The Untold Truth Of Marvel's Ravonna
When Ravonna Renslayer popped up as a judge on Disney+'s "Loki," that certainly raised the eyebrows of longtime Marvel fans. In the comics, Princess Ravonna Lexus Renslayer was the ultimate catalyst as a character. For much of her existence, she was more of a plot device than a person, as she was a princess who defied Kang the Conqueror but later fell in love with him. When she was struck down trying to save Kang's life, he preserved her in stasis, unable to bring her back even with his advanced technology.
Of course, you can't tell a story about Kang without exploring a host of different time-traveling retcons, alternate futures, cosmic interference, divergent selves, and other temporal shenanigans. Like Schrödinger's cat, Ravonna eventually managed to be both dead and alive only in an actual sense, not a theoretical one. The Ravonna who was alive had her warrior's spirit rekindled, using various incarnations of the Avengers against Kang just as he had used Earth's Mightiest Heroes in his own schemes. It's complicated, in other words — so now that she's made her MCU debut, let's take a look at Ravonna's past, present, and possible futures.
Defying a conqueror
When Ravonna was introduced, she gave Kang a lot of sass. She and her father were still figurehead rulers of a kingdom that Kang gave nominal freedom in the 40th century, and he enjoyed taunting them about this fact. When Kang alluded to marriage, she replied, "I'd rather die!" Reflecting her own snooty bearing, she revealed that the idea of marrying a commoner like Kang instead of someone of noble bearing was unthinkable.
Later, after Kang started messing with the Avengers, Ravonna walked into his control room and started taunting him, helping the Avengers by bringing Captain America to the future. After Kang beat Captain America and Quicksilver, he demanded her hand in marriage. When she pointed out that Hawkeye and the Scarlet Witch were still around, he ignored her and demanded an answer, to which she replied, "No one commands a princess!" No wonder Kang was in love with her.
Kang led his army to an overwhelming victory over Ravonna's kingdom and the Avengers. When he demanded a royal wedding, one of his generals reminded him of their code: murdering every conquered ruler to prevent future uprisings. When Kang wanted to break his own rule, his general Baltag attempted a coup. Kang responded by freeing the Avengers and crushing Baltag. As Kang sent his unlikely allies home, Baltag made one last attempt to kill him, but Ravonna jumped in the way of the blast, saving Kang's life and expressing her love for him ... too late.
Ravonna suspended
Sometimes you're the center of the big event, and sometimes you're stuck in a tube, comatose. This is the case with Ravonna's next appearance, when she became the plot device of a big adventure with the Avengers. Kang was offered temporary power over life and death by the Grandmaster, one of the Elders of the Universe (making his first appearance). All Kang had to do was defeat him in the Game of the Galaxies, which no one had ever done. If Kang lost, the Earth would be consigned to total oblivion. If he won, he got the power. The Avengers agreed to help him in order to save the Earth.
This was mostly an excuse for the Avengers to fight a takeoff of the Justice League of America called the Squadron Sinister, as well as fighting Captain America, the Sub-Mariner, and the original Human Torch in 1941 occupied Paris. Thanks to a variety of shenanigans involving the Black Knight accidentally interfering with one of the contests, Kang achieved a draw in the first match but won the second one. As a result, the Grandmaster gave him power over life or death — but not both.
The Avengers, at one point, overheard Kang planning to make them his eternal slaves. This ended up being unfortunate, because just as Kang was going to revive Ravonna, the Avengers burst in and attacked. Annoyed, Kang chose power over death — and was on the verge of killing the Avengers before the Black Knight took him down. So much for the love of his life.
Queen of limbo
The version of Kang who encountered the Grandmaster eventually died in a fight with Thor. However — and this is where things get sticky — every time Kang moved through time, he created a divergent reality. Many of the Kangs who did this got themselves killed. A smarter Kang wound up in Limbo, the dimension outside of time ruled by Immortus.
Immortus was the future version of Kang after he decided to give up conquering. Upon finding Immortus' dead body in Limbo, Kang started messing with Immortus' equipment and found a way to pluck Ravonna from the timestream seconds before she was killed. Thus revived, Ravonna stood by his side as Queen of Limbo. Kang then decided to put a stop to the other Kangs when he realized that if he killed them in Limbo, they wouldn't create a divergence. He recruited two Kangs to help him until he was ready to kill them, too.
As per usual, Kang found it necessary to use the Avengers in one of his nutty schemes. It all seemed to be going his way, but at a crucial moment, one of his stasis rays was overloaded — and although Ravonna noticed it before Kang, she chose not to tell him. Why? Because Immortus wasn't actually dead and was behind it all along, with Ravonna as his willing accomplice. She preferred the sensitive Immortus to the reckless conqueror, and the last Kang was driven insane into Limbo.
