Sui-San (Earth-616)

Origins and early years[]

Sui-San, like every Eternal, was created by the Celestials one million years ago.^[5][1] 400,000 years later,^[2] a civil war erupted between two factions of the Eternals: the side of Kronos, who cherished peace and non-interference, and the side of Uranos, wanting to use their powers to dominate the planet. Despite not sharing his genocidal amibitons, Sui-San joined Uranos' side because her lover had done so. In the end, they were all defeated by Kronos' forces and banished from the Earth.^[6][7][2]

When the two dozen exiles landed on the planet Uranus, they conquered the Kree outpost there to make of it their new home.^[7] As the Eternal Uranos built a spaceship to return to Earth, Astron refused to follow his ways any longer and, along with three sympathizers, remained on the planet Uranus,^[8] where they created their own colony.^[9]

Sui-San accompanied Uranos on his way back to Earth, but their spaceship was destroyed by a Kree fleet investigating the invasion of their outpost, leaving only Sui-San, Uranos, and 5 other Eternals alive. The survivors finally decided to abandon their plans for revenge and, instead, created a colony on Saturn's moon of Titan.^[10] At some point, however, the Titanians fell to warlike tendencies once more,^[11] and, as a result, the colony of Titan was ravaged by yet another civil war, thereby causing the death of all its residents, save for Sui-San, who lived in isolation.^[12]

On Earth, the Eternals had been split by another conflict. Kronos' sons A'Lars and Zuras had led opposite sides in a civil war, with A'Lars wishing to expand the Eternal Machine by finding a way for Eternals to breed with each other, whereas Zuras favored maintaining the status quo. After the conflict, A'Lars left Earth and sought out Sui-San to recruit her to his cause. Sui-San agreed, and together they populated the barren moon with clones, constructs and aliens. They developed Titan into a wonder of science and built the super-computer ISAAC to help them run the environment.^[13][14][2]

In time, Sui-San and A'Lars grew to love each other. With the help of the Quantum Bands,^[2] Sui-San later bore A'Lars two children. Sui-San planned for the firstborn child to be named Dione. However, upon laying her eyes on the newborn, who was afflicted with Deviant Syndrome, Sui-San was driven mad and named him Thanos.^[15] She also tried to kill him, sensing the death in his eyes. Sui-San was stopped by A'Lars and she was institutionalized not long afterwards.^[16] Some time later, Sui-San's mental state improved and she and A'lars decided to conceive their second child Eros.^[3]

By the time Thanos was twelve years old,^[15] Sui-San had already been returned home, though she was noticeably unresponsive. Following the disappearance of two of Thanos' classmates by his hand, she suddenly spoke to him alone, and accused him of knowing who he was.^[17] Having killed seventeen people in total, Thanos targeted Sui-San in hopes of finding in her body the key to who he was, both spiritually and physically.^[17]

Exclusion[]

After her death, Sui-San was resurrected in the Exclusion, where she awoke screaming, and told the Machine that is Earth about everything that had happened to her since she had left Earth. The other Eternals, fearing the potential of her bearing another Thanos, decided that she should be imprisoned forever.^[2]

Decades later, after also being killed by Thanos,^[18] A'Lars was resurrected by the Machine and was also to be imprisoned forever. Ikaris informed Sui-San of this and asked her if she wished to speak with him but she refused and stated that it would be better if she and A'Lars had never met or had never existed.^[2]

Sometime later, Thanos was elected Prime Eternal but, unaware of the fact that his parents were true Eternals, did not realize that they had been resurrected on Earth after being killed by him. Once he was informed that they were alive and imprisoned in the Exclusion, Thanos immediately went to his mother's cell and killed her. Thanos then waited for Sui-San to resurrect and killed her again. In all, Thanos killed Sui-San at least five times before visiting Mentor and killing him at least twice. Frustrated by the fact that his parents kept resurrecting, Thanos asked how he could make them gone permanently and Druig informed him that, as long as there was an Earth, his parents would live. Thanos then turned his attention back to the problem of how to fully integrate himself with the Machine and had both Sui-San and Mentor taken to the rack to be tortured. Thanos enjoyed himself by watching them suffer for a while and then tried to persuade them to tell him how he could be made one with the Machine by threatening to kill the ten thousand people living in the town of Little Hollow. Despite his threat, both of his parents refused to cooperate, with Sui-San telling her son that she did not believe in unconditional love but that her hate for him was unconditional. Thanos then pressed the button that initiated the process that was to kill the people of Little Hollow.^[19]

• Many aspects of Sui-San's history were altered depending on the comic:
  • In some tellings, Sui-San's death is caused by Thanos as part of the assault on Titan,^[20][21][22] while in others she is murdered by her son.^[23][24]
  • Sui-San is sometimes presented as caring for her son^[25] while in other tellings she is disgusted by him.^[16]
  • In Daredevil #105, Thanos' mother was presented as Kazantra instead of Sui-San.
• Sui-San's origin has also varied over time:
  • In a story that Eon told to Mar-Vell, Sui-San first appeared as the last survivor of a civilization on Titan that had been destroyed by war, pollution and inner strife. Aside from the fact that Sui-San looked like a pale-skinned human from Earth, nothing about the origin of her people was revealed, and Eon described her rescuer, A'Lars, as having been born on Olympus as a brother of the Olympian god Zeus and a son of the Titan Chronos.^[12]
  • Later, in a series of Untold Tales of the Marvel Universe, the Watcher revealed that Chronos, Uranos and A'Lars had actually been Eternals^[6] and that it had been Uranos, Shastra, Thyrio, and four other unnamed Eternals who had founded that earlier civilization on Titan of which Sui-San would be the sole survivor.^[26] It was later established that Sui-San was a third-generation Titanian Eternal.^[11]
  • As part of Kieron Gillen's relaunch, Sui-San was retconned into being one of the original 100 Eternals and one of the followers of Uranos who had survived the Uranosian War and fled into space to escape the harshness of Eternal justice.^[27][2]
• During a visit to Mephisto's Realm in Deadpool vs. Thanos #3, Thanos and Deadpool were confronted by some of the many people who had died at their hands. Among them was Sui-San who attacked her son but was stopped by Deadpool who cut off her head and her arms with one stroke of his sword. Since the retcon has established that Eternals are resurrected when they die, the idea that Sui-San could have been present in that Hell is now retroactively unlikely. An explanation of who that "Sui-San" actually was may be required.