Hela (comics)

Hela is a fictional supervillainess appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The Asgardian goddess of death is based on the Norse goddess, Hel. The ruler of Hel and Niffleheim, the character has been a frequent foe of Thor. Debuting in the Silver Age of comic books, Hela first appeared in Journey into Mystery #102 and was adapted from Norse Myths by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

She will make her Marvel Cinematic Universe debut in Thor: Ragnarok, played by Cate Blanchett.

Publication history

Hela was adapted from Norse Myths by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and first appeared in Journey into Mystery #102.

Fictional character biography

Hela was born in Jotunheim, the land of the giants. She is the child of Loki (albeit a different incarnation^[1] who died during a previous Asgardian Ragnarok) and the giantess Angrboða. When she came of age, Odin appointed her as the Goddess of Death, giving her rulership over the dead in the realms of Hel and Niflheim.

Queen of Hel

Hela often tried to expand her power to the dead who dwell in Valhalla as well. These attempts often brought Hela into conflict with Odin or his son Thor. She once appeared to Thor while he was on the verge of death after battling the Wrecker who knocked a building onto him while he was depowered.^[2] However, she failed to tempt Thor into entering Valhalla, despite an image of one that dwelled in Valhalla.^[3]

Later, she stole a portion of the sleeping Odin's soul while he was on the Sea of Eternal Night due to Loki planning to take over Asgard, thus creating the powerful entity Infinity.^[4] Hela then unleashed Infinity upon the universe. Infinity even took control of Odin.^[5] Hela slew Thor, who was restored to life by the sacrifice of her servant, the Silent One.^[6] Hela was then slain by Odin to save Thor, but then returned to life by Odin after being convinced by Thor to restore the natural balance of life and death. Hela slew Thor after tracking him down by putting humans in danger, but restored him to life after Sif offered to die in his place.^[7]

Hela later battled the Olympian Death-god Pluto for the right to claim Odin's soul, as Odin had been killed by the monster Mangog.^[8] As a result, Hela restored Odin to life to prevent Pluto from claiming him.^[9] Some time later, Hela confronted Thor.^[10] Some time after that, she confronted Odin.^[11] She then plotted with Loki to bring about Ragnarök by slaying the god Balder then attacking Asgard. She summoned Volla's spirit before this to tell her and Loki about Ragnarok, after which she prepared an army of monsters to attack Asgard. However Odin used his powers to prevent Balder dying.^[12] Later Balder was restored after the Asgardian's death and resurrection battling the Celestials.^[13]

Hela then summoned the Valkyrie to aid in a war against Ollerus, while Hela encountered the other Defenders.^[14] Hela was then forced to join a conspiracy of Loki and Tyr against Odin.^[15] She also unwillingly entered an alliance with the death-gods of other Earth pantheons, joining their realms together to create a vast hell. As a result, she was destroyed and devoured along with other Death-gods by Demogorge the God-Eater, though it happened to her last, who was wakened by the joining, but was restored to life with Demogorge's defeat.^[16]

Hela later allied with Malekith, and took souls of Earth mortals to Hel using special food of the faerie.^[17] She then appeared in Asgard to claim Odin's soul, but was driven off by Thor.^[18] She encountered the X-Men and New Mutants in Asgard. She appeared to claim Wolverine's soul, but was driven off by the X-Men and Mirage.^[19] Hel was then invaded by Thor, Balder, the Executioner, and the Einherjar to rescue the captive mortal souls. Hela wrestled Thor for the captive mortal souls.^[20] Hela raised an army of the dead to stop Thor's escape from Hel.^[21]

During this fight with Thor, in revenge for his defiance and invasion of her realm, Hela cursed Thor with eternal life, while making his bones brittle, leaving him unable to die while rendering him increasingly vulnerable to attack.^[22] Hela then contested against Mephisto who attempted to possess Thor's soul.^[23] With the aid of Tony Stark and dwarf ironmongers, Thor attempted to create a special armor to keep his body together, but eventually forced Hela to lift the curse by using the Destroyer as his host body to invade Hel after his bones were literally pulverized during a battle in which he killed the Midgard Serpent, forcing Hela to restore his body to life and health in an attempt to extract Thor from the Destroyer.^[24]

