Man-Thing In The MCU: Putting the Pieces Together

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In 2005, three years before the MCU had its cinematic debut with Iron Man, the straight to TV movie Man-Thing made its presence known; much to the dismay of Marvel Horror fans. The film was a far cry from the mad machinations of the comic book upon which it was based and took plenty of liberties with the source material. Make no mistake, the film is awful. Thankfully, there’s a strong case to suggest that the MCU has set the pieces in motion for its own version of the walking swamp to exist, and I’m going to try and put them together.

First off, the rights are indefinitely at Marvel Studios. Man Thing’s been referenced by name on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., as well as the Nexus of All Realities making an Easter egg appearance in Thor: The Dark World and then there’s the fact that Ellen Brandt, Man-Thing’s traitorous ex-wife, was one of the Extremis soldiers in Iron Man 3.  Brandt however is used simply as an A.I.M. lackey rather than a character worthy of multiple appearances. We don’t get a lot of her back story either. However, she bares a scar on her face, despite Extremis’s regenerative capabilities, she still has a scar.

When we see her being interviewed by Aldrich Killian and when she’s administered the Extremis virus, Ellen is missing an arm and she has the scar too. We know that A.I.M. was recruiting injured veterans to test Extremis out on, so it’s obvious that Brandt was injured while in active duty. That would explain the scarring as well as the loss of limb. However, once she’s given Extremis, though her arm regrows, her flesh remains scarred. Maya Hansen says at the start of the film that Extremis is capable of instantly repairing damaged tissue. Skin is multiple layers of ectodermal tissue according to Google. So why isn’t Ellen’s scarring fixed by Extremis? Well, it could be the case that Ellen received the scar through supernatural means. In the comics, Man-Thing gives Ellen the scar after she betrayed his alter ego, Ted Sallis. He did this because she had attempted to steal a super soldier formula he’d been working on for the U.S. government. Ellen tried to steal it for A.I.M. Now, given what we know about the MCU at this point, there’s actually a case to be made for Man-Thing’s genuine origin having actually happened at some point in the past.

Attempts to recreate the super soldier serum were quite common in the MCU it seems, or at least attempts to find ways of creating super soldiers. Hank Pym’s shrinking formula, the serum used on the other Winter Soldiers, the serum used on Emil Blonsky as well as the experiment that turned Bruce Banner into the Hulk, were all attempts at recreating a kind of super soldier akin to Captain America. Given this, it’s not unreasonable to think that Ted Sallis may have developed a super soldier formula just like in the comics. We don’t know exactly when Maya Hansen started working with Aldrich Killian, but it’s safe to assume it was some time in the early 2000s. Bruce Banner became the Hulk in 2005. Thus it can be drawn that the development of super soldier serums was still an endeavour being undertaken in the mid-2000s.

Chad Davis, the first Extremis soldier to give his life as part of the Mandarin terror attacks, blew up in Rosehill in 2009. Aldrich Killian says he spent five years in the hands of physical therapists when Pepper Potts asks him how he’s in such good shape. If he started this physical recovery in 1999, he would’ve been fully functioning in 2004. I’m inclined to believe he was telling the truth with that line and do not believe Extremis is wholly the reason for his recovery. I believe he did those five years and then started to take Extremis. When Maya Hansen first tells Tony about Extremis she notes that there’s a glitch that needs fixing because it essentially kills the host, and seemingly it still has this glitch to a lesser degree in Iron Man 3. So Extremis would have been unsafe to take in 1999, but in 2004, there would have been at least a few advancements with the help of A.I.M. So when were the recruits brought in?

It’s possible, given the time frame in which Chad Davis underwent his ordeal, that Aldrich Killian started recruitment in response to Tony Stark revealing himself as Iron Man in 2008. This puts it at four years after his full recovery, and at this point, conflicts in the Middle East would have produced plenty of amputee recruits such as Ellen Brandt. This means that in order for Ellen Brandt’s injury to have occurred during her service in the army, she would have had to have received it between 2003 and 2008 (2003 being the start of the Iraq War). Let’s say Brandt spends a year in Iraq, the usual tour of duty, meaning she leaves the army in 2004. In that year, she loses her left arm, but her face isn’t scarred by whatever causes the limb loss. Her scarring isn’t consistent with usual explosion scarring. If it were, the whole left side of her face would be disfigured, especially so if the explosion caused her to lose a limb.

