The Beyonder: Original History, Selective Omniscience, and the Retcons

Beyonder has always been one of my favorite Marvel characters because, to me, he had one of the most unique creation stories, power sets and personalities Marvel ever came up with. He wasn't just another cosmic being who happened to be ridiculously powerful. The whole idea behind him was different. Even things like selective omniscience were concepts I had never really heard of before encountering the character, and that was a huge part of why I liked him so much.

And then for some weird reason Marvel decided to retcon him, which I think was one of the worst decisions they ever made for a character.

But before getting into that, you have to understand what the original Beyonder actually was.

The original Beyonder wasn't just another cosmic entity living somewhere outside the universe. He basically was his own reality. His realm existed completely outside the Marvel multiverse, and from his perspective that was everything there was. He didn't really have a concept of "other" because there was nothing else there for him to compare himself to. Then he became aware of the Marvel universe and suddenly realized there was this entire separate reality filled with individual beings who all wanted things.

That concept of desire fascinated him. Why do people want things? Why does getting something make them happy? Why does not getting something hurt? Why do people love, hate, fight, sacrifice themselves for each other, chase power, chase money, chase relationships, chase meaning? That's basically what starts Secret Wars. He pulls heroes and villains together, creates Battleworld and watches what happens because he's trying to understand what desire actually is and why it drives people.

Then Secret Wars II takes that even further because Beyonder stops just watching humanity and decides he wants to actually experience it. He gives himself a human body and starts trying to understand life from inside it. Food, money, sex, relationships, friendship, love, work, power, religion, morality, happiness, pain, purpose, all of it. The problem is that you've got somebody with almost unlimited power trying to learn how to be a person.

Emotionally, he's almost like a child. He can alter reality on a ridiculous scale, but he doesn't understand why hurting somebody emotionally matters. He can do things that even other cosmic beings can't easily deal with, but he doesn't understand why somebody he likes won't love him back. That's what made him interesting to me. He was insanely powerful, but at the same time he was trying to understand things that normal people deal with every day.

And one of the most interesting things about him was selective omniscience.

Basically, Beyonder could know almost anything he wanted to know, but he didn't automatically know everything all the time because he could choose not to. That's the part that I always thought was so interesting. He wasn't ignorant because he couldn't know something. He was ignorant because he intentionally chose not to know it.

Because if he wants to understand love and just instantly gives himself complete knowledge of love, then he hasn't actually experienced falling in love. If he wants to understand grief and instantly knows everything there is to know about grief, then he hasn't experienced losing somebody. If he wants to understand humanity and just turns omniscience on and knows everything, then the whole point of trying to experience humanity is gone.

So he could basically know, but choose not to know, because he wanted to discover things for himself. I had never really seen omniscience used like that before, and that was one of the things that made the character so different to me.

And Beyonder didn't just show up in Secret Wars and then disappear without affecting anybody else. He had a huge impact on other Marvel characters, and I think that's another thing people forget when they just reduce him to "that really powerful guy from Secret Wars."

Nightcrawler is one of the best examples. Kurt's faith in God was always a huge part of who he was, and then Beyonder shows up doing things that, from Kurt's perspective, basically look like miracles. He can reshape reality, bring people back, destroy things casually and do things that look almost godlike. That causes Kurt to seriously question his faith.

He starts asking himself things like, what if Beyonder actually is God? And if he isn't God, why would God allow something like Beyonder to exist and do whatever he wants? And if Beyonder is God, is that even a God Kurt wants to believe in? That wasn't just some throwaway moment either. It affected his faith, his confidence, his relationships and the way he saw himself.

Then you've got the New Mutants.

Beyonder didn't just beat them. He literally killed them, erased them from existence and made people forget they had ever existed. Their friends forgot them. Their families forgot them. Their history was gone. Kitty was one of the few people who still had this lingering connection to Illyana and knew something wasn't right.

Eventually Beyonder restores them, but they remember what happened. They remember dying. They remember being erased. They aren't just brought back and everything is fine again. It screws them up psychologically for a while, and that actually carries forward into their stories.

That's what I mean when I say Beyonder mattered. He affected people's faith, relationships, self-esteem, understanding of life and death, and even their understanding of reality itself. He wasn't just there so Marvel could say, "Look how powerful this guy is."

Then Marvel decided they needed to explain him.

