The Eternals debuted in Jack Kirby's Eternals #1 in 1976, and Sersi, arguably the group's most prominent member, debuted a few months later in Eternals #3. As one of the most powerful characters to ever answer the Avengers' rallying cry, she has the ability to manipulate matter on a molecular level with almost infinite stores of capacity, along with the baked-in Eternal hallmarks like flight and optic blasts.

Sersi is one of the Eternals, a race of beings created by the Celestials as something of a control group during their early manipulations of human DNA. Virtually immortal and thousands of years old, Sersi has been captured in historical literature as the witch who polymorphed the crew of the Homeric Galley and reigned in the malevolence unleashed from Pandora's box. However, modern times have seen her interact with the Marvel Universe more than almost any other Eternal as a semi-regular member of the Avengers.

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How Did Sersi Meet the Avengers?

Sersi Meets the Avengers Issue 246

At the time of Seris' first encounter with the Avengers, the team included Starfox and the Wasp, who was feeling bored after battling Magneto on Otherworld during the Secret Wars crossover event. Vision, who is at this point Chairman of the Avengers, and the Scarlet Witch were in Washington D.C., meeting with the President discussing a potential cabinet position. Hawkeye and Mockingbird were establishing the West Coast team and Thor was somewhere guarding the realms of men, leaving the Wasp feeling despondent in 1984's Avengers #246, by Roger Stern and Al Milgrom.

Starfox suggested that they crash a posh party he heard about while trolling Manhattan watering holes. Sersi was the host of this party, having earned a reputation for elite soireés on the upper West Side whose guest list included movie stars, eccentrics and newly minted member of the Fantastic Four, She-Hulk. The party was interrupted by an Eternal tactical squad known as the Delphans, who were sent to retrieve Sersi against her will and return her to Olympia. Starfox, the Wasp and She-Hulk attempted to fight off the intruders and save Sersi. After helping the Eternals stop the villain Maelstrom from siphoning their collective power away and using it as his own, the Avengers returned to New York with Sersi and the knowledge that Starfox was actually an Eternal as well, making him and Sersi cousins of a sort.

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How Did Sersi Officially Join the Avengers?

Avengers A30 Poster Issue 365

Sersi's amorous personality led her to a variety of romantic interests, including Steve Rogers, though he kept the nature of their relationship as professional as he could manage. After working together over a period of time he eventually made her a formal proposal to join the team after Avengers Mansion was destroyed by the Mandarin in 1990's Avengers #314, by John Byrne and Paul Ryan. Her recruitment coincided just in time for her to save the universe by creating a pocket of unaffected reality while the rest of everything blinked out of existence.

Nebula was fashioning a device to capture limitless energy so she could rule the universe as the heir of Thanos, but a test of its power caused existence to flicker like a dying light bulb. During one prolonged interruption of reality, Sersi summoned her powers to protect herself and everyone in her immediate vicinity from being erased, which left herself, Thor, Captain America, Spider-Man and Jarvis as one of the only two spheres of anything anywhere. The splinter cell of Avengers made a way to Nebula's lab and disabled her machine which restored the universe with no time having elapsed, since space-time had been erased, thus ending her first mission as an official Avenger.

Why Did Sersi Quit the Avengers?

Avengers Sersi Black Knight

Sersi's self exile from the Avengers was the result of a variant saga with astonishing emotional violence. A team of displaced dimensional counterparts calling themselves the Gatherers had all been the survivors of worlds Sersi had allegedly destroyed. Proctor, a variant of Dane Whitman the Black Knight, led this band of would-be Avengers with powers he absorbed from his dimension's Sersi and powers he'd stolen from his dimension's Watcher, Ute, who he kept in captivity. Essentially Proctor was no more than a jilted lover who had stalked and killed Sersi's variants across the multiverse because she romantically rejected him in his timeline. His arrival in the prime timeline meant that his actions now threatened the entire multiverse.

The Eternals came once again to take Sersi against her will, this time from Avengers Mansion. Instead of a hive mind invitation, they were attempting to resolve an encroaching madness that Sersi had succumbed to that was specific to Eternals and whose only remedy was execution at the hands of her brethren. Sersi indicated that she had chosen Dane Whitman the Black Knight as her Gann Josin, an intimate version of the Uni-mind where two soul mates are tethered psychically. Without Whitman's consent, Ikaris initiates the bond to Sersi's delight and Dane's outrage, who must reconcile all of this with his growing feelings for Crystal.

When the final confrontation between the Gatherers and the Avengers took place with all of existence on the line, once again, it was revealed that Proctor had been responsible for accelerating Sersi's descent into madness, and his attacks were causing interdimensional collisions that were tearing apart the fabric of space-time. As Sersi killed Proctor, the dying enslaved Watcher used the last of his power to right the cosmic mischief he'd wrought and create a portal to a dimension where Sersi could be healed but with no guarantee of return. In Avengers #375, by Bob Harris and Steve Epting, she stepped through the portal hand in hand with the Black Knight and her time as a mainstay of the Avengers came to an end.

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