Thanos' Deepest Secret Explains Every Contradiction in His Character

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Warning: Contains minor spoilers for Eternals #10

The Mad TitanThanos is a contradicting character, with different personalities apparently locked in endless conflict. The key to understanding the true nature of Thanos, however, might come from his most recent enemies, the Eternals.

When Thanos was created by Jim Starlin, he was defined by his nihilism and worship for Death: amongst a host of villains who wanted to conquer the world or the universe, he instead wanted only to destroy. Thanos was also a mix of cunning and brute force. After the Infinity Gauntlet saga, however, Starlin decided that Thanos had been a villain long enough. After all, he obtained his goal, gaining ultimate power and offering half the universe as a tribute to his love, Mistress Death. When he did, however, he found out that his quest had been futile: to do what he was asked to do, he had to become so powerful that even Death was no more than his servant, and she could not give him the love that he craved. So Thanos «retired», and even helped the heroes in saving the universe more than once, but such a charismatic villain could not be redeemed for long.

Related: The Original Thanos is Back To Prove Fans Wrong About His True Obsession

After Starlin stepped away from Marvel, Thanos was back to villainy. He was a cosmic serial killer, a psychopath bent on destruction and depravity, but whenever Starlin periodically came back to Marvel, he'd turn Thanos back into a philosopher whose nihilism is balanced by an endless thirst for knowledge. This created some contradictions at first, to the point that Starlin wrote a whole series only to use clones to retcon what other writers had done to Thanos. In the long run, however, Thanos' conflicting traits