From time to time, Odin would enter a magical sleep in order to bolster his powers. It was during one of these sleeps that Hela made a plan for power. She corrupted the Valkyries, mentally and physically, transforming them into fire-demons. This also included Danielle Moonstar, of the New Mutants, who was on Earth at the time, who Hela set against the New Mutants.^[25] Dani and her team were eventually brought over to Asgard. Hela sent the Valkyries against the dwarves and New Mutants in Asgard.^[26] The New Mutants skirmished with Hela's forces again and again, even rescuing the prisoner Hrimhari, a wolf-prince from a far away land. Hela forced the dwarf Eitri to forge an uru sword. One of Hela's spells split the group. This resulted in a more efficient recruitment of resistance force, which included the Warriors Three. Hela sent Mirage to kill the sleeping Odin. While most of the Asgardian forces battled Hela's soldiers, the mutants ventured to Odin's very bedchambers, saved Odin's life and foiled Hela's plans. Hela was defeated when the uru sword was destroyed.^[27]

Conflict with various forces brought Bruce Banner, a.k.a. the Hulk, and Agamemnon, the leader of the Pantheon, to Hela's realm. After an undetermined time fighting Hela's skeletal forces, Agamemnon pleaded, based a vaguely hinted upon relationship, to allow the two to leave. Hela relented, reluctantly.

Hela on Earth

Hela was awakened from her mortal guise after Ragnarök by Thor, albeit due to Loki's machinations.^[28] She now lives in Las Vegas, maintaining a lair where she can feed on the souls of random unlucky people, and agrees to use her powers to aid Loki in bringing him back in time to Asgard to complete his own sinister plans for Asgard.^[29]

She is seen attending a meeting with Mephisto, Blackheart, Satannish and Dormammu about a disturbance created by the newly resurrected Magik, who is looking for the soulsword and the original Bloodstone amulet. Belasco's daughter, Witchfire appears during the meeting and reveals she is now the current owner of the original amulet and vows to take her father's place as ruler of Limbo and seat at their table.^[30]

When Norman Osborn attempted to subdue the X-Men, Cyclops sends Danielle Moonstar to Las Vegas where she approaches Hela for a boon. Hela warns her that the price of the boon is a heavy one, but Dani accepts, requesting "a new ride home and a big ol' sword."^[31] Later, Hela is summoned to Utopia by Hrimhari to save a pregnant Rahne and their child, which is neither human nor mutant. Faced with a moral dilemma, to save his child or Rahne; Hrimhari asks Hela to restore Elixir to full health so Elixir may heal them both and to take him instead. Hela agrees and takes Hrimhari away.^[32]

Siege of Asgard

During the Siege of Asgard Loki appears before Hela asking if she has made arrangements for the dead. Hela points out she is without a Hel so she cannot take them in and plans to let the dead wander Midgard forever. Loki provides her with proof of the Disir, banished, cannibalistic Valkyrie's who once belonged to Bor whom he cursed for dining on the flesh of other Asgardians to only be able to feed on the souls of gods. Using his extraordinary swordsmanship skills Loki was able to make a group of 13 submit to him. Meeting with Mephisto, Loki strikes up a deal granting a portion of his netherworld to Hela for one thousand and one years, as her new Hel. In exchange for this, Hela erases Loki from the Books of Hel, thus he is no longer tied to Hel or Asgard, gaining absolute freedom. However, unknown to Hela, Loki had manipulated these events in his favor as he had the Disir in his services and had leased them out to Mephisto for one hundred and one days after demonstrating their skill to the demon lord.^[33] Hela summons Danielle Moonstar to repay her debt and to gather the spirits of the Asgardians that fell in battle with Norman Osborn's forces as quickly as possible so they do not fall prey to the Disir.^[34]

The Disir, still hungry, attack Hela's new Hel as it was not the true Hel they were banished from. Sensing the Disir's assault on the dead Asgardians, Hela attempts to protect them using the sword Eir-Gram, but she is disarmed and her arm sliced off brutally. Hela is quickly overwhelmed and her own remaining power insufficient to counter theirs. Absorbing the dead into her body, Hela creates a fortress around herself to protect them and asks Thor for help through the recently deceased body of an Asgardian.^[35] With the help of Thor and Tyr, they manage to slay and banish the remaining Disir, whose souls are claimed by the triumphant Mephisto.^[36]

Avengers Prime

In the aftermath of the Siege of Asgard, Captain America, Iron Man, and Thor are mysteriously drawn into one of the other Nine Realms, eventually revealed to be the Hel-realm of Hela.^[37] Thor, after a fierce struggle with the Enchantress, engages in open combat with the Nightsword-armed Hela, and though managing to hold his own against her and her forces for some time, ultimately falls to her immense and evidently vastly enhanced power.^[38] Amora, after teleporting herself and Hela away to save Thor's life, herself challenges Hela using all her strength, but Hela defeats her twice in quick succession, attempts and fails to destroy Mjolnir, despite summoning Bor himself to her aid, and apparently slays the Enchantress after revealing that she now wields the Twilight Sword of Surtur.^[39]

