Ego is gone! I wear his shell like the skin of a snake! Know me— For I am Dormammu! He who comes from the Outer Dark! He who has waited eternities to possess your frail universe! Look upon my visage and know fear! Hear my words in your soul and feel it crumble! I scream blood and murder at your weak stars! And my screams are the armies of Hell!
— Dormammu, Guardians of the Galaxy #16
The Last Annihilation is a 2021 Marvel Comics Bat Family Crossover involving Guardians of the Galaxy (2020) and S.W.O.R.D. (2020), as well as other Marvel cosmic characters. It is primarily written by Al Ewing, with a Wiccan & Hulking one-shot written by Anthony Oliveira and a Wakanda one-shot written by Evan Narcisse.
Ego the Living Planet has been transformed — Ego is no more. Now, there is only Dormammu. Dormammu the Dread One, the Eater of Souls, Lord of the Dark Dimension, Keeper of the Mindless Ones. And now he's invading this galaxy with an army of Mindless Ones of all shapes and sizes. It's a Mindless War, the likes of which the galaxy has never seen before.
With five different planets all under attack at once, the Guardians, the Kree/Skrull Alliance, and S.W.O.R.D are all pushed to their limits. The war of all wars is here. THE LAST ANNIHILATION has begun.
The Last Annihilation issues
- Guardians of the Galaxy (2020) #16
- S.W.O.R.D. (2020) #7
- Guardians of the Galaxy #17
- Cable: Reloaded #1
- The Last Annihilation: Wiccan & Hulkling #1
- The Last Annihilation: Wakanda #1
- Guardians of the Galaxy #18
Tropes in The Last Annihilation:
- All According to Plan: At the end of everything, Dormammu has been beaten, Doom has absorbed quite a lot more of his power than he told the Guardians, and Sister Talonis has gained a bigger prize than a small-time cult, which she plans to use to destroy the Kree-Skrull alliance... just as she and Doom planned.
- Artificial Limbs: Cable's typical mechanical arm gets wrecked on his arrival at Breakworld. Fortunately, he's got a hard-light backup at the ready.
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever:
- Mindless Ones don't just come in one size now. A couple of Mindless Ones standing fifty feet tall start attacking Throneworld II and end up killing Captain Glory.
- Dormammu manages to recreate the body Ego had when Galactus boosted his power to become Ego-Prime. That's a body proportional to a head the size of a planet.
- Badass Boast: Dormammu has a great one when he emerges from Ego. It's the page quote.
- Beneath the Mask: Cable's one-shot has him being his typical gruff self. On the outside. His internal monologue shows that he's actually uncertain about whether anyone will survive what's going on, not trusting Brand entirely, and far more proud of the new X-Terminators than he's letting on.
- BFG: Brand and Rocket's plan to deal with Dormammu. Step 1: Build an Impossibly Huge Gun. Step 2: Find ammunition. Step 3: Shoot Dormammu in the face with it.
- Big Bad: Dormammu.
- Big Damn Heroes: In S.W.O.R.D. #7, Abigail Brand and S.W.O.R.D. show up just in the nick of time to save Emperor Hulkling. Because Brand was monitoring the situation with nano-cameras and made sure to arrive just in the nick of time.
- Blood Knight: Khora of the Burning Heart, of S.W.O.R.D.'s teleport division. Abigail has to tell her she can't stay and fight an endless host of Mindless Ones, even though Khora really wants to.
- The Bus Came Back:
- The X-Terminators haven't been a team since the end of their miniseries in the 90's.
- Breakworld also reappears.
- Continuity Nod:
- Cable: Reloaded reveals Breakworld's had a change of management since the last time the X-Men were there. Not X-Force dryly remark that they probably got bored waiting for Colossus to come back.
- Boom-Boom originally wants to call their team X-Force, before Wiz Kid reminds her that its taken by X-Force (2019), naming them X-Terminators instead.
- Demonic Possession: Dormammu takes over Ego the Living Planet. And the entire Chitauri species.
- Didn't See That Coming: Rocket assumes Cable is going to make some sort of comment about him being a raccoon (or raccoon-like individual). He's thrown when Cable salutes him instead.
- Do Wrong, Right: Cable scolds Khora for throwing a knife into a Breakworlder's face not because she has just killed someone, but because she's scuppered the element of surprise.
- Faceship: A peculiar variation in that the Mindless Ones have dropships that appear to be their single visor-eyed heads blown up with rocket thrusters melded to them.
- From Bad to Worse: The situation on Throneworld II gets bad. Really, really bad. First there's waves of Mindless Ones attacking, so bad that Hulkling has Captain Glory brought in. Then the Mindless Ones kill one another to catch him in the crossfire. Then Hulkling's space sword gets smashed to pieces.
- Future Badass: In the future, Rocket Raccoon is regarded as one of the greatest tacticians of all time.
- Godzilla Threshold: The threat of The Last Annihilation is enough for Hulkling to decide it's time to let Captain Glory out of jail. Unfortunately, he doesn't last long.
- Grand Finale: For Ewing's Guardians of the Galaxy run.