And this is where it starts getting stupid to me.

The first big retcon turns him into an incomplete Cosmic Cube. So instead of this being from completely outside the Marvel multiverse who originally believed his reality was literally all that existed, now he's basically part of this Cosmic Cube situation tied to Molecule Man.

That is such a downgrade to me.

You took one of the weirdest and most original concepts Marvel had created and made him smaller. Instead of expanding the mystery, they explained it away.

Then somehow they came up with an even worse explanation later and said he was basically an Inhuman/Mutant hybrid.

That one I don't even understand.

You have this character who was originally from outside the entire Marvel multiverse, and now you're trying to shove him into two categories that already exist. Mutant. Inhuman. Why? What does that add? To me it just makes him less interesting again.

Thankfully Marvel basically moved away from that explanation later.

Then eventually you get the Beyonders as an entire race, and I actually dislike that one less than the others because at least it brings back the idea that he comes from outside normal Marvel reality. But I still don't like it anywhere near as much as the original version.

Because originally, Beyonder was alone. That matters.

He believed he was everything. Then suddenly he discovers this completely separate universe full of individual people, wants, emotions and experiences. That makes his obsession with desire make sense. It makes his confusion about humanity make sense. It makes the whole story work.

If he's just one young member of an entire race of Beyonders, then some of that uniqueness is gone.

Later Marvel stories have tried to reconcile all of these different versions and explain how the Cosmic Cube stuff, the Beyonders and everything else can all fit together. I understand why writers try to do that because Marvel continuity is a mess after this many decades, but I still think the original version was far more interesting.

And the thing is, I don't even like the original Beyonder just because he was stronger before the retcons.

That's not really what made him interesting to me.

I liked him because he was weird.

He was a being with almost unlimited power who couldn't understand wanting something. He could know almost anything but intentionally chose not to know things because he wanted to experience discovery. He could reshape reality but couldn't understand why somebody loved somebody else. He could terrify cosmic beings while at the same time trying to figure out what it meant to be human.

And his existence actually affected the rest of the Marvel universe.

Nightcrawler questioned God because of him. The New Mutants experienced death and literal nonexistence because of him. Other characters had to question morality, reality, faith and what any of those things even mean when there's a being around who can basically rewrite the rules whenever he wants.

That's what made Beyonder interesting to me.

And turning all of that into "actually, he was an incomplete Cosmic Cube" is still one of the stupidest retcons Marvel ever did.

I enjoyed reading his original entry into Marvel Comics, and I loved seeing how his interactions affected other characters in the world on a deep level. Even things that affected Spideman and some other heavy hitters. I think they should have ENDED his story where it ended originally and left it alone.

Here's how they originally ended him:

At the end of Secret Wars II, Beyonder decides that the only way he's ever really going to understand humanity is to stop just pretending to be human and actually become one. So he creates a physical body for himself in a machine, but he doesn't start out as an adult. He literally begins as a baby, because he wants the full human experience from the beginning instead of just dropping himself into an already-grown body.

He then uses his power to rapidly age that body from an infant into an adult, basically fast-forwarding through human development so that he can complete the transformation and live as a real human being. The whole point is that he's trying to give up the detached, godlike existence and finally become what he's spent all this time trying to understand.

But Molecule Man realizes how dangerous this is. If Beyonder finishes transferring himself completely into that body, you're still talking about Beyonder-level power now concentrated into a human existence, and Owen decides he can't allow that to happen. He destroys the body while the process is happening.

That's the original ending before all the later retcons: Beyonder's attempt to become human fails, his physical body is destroyed, and the enormous energy/power tied to him is released and sent back into the Beyond-Realm. He doesn't originally end as "actually a Cosmic Cube" or "actually one of a race." His story ends with this almost tragic attempt to finally become human being stopped at the last second.
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The ending was a proper ending. He joined the Marvel Universe, his story played out and he deeply affected the ENTIRE marvel universe and many people in it, then he exited the Universe back to the Beyond Realm. That was a complete perfect character arc. Entry -> Involvement -> Exit. It should have ended there. Then they started trying to drag him BACK into the marvel universe in second and third arcs and make him a deeper part of the comic universe, that's when they started throwing all these retcons at it. This is one character that should have had the entire storyline ended at that moment and it was a beautiful moment in comic history.