The MCU and Marvel Comics depictions of Drax the Destroyer are two wildly different characters with only a few key similarities, with the most obvious being their shared desire to kill Thanos at all costs. However, there is another similarity between them that not many MCU fans caught, as the live-action version of Drax actually fulfilled the cosmic purpose assigned to his comic book counterpart (without even knowing it).
Drax the Destroyer was a being created from the vengeful soul of a father who’d lost his family because of Thanos, as his spirit was inserted into an indestructible body crafted by Kronos himself, turning him into a living weapon designed to do one thing: kill Thanos. In the MCU, the entire resurrection aspect of Drax’s story was thrown out the window, and instead he was a member of a species with inherent physical toughness, though the bit about losing his family because of Thanos was kept. The MCU’s Drax was on a mission of personal vengeance, while Marvel Comics’ Drax was vengeance incarnate. Not only that, but the Drax from the comics took on another title along with his ‘Destroyer’ moniker, as Drax’s rebirth for the sole purpose of eliminating Thanos made him Earth-616’s ‘Avatar of Life’, since Thanos was the ‘Avatar of Death’. While the MCU’s Drax never got that official title, he did live up to it just by being himself.
Drax Is the Avatar of Life
In the six-part miniseries The Thanos Imperative by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Miguel Sepulveda, the idea of the Avatars of Life and Death have never been more significant. The series shows the beings of the Cancerverse breaching through a cosmic rift into Earth-616, and Thanos is the only one who can stop them. The Cancerverse is a universe where Death was killed, and life became twisted and corrupted by the elder gods called the Many-Angled Ones that made the cursed eternal life possible. Thanos quite literally brought Death back into this universe, and she promptly corrected the imbalance. But before that, Drax found himself unable to resist the urge to attack and kill Thanos when the two of them stood in this reality. Since Death did not exist in the Cancerverse, Drax was overwhelmed by the endless life surrounding him. Being the Avatar of Life, he wasn’t able to control himself around Thanos, the Avatar of Death, and the two fought a deadly battle right in the middle of this ongoing, multiversal war.
Drax Is Thanos’ Cosmic Opposite
Drax nearly destroyed two universes by attacking Thanos, and his position as the Avatar of Life was to blame. While something similar happened in MCU’s Avengers: Infinity War, when Drax couldn’t help but attack Thanos on Knowhere, the more significant parallels between Drax’s very prominent position as the Avatar of Life as shown in the Thanos Imperative and his untitled role as such in the MCU is far more positive. Not only was Drax technically successful in seeing to it that Thanos was killed in the MCU (since he was part of the main force against him which resulted in Thanos’ death), but the Guardians of the Galaxy films have heavily focused on the idea of Drax as the ultimate father figure, especially in Vol. 3 with him protecting and safeguarding children.
The idea of the Avatar of Life was never officially introduced in the MCU, and it was certainly never bestowed upon Drax. However, Drax still became a champion of life before and after Thanos was defeated, and he did so just by being himself. Therefore, even if he didn’t know it, Drax the Destroyer fulfilled his cosmic purpose as the Avatar of Life in the MCU.
