Raava

Secret Invasion goes on being a powerful spy thriller, albeit it looks like there is a lot to be solved in the two episodes remaining… Anyway, in Beloved we learnt that another main character has actually been replaced by a Skrull: none others than Jim Rhodes, whose face and memories have been borrowed by Raava, portrayed by Nisha Aaliya. The main question remaining is how long Rhodes has been missing: knowing it wasn’t him the one who fought Thanos or mourned Tony Stark would be a major shock, not to mention something that would raise quite a backlash from fans. Waiting for our answers, let’s take a look at the original Raava.

Raava was born within the Skrull Empire, but she wasn’t like the other members of her race: allergic to any law or authority since her youth, she wished to live by her own rules, and never submitted to the strict hierarchy of the Empire, even refusing to learn her race’s greatest ability, shapeshifting, as a way to be – literally – faithful to who she was. She became and adventurer, and she accomplished many feats believed to be impossible, such as flying through the poison storms of Vokkorra-4, or escaping her wannabe captors by navigating through the god-mazes of Yalg, with her hunter’s bag still on her head. A formidable warrior and space pilot, she eventually chose to stop and try to build a more stable life, a new kind of adventure: she formed a family, and had two children, Skragg and Raavaka… but it was here that the Skrull authorities found her. Because of her unorthodox and unlawful life, she had been branded a pirate, and was a wanted woman. Her children were taken away, to be given into custody to some law-abiding Skrull family, and she was to be arrested… but she was still a great warrior, albeit retired, and she evaded capture. She laid low for years, but when she learnt that her children had both been killed while serving the Empire she got furious: her sheer will forged two swords, which she called Angry Daughter and Hungry Son, in honor of her fallen children, and she used them to bring her bloody vengeance on the Empire. She was now too old to have other children, and since the “men with laws” had taken all the bloodkin she could have in her life, she would have shed a proportional amount of blood to sate her rage. Now naming herself Raava the Unskrulled, she was the most feared pirate in the Skrull Empire, until she was finally captured, and sent to a dark place of the universe everybody pretended not to know anything about.

The place was a prison with no name, an obscure corner of depravity in which the prisoners were constantly tortured, killed, resurrected and tortured again, all for the sake of the Jailer, the creature in control of the structure, a psychic parasite who fed on pain and desperation. Even the mighty Raava found herself powerless against the Jailer: she often fell in battle against him, only to be resurrected again to restart the cycle of suffering and violence. A mighty warrior, she was forced to fight against other prisoners in the local arena for her captors’ delight, and she always came out on top… unwillingly becoming an accomplice to the Jailer’s tortures against the other inmates. Finally, because of her indisputable talents, she was noticed by another prisoner, one who had been in that hellhole for a long time: Molyb the Metal Master, who had been devising an escape plan for years and was selecting a small crew to implement it. Molyb immediately earnt Raava’s trust by warning her of Spyder, another prisoner who was actually Jailer’s agent, who she started to avoid. Little by little, Molyb’s crew started taking form: after Raava came Blinky, a telepath girl, then the Absorbing Man, a human criminal of great power. Last but not least came Black Bolt, the king of Attilan who had been sentenced to the prison by the machinations of his treacherous brother Maximus. At first the proud king didn’t join their group, and Raava was quite worried seeing him defeated and killed week after week. She first met him face to face when the two of them were forced to fight in the arena: for the first time in ages, Raava was defeated, something that she actually celebrated… but Black Bolt refused to kill her, and he was killed by Spyder in retaliation. When the king was resurrected, Raava and Absorbing Man were waiting for him, and they finally convinced him to join them: with Black Bolt by their side, freedom was closer than ever before…

Raava is surely a simple mind, a barbarian who speaks of herself in third person, but she’s unexpectedly clever in battle, and what she lacks in intellect she makes up in bravery and determination. As the Unskrulled, she gave up on her shapeshifting abilities, but she’s extremely strong and swift in combat, and she can forge with her sheer fury two energy broadswords, Angry Daughter and Hungry Son, blades as unbreakable as her will, that can also serve as means of self-propelled flight; she’s also a formidable pilot, with a natural sense of spatial awareness that allows her to always find her way to her objective, even if she can’t see a thing. A legendary pirate and a vengeful mother, Raava the Unskrulled is a living myth, one who promised to drown the Skrull Empire in blood… and the worst prison in the universe is just a minor setback from the fulfillment of her main goal.