Playing Nebula
Buckle up, because things area bout to get even more complicated.
One Ravonna was living in Limbo with Kang. However, after the Grandmaster lost to Kang, the sulking Elder secretly plucked the comatose Ravonna out of her tube and replaced her with a double. He revived the original Ravonna, told her that Kang chose to kill the Avengers instead of saving her, and set her down the path of vengeance.
She learned of an organization called the Council of Cross-Time Kangs, comprised of every being who ever managed to kill Kang and take his place in every timeline. She joined it and learned of a powerful weapon located in a time bubble. As part of the council, she seduced, murdered, and otherwise schemed her way into gaining all sorts of knowledge & equipment, and she put a plan into place.
Like Kang, she used the Avengers as her pawns. Disguising herself as Nebula, the space-pirate who claimed to be related to Thanos, she seduced the pompous Avenger Dr. Druid in dreams and visions. Eventually, she used her tech to make the Avengers her mind-slaves and tried to pierce the time-bubble in a souped-up Quinjet. She was opposed by several Kangs from the council, who managed to free the Avengers from her mental domination. She-Hulk nearly tore Ravonna to shreds, which made her attempt to teleport out backfire. She and Dr. Druid were cast out of the Quinjet, apparently lost to time.
Nullified
Part of the deal with the Council of Cross-Time Kangs is that they knew a vessel would eventually penetrate the time bubble, and that Thor would be on it. Ravonna knew this too, and when she saw that the Fantastic Four were about to try to penetrate the bubble, she used her helpless love slave Dr. Druid to help her take over Johnny Storm's body. More Kangs followed them in, but Ravonna murdered one of them using the Human Torch's powers. Understandably, this made Reed Richards suspicious.
The explorers learned that the Galactus of the near future was at the heart of the time bubble, with a device that was causing him to devour not just planets, but the entire universe. They teamed with Gladiator of the Imperial Guard in an effort to destroy the world-eater, but it didn't work. Meanwhile, Ravonna/Johnny was eyeing Gladiator as a potential future slave/consort.
The explorers learned that the renegade Dreaming Celestial on Earth had turned Galactus into a tool of vengeance against the other Celestials. In fighting it, it appeared that Johnny and Sue Storm died. In fact, Sue saved Johnny, but Ravonna took over Sue's body. After the team tricked the Celestial into being absorbed by Galactus, they realized what Galactus had been using to devour the universe: the fabled Ultimate Nullifier. When they obtained it, Ravonna promptly tried to steal it, but a suspicious Reed had it booby-trapped, causing her to lose control over Sue's body and fall back into the timestream.
Undone by Dr. Druid
When Ravonna was thrown back into the timestream after losing control of the Ultimate Nullifier, she was reunited with Dr. Druid. For an unknown period of time, they were together in a perfect utopia they had created together in their minds, but they had lost all of their memories. Piece by piece, they started to recover them, as Druid suggested they try to merge minds. Ravonna recalled Druid's past, as a doctor who was given mental powers by a mysterious lama near Tibet in 1961. Druid recalled some of Ravonna's past, as a murderous manipulator that he fell in love with.
Always power-hungry, Ravonna threw herself into the raw flow of the timestream and Druid went after her. They appeared in a time-bubble in 1961, and Ravonna had gained the powers of anti-time. She could speed up or reverse the effects of time on anything or anyone, aging them or devolving them to their original states. She cast out Druid, who then relived his origin, only to learn that the lama was really the Ancient One, and that Druid had gained his powers as a sort of harbinger of Doctor Strange. The Ancient One sensed him going back in time and brought him to 1961 once again.
Druid called upon the three Celtic war goddesses, who split his persona in three: young, middle-aged, and old. They were able to turn Ravonna's power on herself, flinging her back into the timestream once again.
Chronopolis
Ravonna was nothing if not persistent. She got out of the timestream and learned of Kang's ultimate achievement: a time-spanning city called Chronopolis, with small sections in dozens of different time periods and a central citadel allowing him total control of his empire. Kang's larger game emerged: It was revealed that he was responsible for the technological revolution of the 20th century and kicking off the heroic age.
For Kang, the Avengers and Ravonna were diversions. So when Ravonna followed the Avengers and Fantastic Four into Chronopolis, it was because Kang wanted to capture the woman who had killed so many Kangs once and for all. He was astonished to find that the woman who had taken on the guise of Nebula (among others) was actually Ravonna, and a bloodthirsty one to boot!