Given that Ellen eventually joins A.I.M. it can be seen that she wants to regain her former life. This desire leads her to Ted Sallis, in the Florida Everglades, who is developing a super soldier serum around the same time as Bruce Banner is developing his. Let’s say she creates a false relationship with him while he perfects his formula, hoping to use it to restore her to her former self. 2005 rolls around and Bruce Banner’s attempt at recreating the super soldier formula fails, turning him into the Hulk. Ted loses faith in his formula, believing there would be no way that he could possibly sell it after what happened to Banner. Angered, Ellen steals the formula and attempts to make a getaway, hoping to find someone else who’d be willing to work on the formula. Ted pursues her and manages to retrieve it but in the chase, ends up falling into a swamp. The swamp just so happens to be the site of the Nexus of All Realities, and the mystic energies mix with the formula turning Ted into the Man-Thing. As he emerges from the swamp, he discovers Ellen, who’s reasonably terrified at the sight of Man-Thing. The creature tries to reassure her everything’s okay with a gentle gesture of affection, but instead burns part of her face. Horrified at what he’s capable of, Man-Thing retreats into the swamp and Ellen departs, joining A.I.M. three years later. She regrows her arm thanks to Extremis, but the mystic mark of the Man-Thing remains on her face.

So why do S.H.I.E.L.D. know about Man-Thing? We know they kept some sort of a file on him because Maria Hill mentions that a senate committee had asked her “Who or what is a ‘Man-Thing’?”. This suggests that S.H.I.E.L.D. do not know Ted Sallis is Man-Thing nor do they know anything about Man-Thing beyond that he exists. Is that entirely true though? After all, this is S.H.I.E.L.D. we’re talking about. Surely they were keeping tabs on Ted because of the work he involved himself with. If that were the case then they’d know that Ted went missing in 2005, and around that time, reports of the Man-Thing may well have started to crop up. Or perhaps they got muddled up with other reports of a giant green monster that would’ve been parading around the United States at the time? The Hulk would’ve been a far more public issue, and so reports that deviated from what was obvious to S.H.I.E.L.D. may well have been shrugged off as false sightings born out of paranoia. Given what Thaddeus Ross says in The Incredible Hulk, it can be assumed that Bruce Banner went across the northern half of America before getting into Canada and from there going to Brazil, possibly due to the incident we’re informed of at the start of the movie with the “Days without incident” counter.

“He is also implicated in the deaths of two scientists, a military officer, an Idaho state trooper, and possibly two Canadian hunters.” – General Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross, The Incredible Hulk

So when reports of a large green creature crop up in Florida, completely out-of-the-way of every other Hulk sighting or encounter, S.H.I.E.L.D. were likely intrigued. This led to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s discovery of the Man-Thing. A few years later, Erik Selvig would end up being influenced by the Tesseract, he himself stating that it showed him more than knowledge, but truth. He subsequently went a bit mad and in that state of mind, he produced some scribbles on a chalk board in Thor: The Dark World.

So the Nexus of All Reality definitely exists in the MCU. Furthermore, given the fact that all of the Nine Realms orbit Midgard, it’s not a drastic leap to assume that it’s here on Earth. Selvig is now working for the Avengers as a consultant scientist, at least that’s where we saw him in Avengers: Age of Ultron, his role may have changed since Captain America: Civil War. Perhaps he’ll bring the Nexus to people’s attention and S.H.I.E.L.D. will finally discover more about the Man-Thing. It may be something we’ll see expanded on more in the next season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. After all, if they’re introducing Ghost Rider as current rumours speculate, maybe we’ll see a few other mystical characters pop up in the show. Or there might be something about Man-Thing in the upcoming Doctor Strange movie. There’s plenty of potential for more mystic Marvel on the way, that’s for sure. So why rule out a staple of Marvel’s mystic tales like Man-Thing?

That’s my speculation on Man-Thing in the MCU. What d’you think of it? Be sure to chip in with your own ideas and point any flaws or plot holes!

And if you liked this theory, be sure to check out my latest, The Infinity Imbalance Theory!