Anyone who saw Ravonna Renslayer (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) as just another TVA employee was startled in the last few episodes of Loki.
She decided to erase everyone who spread that TVA employees are variants taken from their timelines, such as Agent Mobius (Owen Wilson) himself. In other words, there is much more to Gugu Mbatha-Raw’s character than an authority figure opposed to Loki’s (Tom Hiddleston) schemes.
In a recent interview, the actress revealed that Loki would introduce her character’s story, who may have an even more significant role in Phase 4. The reason is not hard to imagine. After all, in the comics, she is the Kang the Conqueror’s main love interest, a character who has already been confirmed in the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania movie.
If you watched Loki and thought that Ravonna Renslayer was just a supporting actress without much importance, you are sorely mistaken. But rest assured: I have prepared this article explaining the Ravonna Renslayer’s origin in the comics and why she has everything to be one of the series’s main characters – and of Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)!
Who is Ravonna Renslayer in the Comics?
Created by Stan Lee and Don Heck in the 1960s, Ravonna Renslayer is a character from the future, more precisely from the XL century. However, it is important to notice that she is not from Earth-616, where most of the publisher’s titles are located, but from Earth-6311. In other words, she is, in essence, from an alternate timeline.
The most interesting fact about her trajectory in the comics is how she is closely intertwined with the villain Kang the Conqueror. Daughter of the king of Eximietatius, Ravonna was very loyal to her people and strongly opposed the attempts of Kang and his army to dominate the kingdom. However, as soon as he took command of the place, she began to hold a deep hatred for the villain. He, in turn, immediately fell in love and proposed to her.
As expected, her response was negative — and he tried to convince her several times. Finally, on one occasion, he took her to see him fighting the Avengers on Earth-616, but he couldn’t even get a “yes” from the princess. Eventually, the villain proved his worth, and she responded to his love. In the battle that united Ravonna, Kang, and the Avengers against Baltag in Avengers #24, she even sacrifices herself to save the conqueror. Who would have thought it, right?
Ravonna and Kang didn’t exactly live a happily ever after. In fact, over years of traveling through time to save each other, their relationship fluctuated wildly between love and hate. In one of the stories, she even kills him once and resurrects him only to kill him again.
Her own transformation into Terminatrix happens in her desire to get revenge for her lover’s betrayal — or, better, one of his versions. It is also during this phase that she adopts a super-advanced armor full of equipment.
Ravonna Renslayer Powers and Abilities
In the comics, Ravonna is skilled in hand-to-hand combat, very intelligent, and an expert in advanced technology. The character has no powers, but her equipment does. All of her gifts are derived directly from her contact with futuristic technology. Like Kang, she can “summon” weapons from any time period and use them at will as needed.
She possessed special armor when she became Terminatrix, made of a material of unknown origin that granted her several unique abilities. Her gear includes a device capable of changing shape according to her demands (Tom Hiddleston’s character does the same but with magic) and a tool that projects her into other people’s dreams. The combination can be hazardous and capable of causing a lot of confusion for Loki and the ATV.
Ravonna is also known for her training in various martial arts styles, especially futuristic 40th Century arts. With this knowledge, she has become a more than effective fighter, always using her enemies’ strength against them.
Ravonna in Loki TV Series
The Loki‘s last episode brought many answers to the series’ mysteries – including the identity of Marvel’s next great villain – but it also left a few loose ends. Such is the case with the fate of Ravonna Renslayer, who left the Temporal Variance Authority (TVA) without saying where to, much less why.
Michael Waldron, the series’ scriptwriter, has come to the public to explain what happened and what we can expect for the already announced second season, adding more details about the change we have seen in the character.
According to him, the judge began the story as someone very much stuck in the order established by the TVA and suddenly saw everything she believed in began to crumble – and it is from that point she goes into desperation and does previously unthinkable things.
Most interestingly, Waldron points out that despite all the revelations, Renslayer still believes that the TVA is correct and that she is on the right side of the fight. So, now the judge wants to find out who was manipulating the agency all this time, and this journey is what we should see in Loki’s second season.
An important detail comes from Miss Minutes. Ravonna wanted the jolly little avatar to dig up all the files on the formation of TVA, but after the wheel stopped turning, the judge was left to look at the wrong files. When confronted, Miss Minutes replies, “he thinks this will be more useful.”
The “he” in question must surely be He Who Remains, suggesting that Ravonna Renslayer was his contingency plan if the Lokis made the wrong choice. Whatever the character played by Jonathan Majors told Miss Minutes to show Ravonna could have put her on the path to saving the timeline from Kang the Conqueror.
We still don’t know where she went or what information Miss Minutes provided her with. Waldron made it clear that Ravonna Renslayer is someone who fears the multiverse and that it will be from this and the newly established chaos in the Timeline that we will meet her again in future episodes.
Does this mean that the character has gone on her own journey pursuing He Who Remains, the real person responsible for the TVA and one of the variants of the villain Kang the Conqueror? And what to expect from this?
As we saw in the last episode, the great mind behind the agency ended up killed by Sylvie, which leads us to believe that Ravonna’s search for answers across this multiverse should lead her to some other version of Kang – and this encounter is what should define her future.
In the comics, Ravonna Renslayer and Kang have a very close love-hate relationship. Ravonna was initially presented as someone whose world had been taken over by the Temporal Despot and wished to kill him. However, love and hate go together, and she ends up having a relationship with him in some stories.
And as much as the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has created a somewhat different basis than what we see in the comics, it is still possible to replicate this relationship in the series. Such as the judge initially confronting a Kang variant and, from there, allying herself with him in an attempt to bring order to the multiverse.
In any case, all of this is merely speculation. We will have to wait a while longer to find out what is to come. Unfortunately, Marvel Studios has not yet predicted when we can expect Loki’s second season. A lot can change as films like Doctor Strange in the Madness Multiverse and series like What If…? were released.