After Thor reunites with Iron Man and Captain America, he manages to persuade many of his former Asgardian enemies into rallying behind him into an army against Hela and her own forces. Hela attacks Thor and his allies, defeating and nearly slaying him with the power of the Twilight Sword, but the Enchantress intervenes and saves him, teleporting him away to re-claim Mjolnir and using her own powers to help Thor fight Hela. Thor ultimately manages to claim the Twilight Sword and uses it to restore the Nine Worlds back to their former harmony and order while banishing Hela, but refuses to set Asgard back into the sky, as Amora asks, claiming that using such unholy power for his own ends would make him the same as Hela herself. A grateful and healed Amora then returns Thor and his friends back to Midgard after Thor promises her that her allegiance will not be forgotten.^[40]

Chaos War

During the Chaos War storyline, Hela breaks into Pluto's throne room in the Underworld to warn him of Amatsu-Mikaboshi's army of thousands of alien deities decimating the death realms, joining forces with him in a desperate and a seemingly futile attempt to repel the massive assault on their domains.^[41] Hela, along with Pluto, Satannish, and many other rulers of Earth's various netherworlds, are shown to be slaves of the Chaos King after he obliterates the realms of Hell itself.^[42]

Fear Itself

During the Fear Itself storyline, Cyclops sends Danielle Moonstar to what's left of Las Vegas (after what Juggernaut in the form of Kuurth: Breaker of Stone did to it) to look for Hela while the X-Men fight Kuurth. Hela had taken to living in a Las Vegas casino. When Moonstar does find Hela, she teleports Moonstar to Hel in order to defend it.^[43] When her teammates try to invoke a dark magic to summon a portal to follow Danielle, they end up in Hell instead of Hel where they encounter Mephisto who says that he will get them to Hel if Magma goes out with him.^[44]

Powers and abilities

Hela possesses attributes common to Asgardian gods. She possesses superhuman strength, speed, stamina, agility and durability. When wearing her cloak, she is far stronger than the vast majority of her race. Her vast strength has allowed her to engage in sustained hand-to-hand combat with Thor.^[45] Like all Asgardians she has resistance to magic.

Hela has vast mystical powers which she can use for various effects like limitless astral projection while retaining many of her powers and abilities, firing deadly bolts of energy from her hands which can kill or age even Asgardians, levitation and the creation of illusions. Her most powerful ability is her Hand of Glory, a technique that uses mystical energy to enhance the strength of her punch to kill even an Asgardian.

As a Death Goddess, Hela has a pact with Death, allowing her to claim the souls of any worshipper of the Asgardians and the Asgardians themselves and take them to Hel or Niflheim, as well as able to travel nearly anywhere within the Nine Worlds in an instant. While Hela's touch is fatal to mortals as well and she is capable of stealing their souls into Hel, she generally did not claim the souls of mortal heroes, leaving that task to the Valkyries who took the souls of heroes to Valhalla. Hela is usually willing to wait until a person has died before claiming the soul, but she can kill a healthy human or even Asgardian with a single touch, her "touch of death." Hela is also willing to use her illusions to kill living Asgardians. Hela also has the ability to restore a dead Asgardian to life provided their spirits have not passed on to the afterlife, but she rarely used these abilities.

Hela always wears her magical cloak which enhances her strength and keeps her young and healthy. The goddess has jet black hair and bright green eyes. Without the cloak, Hela reverts to her true form: in this form half of her body is healthy and beautiful, while the other half is decaying. Without the cloak Hela is very weak and can barely move, and her powers are greatly reduced; she is unable to levitate or even stand, and cannot project mystical bolts. Hela doesn't need to wear the cloak; simply touching it is enough to restore her to her stronger form. The left side of her body appears dead and decayed, though it appears alive and beautifully healthy while she wears her cloak.

Hela is often armed with her "Nightsword," and is a proficient swordswoman.

Hela can command all of the dead who dwell in Hel and Niflheim, but she has no power over the dead in Valhalla.

Other versions

2099

In the year 2099, the megacorporation Alchemax tried transforming people into false versions of the Norse Aesir in order to gain advantage of the worldwide worship of these beings. A supporting character in Ravage 2099 named Tiana, the love interest of the titular hero, was turned into Hela via technological means for this project.^[46]

Ultimate Marvel

Ultimate Hela. Art by David Finch.

