How The Medusa Twist In ‘Marvel’s Inhumans’ Mirrors The Comics

The latest trailer for Marvel’s Inhumans revealed a shocking twist for the Inhuman queen Medusa, and it’s surprisingly current to things happening in Marvel’s comic books.

The new trailer included a final tag that showed Medusa (Serinda Swan) battling Attilan’s head of security Auran (Sonya Balmores) and reasserting her position as queen. What’s interesting about this scene is that Medusa is fighting with her fists instead of her hair, and that’s because her long, red locks that she could control like an additional limb have been removed from her head.

Medusa’s signature has always been her hair, but even in Marvel’s ongoing comics, the Inhuman queen has had her powers stripped. In Al Ewing’s Inhumans series Royals, Medusa’s hair has mostly fallen out and what remains has turned gray and limp. Medusa believes she is dying and that it is some kind of karmic comeuppance for her destroying Earth’s Terrigen Mist clouds in order to end the threat to and conflict with Marvel’s mutants during the Inhumans vs. X-Men event.

However, Medusa’s hair in the Inhumans trailer seems a bit different. Unlike Medusa’s somewhat ragged new hair look in the comics, the result of the hair falling out on its own, her hair in the television series looks much neater, as if it had been purposefully shorn rather than having fallen out naturally.

The scene in the trailer that comes just prior to Medusa’s fight with Auran shows what one might assume is a minion of revolutionary Inhuman prince Maximus (Iwan Rheon) using an Inhuman ability to freeze Medusa in place while she was resisting Maximus’ coup. It seems likely that Maximus then captured Medusa and had her head shaved in order to remove her power.

This scenario more closely resembles events that transpired in the Marvel Knights Inhumans series by Paul Jenkins and Jae Lee. In that series, Maximus himself cuts Medusa’s hair. The Marvel Knights series is considered to be the definitive modern take on the Inhuman Royal family, so it makes sense that Marvel would look there for inspiration for the television series.

The fight scene suggests that Medusa somehow still manages to escape Attilan and flee to Earth. Maximus then likely sends Auran as head of security, who is either serving Maximus out of a sense of fealty or duty, to track Medusa down, leading to their struggle.

Marvel’s The Inhumans premieres in IMAX theaters on Labor Day and on ABC on September 29th.