Marvel Comics is home to a lot of gods, including multiple gods who oversee death, like Hela and Lady Death. The sentient cosmic representation of death is more than capable of handling the dead and dying on its own, yet there are other gods who trample on that responsibility. Whether it’s Death, Hela, or Hades, every god has a role.

Because Marvel is host to so many mythologies, it can be confusing to understand why there is a redundancy of gods. An Abstract Entity, like Death, is a godly cosmic embodiment of a concept, acting as the mystical source for the concept itself. Death, as a living concept, is the reason living things die.

However, the existence of gods like Hela isn’t a redundancy. She, alongside every other god of death, is a living "person" with a job to oversee the collection of their dead followers. She was given the responsibility to manage the dead, but Hela is not Death.

Hela Is a Failed Imitation of an Infinity Stone

Lady Death Is Death Itself

Marvel’s mythology, while expansive, is relatively straightforward to understand. Toward the top, there are living cosmic entities that embody thoughts, concepts, and ideas. They are the sentient building blocks of reality. And very far below them, the Earth has gods of magic, born through life. Atop is the Demiurge Primordial, the Earth’s sentient lifeforce, who gave birth to the first Elder Gods. Finally, the Elder Gods’ descendants changed to become more human-like, as their powers gradually weakened compared to their ancestors. On the grand scale of godhood, Hela sits at a significantly lower ring of power compared to Lady Death.

However, Hela is more than just a lowly goddess charged with overseeing her pantheon’s dead followers. Hela was originally an attempt to create a duplicate of Death. During the reign of Bor Burison, Odin’s father, Bor had attempted to forge an artificial Black Infinity Stone. As he harnessed the most profane and cosmic powers within the Ten Realms, a time-traveling Thanos attempted to steal the stones. Thanos was subdued, but not before the stone took the form of a baby girl. Hela was taken from her time and brought to Loki in the future to raise as his own.

Lesser Gods of Death Still Have Power and Responsibility in Marvel Comics

Every God Serves Its Role In the Grand Scheme

Despite being a failed attempt at an Infinity Stone, Hela is still a God of Death. But that still doesn’t mean that she is Death. From a mythological stance, Hela is purely responsible for managing the Asgardian dimensions for the dead, Hel and Niffleheim. It’s identical to how Hades, another powerful being from an alien dimension whom humans revere as a god, merely ushers the souls of his pantheon’s followers to the Olympians’ own realm of the dead. The gods that oversee and manage Earth are essentially powerful mystical aliens who oversee humanity. They manage day-to-day existence.

Without Death, nothing could die and the lower gods of the dead would be without purpose.

Once again, Death herself is a living concept. She doesn’t ferry the dead as Hela does; Lady Death is the one who kills the living. While Phil Coulson currently manages Death’s responsibilities, the effect is the same. Both Coulson and Lady Death are tasked with ensuring that people die. Nothing lives forever, not even multiversal entities. Without Death, nothing could die and the lower gods of the dead would be without purpose. While they both serve to maintain the delicate balance between life and death, there is a clear difference in power and scale between Marvel Comics' Hela and Lady Death.