!SPOILERS ALERT!
If you love watching movies and series, then you must be familiar with the death of your favorite characters, right?
As sad as it is, we must come to terms with the fact that sometimes their death is significant for the story to go forward.
But nothing is more heartbreaking than seeing your favorite superhero die right in front of your screens, and nobody knows this sorrow more than the fans of the Marvel Universe.
Over the years, not only villains but some of the most powerful superheroes have also met their ends, be it in the comics or the cinematic universe of Marvel.
Even with its recent release, The Eternals, Marvel couldn’t just hold back from killing yet another powerful hero and not your ordinary superhero, but the leader of the Eternals-Ajak, who Salma Hayek portrayed.
That’s right! one of the most powerful entities on the planet, the leader of the Eternals, Ajak, is dead.
It is very understandable to be shocked; we were too, when we first learned about it. But aren’t you curious if she really is dead or not and how such a powerful being even died?
Well, that is exactly what were are going to look into in this article. So, without further ado, let’s get right into it, shall we?
But first, if you have forgotten about her, let us remind you once again who she was.
Who was Ajak?
Ajak was the Prime Eternal, meaning she was the group’s leader. She was the wise and spiritual leader of the Eternals, who were genetically engineered individuals.
Not only she led the group, but she also guided them in times of need and showed them the right way. Since she was the leader of the group, she was mighty.
Along with the powers to directly communicate with the Celestials, Ajak was an extremely powerful combatant. An incredible thinker, Ajak could use her Cosmic Energy to heal humans and Eternals from injuries and illness.
So overall, not only was she a great leader, but she also possessed some great combat skills along with her healing abilities.
Ajak first appeared in The Eternals #2 (Aug. 1976), where Ajak and his men were awakened from slumber by fellow Eternal Ikaris just in time to greet the Fourth Host of the Celestials. Yes, Ajak was first a female, but later on, when she was revived and turned into a male, and to match the cinematic Ajak, they finalized Ajak’s gender to be a female.
Is Ajak really dead?
If you have watched the new Eternals movie, chances are you probably know the answer to this and if you haven’t, we are sorry to break it to you, but Ajak is dead and the Deviant Kro was the one to finish her off.
One of the most highly anticipated movies, the Eternals, just had to kill off the prominent leader of the universe’s most elite group.
The movie showed just how great the Prime Eternal, Ajak was and showed what a true leader was through her.
She was a great leader as she not only took the Eternals under her care, but the humans under her were protected with the utmost care from her.
This just indicated just how responsible and caring she was. After being on Earth for over seven thousand years, Ajak finally took her last breath, still fighting for the protection of her loved ones, which just showed how sincere she was toward her duty as the leader of them all.
Fans were shocked by her death. She was such a great and strong figure, and with that, she was the first to die among the Eternals, which didn’t sit well with the fans.
How did she die?
To know how Ajak died, we must get back to the earlier parts of the movie; the part where Sersi and Sprite were in London.
During their time in London, a Deviant attacked both of them. The Deviant was amazingly very strong and gave a hard time for the strong Eternals to defeat it.
When they were about to be defeated by the Deviant, Ikaris arrived just in time to save them both from the mighty creature. Just as they were fleeing, they noticed something that the Deviant was able to heal itself, which was not a usual power for them to use.
Furthermore, because the Deviant healed itself, something only Ajak could do, it raised some questions not only among the Eternals but also the fans.
After their fight with the Deviant, Sersi along with Ikaris and Sprite, decided to let their leader, Ajak, know about the encounter they just had and hoped that she knew why the Deviant was able to have a healing ability that was similar to hers.
Even though they had annihilated all the Deviants five hundred years ago, their reappearance caused them to seek help from their leader. So, the three of them went to Ajak’s home in the countryside of South Dakota, only to find that their leader was dead.
Shocked by such a discovery, their initial thought was that the Deviant killed their leader. They suspected the Deviant that had attacked them in London as such a strong individual as their leader could only be killed by a powerful foe.
Their suspicion was understandable as the Deviant in London was not only strong but also had the powers of Ajak because it stole them from her.
It turned out the Deviant that they encountered in London and the one behind Ajak’s death was none other than Kro, the General of the Deviants.
As shocking as her death might seem, it was very brutal and fans were thrown off by the mysteries surrounding her death. Mysteries you ask? Well, Ajak was not really killed by Kro but it was someone else.
Curious to know who it was, we suggest you keep reading the article as it is going to get very interesting and will surely blow your minds.
Who killed Ajak?
After they discover their leader’s death, they were left heartbroken as she is the one who guides and leads them. As sad as they were to know that their leader was no longer with them, it was time for them to elect a new leader.
After Ajak’s death, Sersi was chosen to take on the Prime Eternal position and become the Eternals’ new leader. With the new duty as the leader, Sersi learned about Arishem’s original plan.
