Keeping Close Watch
In modern times, Uatu met the Fantastic Four when they visited the Moon to investigate the Blue Area. The criminal mastermind Ivan Kragoff, AKA Red Ghost, and his Super-Apes had also landed there and soon attacked Ben Grimm, AKA the Thing. Uatu revealed his presence to the Earthlings and ended the fight, decreeing that the Fantastic Four would battle Red Ghost and his simian cohorts. Uatu was impressed with the FF’s victory and gave them his blessings, allowing them to retain their memories of his existence. Becoming fond of them, he often warned them of impending dangers, such as the Owen Reece, AKA Molecule Man, who gained matter-manipulation powers in a lab accident. After the Molecule Man’s defeat, Uatu transported the villain to an other-dimensional world where time passed at an accelerated rate and reinforced the self-imposed mental blocks which limited Molecule Man’s ability to use his powers.
Soon after, when the wedding of Reed Richards, AKA Mister Fantastic, and Susan Storm, AKA Invisible Girl, was threatened by numerous Super Villains summoned by Victor von Doom, AKA Doctor Doom’s Emotion Charger device, Uatu invited Richards to his citadel and allowed him to choose a weapon to end the conflict. Richards chose the Sub-Atronic time-displacer, which allowed Richards to send the villains back in time to before the Emotion Charger had affected them and to remove Doom and all the other villains’ memories of the relevant events. Afterwards, Uatu allowed Reed and Sue to honeymoon in the Blue Area’s city, providing an opulent banquet hall and assuring the newlyweds that they would be the only beings in the galaxy that he would not be watching that night.
Later, when Galactus first menaced Earth, Uatu tried to hide the planet from the world-devourer. During the attempt, he debated him as to why the Earth should be spared, and finally helped Johnny Storm, AKA Human Torch, obtain the only weapon capable of destroying the cosmic menace—the Ultimate Nullifier. Uatu continued to assist the Fantastic Four and other heroes by providing subtle hints or guidance to help them in their battles to protect others, such as when he led the Fantastic Four to time-travel back to World War II to obtain a Vibranium canister to prevent it from altering the past. Uatu also studied alternate realities, which he observed through a portal given to him by the Time-Keepers, a group of beings who existed at the end of time itself.
Eventually, Uatu disgraced himself completely by physically opposing the Kree soldier Mar-Vell, AKA Captain Marvel, after allying himself with the Lunatic Legion, a Kree faction opposed to Mar-Vell who were led by Zarek, Fer-Porr, and Sro-Himm and based in the Moon’s Blue Area. Placed on trial by his own people for his numerous violations of their ethics code, Uatu explained that he had come to identify with the action and emotion that he observed on Earth and thus yearned to become involved. At the conclusion of his trial, Uatu was released from custody on his own recognizance after promising never to interfere in the affairs of other races again.
Later, Uatu was captured by intergalactic gambler A’Sai via a weapon from one of Galactus’ former worldships. Uatu allowed himself to be coerced into a football wager—Uatu’s technology vs. A’Sai’s weapon—but when Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, led Uatu’s team to victory, Uatu destroyed the weapon and transformed A’Sai into a casino playing card as punishment for his intent to renege.
Uatu also saved the life of Bette Chekhov, granddaughter of Anton, one of May Parker’s former boarders. When the criminal Living Laser tried to escape Wendell Vaughn, AKA Quasar, by flying into Uatu’s alternate worlds portal and diverged into separate beings in seven different alternate realities, Uatu enlisted Quasar to recapture the Living Lasers. Based on the Watcher Otmu’s theory that even observation affected others, the “Oblivion Plague” caused many Watchers to end their existences; though perpetuated by Maelstrom, the Plague was ended when Quasar convinced the Watchers that they must continue to observe so they could pass on their accumulated recordings to the next universe.
Uatu assisted the Time Variance Authority (TVA), a vast bureaucracy dedicated to overseeing, adjusting, and balancing the many timelines within the multiverse, against the threat of the time-traveling Immortus, who was accumulating temporal energy in an attempt to reorder the entire multiverse so that he would be the master of all time. Uatu recommended the TVA target Nathaniel Richards of Earth-6311 (Other Earth)’s 31st century, who would eventually become Immortus, among various other temporal counterparts. Uatu and the TVA ultimately recruited Reed Richards’ Rocket Group from Earth-8212, an alternate world where the Fantastic Four never gained super-powers, and sent them to implant within Nathaniel Richards the Saturnyne Symbiont, a chronosynclastic nucleus that weakened an organism’s natural resistance to time energy. The Rocket Group persuaded Nathaniel Richards to take the Saturnyne Symbiont, thus rendering Immortus unable to accumulate temporal energy and foiling his scheme.