In Ultimatum #2, Thor travels to Valhalla in order to retrieve Valkyrie's soul, since she died. Hela tells him that if he manages to defeat her army, she will revive Valkyrie, but for a price.^[47] In Ultimatum #3, after her army is defeated, she reveals that the price is Thor's soul. He agrees, and Captain America (who had died) and Valkyrie are released.^[48]

She appears in Ultimate Comics: New Ultimates, telling Thor she will release him in exchange for giving her a son.^[49] The next issue has a vision shown to Valkyrie by Amora where Thor is making love with Hela, as he had no other choice.^[50] Thor then demands his freedom, however he is informed another deed is still required to release him. Thor, being incapable of killing Hela, is released instead by Valkyrie who is killed in battle with the Defenders, who now have superpowers due to Loki's intervention.^[51]

After she discovered that Thor had murdered their son, Modi, Hela displayed an immense fit of rage; Thor explained to her that Modi had been corrupted by the World Tree and that he had been left with no other option.^[52]

X-Men: The End

In X-Men: The End, an alternative reality focusing on the alternate future of the X-Men, Danielle Moonstar is separated and held in confinement in the mutant concentration camp Neverland situated on the Moon when Hela appears before her. Near death from torture and confinement, Moonstar's struggling pleas are only heard by Hela. Materializing before Moonstar, Hela reminds her that she is a Valkyrie and as such, cherished by the Goddess of Death. After Moonstar invokes both Asgardian and Cheyenne chants, Hela revives her and grants her enhanced powers.^[53]

Loki Triumphant

Hela appears in the 4 issue series simply titled Loki where Loki has now claimed leadership of Asgard. It is revealed that Hela was one of the Asgardians that helped him to the throne, but is now demanding payment in kind for her assistance, along with the seductress Lorelei.^[54]

Marvel Zombies

In the alternate Marvel Zombies universe, Loki seeking more mischief has induced a zombie wide apocalypse during World War II. A curious Odin makes the decision to investigate personally and is bitten by a zombie. As Odin shares a magical lifeblood with all Asgardians, they all also become zombies, including Hela.^[55]

In other media

Television

• Hela appears in The Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes episodes "The Fall of Asgard" and "A Day Unlike Any Other", voiced by Nika Futterman. When the Avengers destroyed the Norn Stones on Earth, a chain reaction of magic scatters them across the 8 other realms connected to Yggdrasil, the Tree of Life. Captain America is transported into Hela's realm. She tries to convince him to stay while using the illusions of his fallen war comrades. She knows of Loki's plans and plays along with them, but knows her father would betray her eventually. She agrees to transport Captain America to Asgard to aid his friends on the condition that should he fall in the battle with Loki, his soul will belong to her. Back on Earth, Captain America sees a reflection of Hela on his broken shield just before he is ambushed and replaced by a Skrull.
• Hela appears in the Avengers Assemble episode "Valhalla Can Wait", voiced by Vanessa Marshall.^[56] In this version of the character, Hela is made the ruler over Valhalla instead of Hel and Niffleheim. She was shown to be bored pairing her skeleton minions against each other until Loki arrives to cut a deal with her. In exchange that Hela lends Loki the Horn of Hela to control her skeleton minions, she can get entertained by watching Hulk and Thor fight each other. Loki ends up tricking Thor and Hulk into heading to Valhalla where Hela makes them fight each other. When Hulk even tried to attack Hela, she temporarily transformed him back into Bruce Banner and then transformed him back into Hulk. After letting Hela send them back to Earth to continue their fight there, Hulk and Thor fight Loki where they take a dive against him. Hela deems Loki the winner of the fight as she has the giant skeleton that Loki formed take Loki back to Valhalla to keep her entertained in his fight against her skeleton minions.

Film

• Hela appears in the animated direct-to-video film Hulk vs. Thor voiced by Janyse Jaud. In the film, Thor takes Loki to Hel to bargain with Hela for the soul of Bruce Banner after Loki separated Banner from the Hulk and kills him in a botched attempt to defeat Thor, not knowing that Banner was the only person that can control the Hulk. Loki tricked Hela into releasing Bruce Banner from Valhalla so he could reunite with the Hulk. She took Loki instead to make up for losing Banner, but states since he's her father he won't stay long.
• In May 2016, Cate Blanchett was confirmed to have been cast as Hela in Thor: Ragnarok.^[57]

Video games

• In Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, it is briefly mentioned by Thor during the Bifrost Bridge briefing that Loki has bargained with Hela to let loose the dead meaning that the heroes also have to face Undead Viking Warriors.
• In Marvel: Avengers Alliance, Hela appears as a boss in Special Operations 24: Land of Fire and Ice, after forming an alliance with Surtur, Ymir, and Malekith.

Motion comics

• Hela appears in the Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers motion comic, voiced by Katharine Chesterton.

References

External links

• Hela at MarvelDirectory.com
• Character Gallery Hela
• Hela at Marvel Database
• Hela at Comic Vine