He told her that he'd brought dozens of different Ravonnas back from the past, but got bored with them quickly. However, this vengeance-crazed, power-seeking Ravonna was actually worth his time. Renaming herself Terminatrix, she fought Kang to the death. During the course of the battle, Thor's hammer almost (accidentally) killed Ravonna, but Kang pushed her out of the way and took the hit, just as Ravonna had once done for him. Ravonna was left to run Kang's empire as she tried to bring him back to life.
Fear the Revelation
Ravonna pretended to be Kang after he was incapacitated. She ran his empire and learned deep time secrets. For example, Kang had to deal with other time-spanning entities, like the Time Variance Authority, the Congress of Realities, and a time-devouring creature called Alioth. Meanwhile, Revelation, yet another armored woman from the future, convinced War Machine, Thunderstrike, and U.S. Agent to take out Ravonna. She responded by summoning Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America. While they were all fighting each other, Ravonna slipped off to the year 9999 to confront Revelation.
After nearly getting killed by Revelation's son Marcus, Ravonna was chosen among a group of other Ravonna alternates (including one that looked like the Grandmaster) to help end the lives of the ancient Immortus and Ravonna of the far future. When Revelation finally revealed herself to Ravonna, it naturally turned out that she was yet another alternate self of Ravonna's from the future, who ruled the time period just after Kang's. Revelation finally dropped all pretenses and told Ravonna why she was there: she had to revive Kang so he could stop Alioth. She couldn't figure out how he did it from the far future. Ravonna agreed and took back a formula that revived him.
Using the Avengers as pawns, Kang used the energies of the Kang Council members that Alioth killed to animate the creature called Tempus, holding Alioth at bay forever. In one reality, Ravonna joined with Kang to rule together. In the main Marvel reality, she killed him and revived him later.
Ravonna forever
Just as there are a bunch of different Kangs and a bunch of different Immortuses, so too there are there a number of different Ravonnas. One Ravonna ended up with Immortus, and they lived happily ever after. This was the gentle but feisty soul that Kang initially fell in love with, and they lived until the Terminatrix killed both of them (by their request) in the far future. They frequently peeked in on the lives of their alternates, snootily judging their violent and primitive ways.
The Ravonna who became Terminatrix revived Kang, then killed him, then revived him again. In this way, she avoided directly becoming Revelation, as her history with Kang was slightly different. They spent many years together, before Kang got older and bored. He left his empire to Ravonna, went to Egypt, and returned after he rejected the idea of fulfilling his destiny to become Immortus. He and the Avengers battled Immortus together in the Destiny War, but Ravonna was killed in Immortus' attack on Chronopolis.
The Ravonna who became Revelation continued to rule her realm with her version of Kang and their son. The Kang from the main timeline dealt with her potential threat by setting another set of his chronal enemies, the Delubric Consortium, against her. More Ravonnas will appear to wreak havoc in time.
The Kang Dynasty
On the animated series "Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes," Ravonna was introduced in the episode titled "Meet Captain America." Kang's rationale for conquering the 21st century on the show was explained very differently than in the comics. While he ruled the 40th century, a time disruption destroyed Earth and everyone on it. As he tried desperately to warp his fleet back in time before it happened, Princess Ravonna was caught up in a time jolt and left hovering between life and death in a tube (it's always a tube!). Kang narrowed the reason for his timeline's destruction to one factor: Captain America being revived in the 21st century.
In "The Kang Dynasty" episode, the Avengers took the battle to Kang in his flagship Damocles Base. Iron Man was about to warp them all back to the future before the Wasp stopped him. She saw Ravonna in the tube and realized that if she was pushed forward in time, she'd die. The Avengers vowed to help Kang save Ravonna's life and imprisoned him. While it was never revealed whether Hank Pym and Reed Richards were able to revive her, Kang eventually escaped, losing to the Avengers and getting pushed back to his timeline.
Here comes the judge
Ravonna is introduced on "Loki" as a judge working for the Time Variance Authority. Her job is to dole out punishments for those who mess with the Sacred Timeline. As such, she works directly for the Time Keepers, the bosses of the TVA and the beings who established the timeline in the first place. She works frequently with Mobius T. Mobius, the agent who enlists Loki to capture an even more murderous version of himself.
It remains to be seen if what, if any, connection this Ravonna will have to the Kang the Conqueror who's set to make his MCU debut in the film "Ant Man and The Wasp: Quantumania." Considering that in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Quantum Realm is one way to travel through time, it wouldn't be surprising to see Scott Lang and Hope Van Dyne encounter Kang somewhere along the way in their quantum travels. Will Kang be friend or foe? Will he be a renegade TVA agent? Will he be Ravonna's ex? Time will tell...