- Irony: During the Hellfire Gala, T'Challa refuses to accept the new element Mysterium and the Galactic Empire of Wakanda is the only galactic power to do so. It ends up being the only thing to save the Shi'ar worlds from the Mindless Ones after using vibranium failed.
- The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Cable, a man who has been up and down the timeline and is a genuine badass in his own right, is amazed to be in the same room as Rocket Raccoon. He even salutes him.
- Leeroy Jenkins: Khora attacks the Breakworlders who confront them before they have a chance to do anything, without waiting for Cable or anyone else first.
- Let's Split Up, Gang!: Hulkling and Wiccan are fighting the Mindless Ones on Throneworld II when they hear that the Mindless Ones are also attacking Skrullos. Even though they don't want to split up, Hulkling still sends Wiccan off to fight on Skrullos so that his people know he doesn't favor one race over the other.
- Literal Metaphor: Cable is annoyed that Abigail has him twiddling his thumbs, he tells her while he's welding his thumb back on his mechanical arm.
- Loophole Abuse: Because S.W.O.R.D. can't get anyone through the shields of Breakworld, Cable drops down from space using his shield arm to protect himself, then using a Krakoan portal to bring in team members.
- Morality Chain: Cannonball to Cable. Sam's general goodness motivates Cable to be slightly less 90s than usual.
- Nepotism: Cable's one-shot has him note Brand only gave Kid Cable the job of head of S.W.O.R.D. security as a way of keeping the Summers family on-side.
- Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Dormammu projects an aspect of himself to Billy while he's failing attempts to magically repair Teddy's sword, so he can to taunt and threaten him. Unfortunately for him, when he grabs Billy, it brings him in range to have his flames directly channeled to repair the sword immediately. Then Billy switches places with Teddy so he can wield the Anti-Magic sword directly against Dormammu.
- Once More, with Clarity: S.W.O.R.D. (2020) issue 7 revisits the scene from the end of Empyre showing a beaten Hulkling surrounded by corpses, before Abigail Brand shows up. Here, it's her showing up just after the Mindless Ones have wrecked the joint to get Teddy to safety.
- Rogues' Gallery Transplant: Dormammu usually menaces Doctor Strange or his Defenders team, so suddenly becoming a cosmic threat without Strange's involvement is surprising.
- Sequel Hook: After everything's over, Doom vows that with the power he's stolen from Dormammu, he plans to get a "reckoning".
- Shout-Out: Wiz Kid ends up quoting Die Hard after transforming a Humongous Mecha into an equally-large BFG:"Now I have a planet-sized super-gun. Ho, ho, ho."
- Shut Up, Hannibal!: Doom tries to persuade Storm into taking a paternalistic deal with Latveria to provide aid and guidance for the apparent imbalance to the universe Krakoa set off by manufacturing Mysterium. Storm's response is a lightning bolt shattering their dining table, sternly telling him that the meal is over and that he should leave.
- Space Fantasy: The event is an invasion of the universe by the demonic Dormammu, using an army of magical golems. His incursion into reality was opened by a blood sacrifice of thousands of alien cultists on a sentient planet that moved to a point in space equidistant from multiple stars with mystical significance. Doom suspects he plans to seize five throneworlds representing the five elemental forces, drawing a galaxy-sized pentagram to cast a massive spell that will merge the universe with his hell dimension.
- Stuff Blowing Up: Boom-Boom's thing, but thanks to Khora of the Burning Heart's power-boost, she gets to really blow stuff up.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: Hulkling mentions to Brand that he and Wiccan tried calling Wanda Maximoff for assistance, but they got no response, which he figures must be because Dormammu's kicking up magical interferance. Brand, who knows the real reason (namely: Wanda's been murdered at Krakoa.), agrees with him.
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork:
- Nova really, really doesn't like working with Doctor Doom. And while it's hard to blame him for not trusting the guy, Doom is trying to save the universe. Mostly. Ultimately, Rich declares he can't trust or work with Doom.
- There's some massive bad blood between the Shi'ar and the Wakandans due to a war the two empires had that resulted in the Wakandans using a superweapon that ravaged a world. Despite T'Challa taking over, the Shi'ar still don't trust them and are only begrudgingly accepting their help.
- Teleportation: Cable uses Lila's ability to steal the weapon and teleport it across the universe back to Mars/Planet Arrako.
- Token Evil Teammate: Khora of the Burning Heart, having grown up in a nigh-literal hellscape where every day was a battle for survival. She doesn't realize that someone declaring themselves a warrior is not grounds to immediately chuck a knife in their face.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Doom suggests that mutantkind's mining Mysterium created a cosmic disturbance, which is what kicked off the events of Last Annihilation when Dormammu noticed. This turns out to be a lie, and a form of misdirection, when it turns out that the entire event was masterminded and precipitated by Doom in order to steal magical power from Dormammu.
- We Have Reserves: Mindless Ones are perfectly willing to kill one another just to get one enemy in the crossfire.
- Working with the Ex: Cable's mission means Lila Cheney and Cannonball have to work together. Fortunately, they're entirely good-natured about it.
- You No Take Candle: The warning sign of the Breakworld city in Cable: Reloaded is written in broken English.
- Zerg Rush: Dormammu's army of Mindless Ones. Even a single Mindless One is capable of causing some damage, so an endless army of them?
