SNAP Into Marvel! — Is It Time For Sersi To Go Wild?
by Austin Gorton
First Comic Book Appearance: The Eternals #3 (September 1976)
First Multimedia Appearance: Eternals (2021)
Powers: In addition to all the usual Eternals abilities, Sersi is able to manipulate molecular and atomic structures to transform stuff into other stuff.
Comic Book Chronicles
The inspiration for Circe in The Odyssey, Sersi is relatively unique amongst the Eternals for her love of humanity. No other Eternal, save Gilgamesh, has spent as much time amongst humans as her, and no other Eternal has appeared in as many comics as she has. Far more than the somewhat reserved and overwhelmed teacher of the Eternals MCU film, comic book Sersi is vivacious and fun loving, a fixture in the modern era of New York high society, known for her extravagant parties.
Eventually, Sersi followed in Gilgamesh’s footsteps and joined the Avengers, becoming a long serving member of the team for most of the early 90s. In her earliest Avengers team ups, Sersi had a particular knack for flirting with Captain America, but to his chagrin. Later, she became romantically involved with Black Knight, entering into a twisty love “quadrangle” with him, the Inhuman Crystal, and Crystal’s husband Quicksilver.
This all came as writer Bob Harras amped up the soapy elements that had helped make the X-Men titles he also edited such a hit. During this time, Sersi was believed to be suffering from the Mahd Wy’ry, the mental breakdown of Eternals, and was mentally bonded to Black Knight to stave off the effects. Once it was revealed that Sersi’s mental breakdown was the result of attacks by Proctor, an alternate reality Black Knight, Sersi and the “main” Black Knight left for the Ultraverse.
That more or less marked the end of Sersi’s tenure as an Avenger. From there, she shifted back into the world of the Eternals, popping up whenever they did in the various reboots and reimaginings through the years.
Most recently, she returned in Kieron Gillen‘s Eternals, joining Thena and the rest of the “main” Eternals in their rejection of the newly-revealed circumstances surrounding the Eternals’ immortality (that every Eternal rebirth comes at the cost of a human life). That story in turn led to 2022’s “AXE Judgment Day” crossover between the Avengers, Eternals, and the X-Men, in which Sersi is killed opposing the rogue Celestial rendering judgment on humanity after she exposed the secret of the Eternal’s resurrection to the world.
Fit & Finish
No character suffers more from the desire to lean into the MCU character designs for the Eternals’ initial Marvel Snap cards than Sersi. Thanks to her wider presence in the Marvel Universe, several of Sersi’s comic book looks are iconic, from her initial Jack Kirby-designed green unitard to her 90s era red-and-black, knee-high boots, leather jacket look, to her variety of headbands, Sersi has a number of distinctive elements to her comic book look. The movie — and Marvel Snap, in turn, ignore most of them, which is a shame. No character this season calls out for a “classic” variant more than Sersi.
Form and Function
True to her nature as the life of the party, Sersi’s is a bit of a wildcard in Marvel Snap. Her transmutation abilities are represented by her ability to transform the other cards at her location into a higher cost, but true to form, the selection is random. So players have no way of knowing what they’ll get when they play her.
This effect is poised to make Sersi a divisive card. Some players will enjoy the dice roll aspect, while others will find the level of uncontrollable variance too much of a dice roll, especially when climbing the ladder (some level of unpredictably plays a lot better in Conquest). She seems unlikely to be a card which decks get built around, but she could slot into several existing archetypes, like ramp decks or negative/junk decks. Like Blink, she has the ability to replace low powered cards like Jubilee, or cards like Electro where transforming him into a 4 cost would keep his increased power but remove his “one card per turn” limitation (and like Blink, Sersi delivers a fair amount of power on her own as a 5/7).
In Junk and Negative decks, she can transform those -3 Hood’s or 1 cost rocks into better cards. With lower cost cards carrying less risk than higher cost ones, Sersi could also find play in Surfer or Patriot decks, giving a boost to Brood or Sinister duplicates. But while there are places where she can fit, at the end of the day, the sheer randomness of her transformation makes it unlikely she’ll ever become a must have card finding tons of play across the meta.
