.