Present at Uatu’s earlier trial was his nephew Aron, a relatively young Watcher mentored by his uncle who was not yet assigned a solar system to observe. Fascinated by Earth, Aron eventually broke the Watcher’s code by manipulating the Fantastic Four and Inhumans into a fight. Now a “rogue” Watcher, Aron grew more malevolent; after cloning the Fantastic Four and trying to create a pocket world within the mind of Alicia Masters, Aron was ambushed by Doctor Doom, who siphoned off Aron's power into a containment device. Uatu cared for Aron as his nephew recovered; but before Aron could be tried for his crimes, the Watchers became preoccupied with the threat posed by the giant cosmic entities known as the Celestials. Aron seized this opportunity to masquerade as his uncle Uatu and manipulate the Fantastic Four into helping him recover the energy stolen from him by Doom. Completing the first phase of his plan, Aron plotted to swallow the entire universe into a black hole and then create a new universe for himself to manipulate. Opposed by the Fantastic Four and Fantastic Force, Aron pitted legions of their past enemies against them, but Scott Lang, AKA Ant-Man, foiled his scheme by destroying the device needed to create the black hole. In the end, Uatu disciplined his nephew by dissipating his energy and using it to revive the leader of the Watchers known as the One. Uatu was stripped of his title and exiled by the Watchers for these controversial actions.
Despite his expulsion, Uatu continued to observe affairs on Earth, compelled by the lives and struggles of its inhabitants. Eventually reinstated into the Watchers, Uatu witnessed the temporary demise of Galactus, who was destroyed by an intergalactic alliance of heroes led by Norrin Radd, AKA Silver Surfer, near the Shi'ar homeworld. Soon after, Uatu was viciously attacked by Abraxas, a cosmic entity threatening all of reality, but Abraxas was defeated by the Fantastic Four. Uatu congratulated the heroes, informing them that humanity had passed another test. More recently, Uatu and two of his fellow Watchers, Zoma and Qyre, appeared before Jennifer Walters, AKA She-Hulk, who was then serving with the Magistrati as a presiding judge in the Living Tribunal's Cosmic Claims Court. Qyre had discovered a reclusive race who had kept their existence secret since time immemorial. The reclusive race sued the Watchers in the Cosmic Claims Court, and She-Hulk ruled that Qyre’s mouth be permanently sealed so that he could not share his knowledge of the plaintiffs with his fellow Watchers.
Uatu’s direct observation of events has become an indicator of their apparent significance, as when he appeared on the Stranger’s Battleworld to observe the seeming death of Greg Willis, AKA Gravity, and his presence made the Stranger think Uatu was there to witness the Stranger’s defeat; during T’Challa, AKA Black Panther, and Ororo Munroe, AKA Storm’s wedding, where he noted their children would be of great import; during the Super Hero civil war; and during the Central Park battle against Queen Veranke’s invading Skrull army. Uatu allowed the Fantastic Four to access the Cyclopedia Universum to locate Gravity, whose grave had mysteriously emptied, enabling them to help the revived Gravity save Epoch from Galactus. Uatu subsequently guided Gravity and Dr. Stephen Strange in excising a diseased portion of the cosmic Eternity and sending it to a pocket dimension.
Uatu also appeared during Parker Robbins, AKA the Hood’s hunt for the Infinity Gems and when the Hood took notice, Thaddeus Ross, AKA Red Hulk, took advantage of the distraction and usurped the Power Gem, which Hood possessed. Uatu was also present when the Hood went up against Charles Xavier, AKA Professor X, and when the Avengers went up against the X-Men over the Phoenix Force. To Uatu’s shock, he witnessed Hope Summers punch a Phoenix-Force possessed Scott Summers, AKA Cyclops, from Earth to the moon, something that shouldn’t be possible considering the amount of power the Phoenix Force adds to its host.
Uatu then became a consistent ally to the teenage Nova, and it started when he warned Nova of an forthcoming armada of Chitauri headed towards Earth. Nova defeated them with the Ultimate Nullifier, which he left in Uatu’s hands afterward.
When Doctor Midas, Exterminatrix, Orb, and the Mindless Ones attacked and robbed Uatu and his armory, Uatu attempted to fight them off. The Orb ended up shooting Uatu and removing one of his eyes. When Uatu’s ally Nick Fury appeared at Uatu’s citadel on the moon, he demanded to know who attacked him but Uatu remained silent. Fury then killed Watcher and took his remaining eye so that he could see what Uatu saw. Uatu’s corpse was found by the God of Thunder Thor Odinson, AKA Thor. Eventually, the Council of Watchers punished Fury for the murder and fused him with what remained of Uatu’s power and position. They transformed him into the Unseen, halfway between a Watcher and a man, and his sacred duty was to record life and observe from afar.
When the Cotati, plant-like aliens, attempted to take over the universe, the Unseen collected weapons left behind by them, weapons that could overpower the Kree and the Skrulls. While assessing their makeup, Fury’s eye told him that they originated from the first race and then suddenly Uatu manifested, emerging from Fury’s eye and speaking an unintelligible language. Uatu, now resurrected, realized his home was in ruins and immediately rebuilt it with the flick of his fingers. He then entered Fury’s mind to catch up on what he had missed and they entered the Cyclopedia Universum, the visual archive of everything a Watcher has ever seen. Uatu learned that despite how his brothers and sisters broke their oath of non-interference by punishing Fury, they failed in their intent to recreate him as a kind of Watcher. Uatu reviewed all that Fury had achieved, including putting a thunder god on a new path, counseling the Silver Surfer, and reforming the Exiles, sending them across realities. Reviewing everything since, Uatu noted how he would never tire of watching the humans of this sector. Once he caught up to the moment Fury analyzed the Cotati weapons, Uatu conveyed to Fury that the weapons were of Watcher origin. Despite Fury’s protest to unchain him, Uatu wasn’t about to commute his sentence. He made Fury work for him as he began to prepare for the next war. An old war known as the First War.