She learned all about the Eternals’ origins and their purpose to destroy all the Deviants so that the population of the Earth could grow.
Not only her, but the rest of the Eternals also came to know about Arishem’s main reason for saving the Earth’s population. The real reason why Arishem need the human to grow was so that he could put the Emergence of Tiamut into action.
For the birth of the Celestial, it needed to feed on the lifeforce of the life on the planet. Since the Deviants evolved and began hunting the humans, the lifeforce required for the Celestial was depleting, so Arishem sent the Eternals to eradicate them and help with the birth of the Tiamat.
However, when the Eternals discovered how the emergence would destroy the entire planet, they joined forces to stop it from happening.
As the movie developed, we saw that the real reason behind Ajak was not Kro. Although it might have been Kro who attacked her and killed her, Ikaris was responsible for “pushing” her to her death.
When the truth confronted the Eternals, they also discovered that Ikaris had betrayed them and was working for Arishem.
Ikaris went to his fellow Eternals and told them he had long known about the Emergence centuries earlier when Ajak told him about it. Also, he confessed to killing Ajak as he was angered by the fact that she came to love the human race and was against Arishem’s plan.
Since Ikaris was loyal to Arishem, he decided to take the matter into his own hand. He knew how much Ajak trusted him, and using it against her, Ikaris brought her to a frozen lake where there were few Deviants.
Just when he finished with his little chat, he confessed to Ajak his wishes to follow Arishem’s plan and pushed Ajak into the frozen lake.
Shocked by such betrayal from who she considered more than family, Ajak tried to fight off the Deviants. Although she was one of the strongest Eternals, she was not a combat-oriented fighter.
However, she was able to ward off the Deviants for a while by using a firearm. The firearm didn’t last very long as the Deviants began to attack her.
She could have easily defended herself using her healing abilities to heal herself and tried to escape. Still, before she could even do anything, the powerful Deviant, Kro, with its strong tentacles, stabbed her and began to absorb her powers.
As it had trapped her in its tentacles, she was not able to do anything as the Deviant kept sucking her powers out of her. After taking her powers, the Deviant left the scene leaving the lifeless body of Ajak out in the frozen lake.
Taking his leader’s cold body, Ikaris returned to her house and left her body there. This was before Sersi and Sprite were attacked by the same Deviant and decided to meet up with Ajak, only to find her dead in her home.
So, although it was still a Deviant that pierced the former Prime Eternal to death, the one that was behind all this was Ikaris, her friend, who decided to betray her.
Did she die in the comics too?
Many of you might wonder if she is dead in the movies. Is she dead in the comics version too?
The answer is, Yes. She is dead in the comic too.
In the comics, she or rather he was the member of the Polar Eternals, a band of the near-immortal Eternals whose outpost lay within the Ural mountains of Russia.
It was believed that the earliest interaction Ajak had with the humans was around 2500 BC in Babylon when he was among the Eternals, who clashed with the Deviants and their general, Warlord Kro.
In the 2008 “Secret Invasion“ storyline, Ajak became a gardener in San Franciso and joined the God Squad led by Hercules to battle the Skrull Gods.
So to learn more about the Celestials and the Skrulls and beat Makkari, Ajak joined Hercules. However, Ajak believed Hercules was not a good leader, so he took charge of the God Squad.
Later, Ajak revived again and, along with other Eternals, continued their mission of awakening other Eternals who didn’t remember who they were and living human lives.
Nevertheless, when countless bodies of Celestials rained down on the Earth to mark the arrival of the Dark Celestials, the Eternals learned about the dark truth behind their true purpose.
When Ajak learned that they were created to cultivate humankind since the First Host of Celestials allowed humanity to thrive because they knew that the human’s genetic makeup was perfect as the antibodies against the Horde.
Learning such dark truth, the Eternals went mad. In such madness, they killed each other, and some even committed suicide, including Ajak.
Will she come back to life?
Now, of course, she was an Eternal, which gave her the power of immortality. If she had been killed, she could have quickly reincarnated with her memories of the past life wholly erased.
However, that was not the case this time. She was the first Eternal to die in the movies. Initially thought that the Deviant Kro killed her, it was later revealed that the mastermind behind her death was Ikaris, her fellow Eternal.
This time, when she was killed by the deviant, it not only pierced her with its tentacles but also sucked her powers and stole them.
Since all her powers are stolen, Ajak won’t be able to come back to life. Even in the comics, it is not clear whether Ajak returns to life.
So, for now, we must say that Ajak won’t be making a comeback anytime soon. Unless the directors resurrect her from the dead or bring her back from some unheard planets, I mean- it’s a Marvel, nobody knows what might happen. So, all we can do is wait for the new Eternals movie to drop and hopefully, get Ajak back.
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