Beyonder vs. Living Tribunal: Who Would Win in a Fight?
Beyonder and the Living Tribunal are at the top of Marvel’s most powerful list, and for a good reason. They both have reality- breaking powers, and both are not subjected to the normal laws that guide the Universe. And naturally, you’re probably just now thinking about that instance in which the Beyonders manage to defeat the Living Tribunal and wondering what the point of this even is. However, Beyonder has seen multiple retcons over the years, and his absurd power level was adjusted several times, and new origins were uncovered. Due to that, we decided to revisit this burning question. Is Beyonder more powerful than the Living Tribunal? Who would win this one?
The Living Tribunal is absolutely more powerful than Beyonder and would be able to defeat him. Pre-retcon Beyonder was insanely overpowered, and even though subsequent balance adjustments severely nerfed his powers, he still kept his insane reality-altering incalculable strength and much of his superhuman physique. However, he is no longer able to take down the Living Tribunal in its true form.
Now that we’ve given you a brief answer let’s revisit Beyonder’s origin story and see how he managed to defeat the Living Tribunal in the first place. If you’re interested, stay with us and keep reading!
Beyonder was everything until he became too powerful to handle
Beyonder was first introduced during the ‘Secret Wars’ event, and he was imagined to be a creature hailing from outside of our own Multiverse, which he became aware of due to the experiment that failed that consequently transformed Owen Reece into an incredibly powerful Molecule Man.
As a being outside of the Multiverse, Beyonder wasn’t subject to playing by our rules, and as such, he was omnipotent. But omnipotent characters are difficult to feature in stories, at least for a longer period of time, without putting some sort of a twist to their powers. So. Beyonder’s origin was changed, and it turned out that he was a failed attempt at creating a cosmic cube.
Following this change, in ‘Avengers: Illuminati’ #3, it turned out that Beyonder was an Inhuman Mutant and that his powers are nothing out-of-this-multiverse but rather mutations created by the Terrigen Mists.
This was once again retconned when Beyonder’s origin story was rewritten once again, stating that he was a faulty member of the Beyonders, an underdeveloped “child unit” that was left to grow. Later, it was revealed that the Beyonders as a whole siphoned much of their powers from a terrifying being called the Lost One, who also serves as their progenitor.
As you can see, Beyonder’s power levels fluctuated over time but are more or less on the level where he is basically able to threaten much of Marvel’s Universe and its cosmic hierarchy.
Beyonder is currently still an extremely powerful being, the core of his powers still relying on his incredible reality-manipulating powers, the ability to reconstruct and deconstruct reality, the ability of molecular and matter manipulation, as well as his apparent immortality, incalculable strength, and the fact that there’s basically no way to kill him.
The Living Tribunal fell to Beyonder in the past, but there’s a catch
The One Above All is Marvel’s supreme being. As the name says, there’s really no one above its power. It is the creator of everything, the manifestation of the writer’s will with no cap to its power, no weakness, and no apparent beginning and the end. The One Above All is everything, and underneath the One Above All, there is the Living Tribunal.
The Living Tribunal was created as the ultimate judge, having a portion of the One Above All’s powers kept him at the top of Marvel’s hierarchy for a very long time. The being has incredible powers, it’s very close to being omnipotent, and it basically serves as cosmic judge, keeping all other abstract entities in check and ruling the day-to-day matters instead of The One Above All in the context of the Omniverse.
As such, it’s impossible to kill the Living Tribunal, except the Beyonder has done it. Well, there’s a correction to this, as three Beyonders were needed to take down the Living Tribunal, and three Beyonders across every incarnation of the Universe were simultaneously attacking every instance of the Living Tribunal until the entity was dead. Naturally, the One Above All could have stopped it, but it chose rather not to get in the midst of things.
The reason why Beyonders were able to take down the Living Tribunal is simple: at that point in the story, they were beyond the judgment of the entity because the rules of our Multiverse are not valid for a creature that hails from outside of it. It’s a stretch to claim that the Living Tribunal was powerless to do anything against them, but it certainly didn’t have access to all of its powers in this fight. Still, three Beyonders attacking a single entity across the Universe simultaneously witnessed how incredibly powerful The Living Tribunal, even at that point, was.
Could Beyonder be able to defeat the Living Tribunal today?
The current Beyonder wouldn’t be able to defeat the Living Tribunal since his powers have somewhat decreased over the years. Beyonder’s powers now largely depend upon the scenario in which he finds himself and are circumstantial, in large part. He still has enough juice to take down half of the abstract entities and frequently breaks the limits of the Multiverse, but he wouldn’t be able to defeat the Living Tribunal and entity that keeps getting stronger.
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