In Thunderbolts*/The New Avengers, we’re introduced to one of the MCU’s most powerful characters ever, in the form of Lewis Pullman’s Bob Reynolds, a.k.a. the Sentry. In the film, we discover that when he was a lost and lonely young man, one struggling with serious mental problems, he made a very poor choice. Bob volunteered to become one of many human guinea pigs for O.X.E. This shady corporation was trying to recreate the super soldier serum that gave Steve Rogers his powers, only with even more potency. And their experiment worked—perhaps too well. But what is O.X.E., and how does it connect to the MCU’s other evil scientific corporations?
All we know is that O.X.E. is a company run by Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), run specifically for her secret off-the-books operations. The kind of things that one might not exactly consider as legal. It was first mentioned in Black Widow, and again in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. But it’s in Thunderbolts* where we really see their operation in full effect. In the comics, the Life-Model Decoy of Valentina created O.X.E, and its intel was used to form one of the (many) iterations of the Thunderbolts team. In Thunderbolts*, we learn the MCU version has at least one top-secret bunker in the American desert to store their experiments.
But did Valentina actually found O.X.E., or did she buy it from someone else? Traditionally, O.X.E. is a reference to Omega Chi Epsilon (or ΩΧΕ, often simplified to OXE) an international honor society for chemical engineering students. But we already know of another shady, up-to-no-good corporations in the MCU, some going back all the way to the first Iron Man in 2008. In the background of that film, we saw a building marked Roxxon. We also saw Roxxon in Loki, and mentioned in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Agent Carter, and Cloak and Dagger. The latter two shows probably aren’t MCU, but they are at least adjacent. Could they be extensions of O.X.E.? Probably not, but there’s one MCU company that might be.
Iron Man 3 also introduced us to A.I.M., or Advanced Idea Mechanics. They were behind the Extremis experiments to create unbeatable soldiers. Seeing a pattern here? They very nearly killed Tony Stark’s nearest and dearest, Happy Hogan and Pepper Potts. It feels like some of Sentry’s power set derives from Extremis, so for all we know, O.X.E. absorbed A.I.M. after the events of Iron Man 3 and used their research to help create the Golden Sentry Program. But there’s yet another possibility that could be very exciting for the future of one Marvel hero in particular, Spider-Man.
One of the most nefarious corporations in Marvel Comics is Oscorp, the company founded by billionaire tech genius Norman Osborn. It’s long been a thorn in the side of Spider-Man and the Avengers. A version of Oscorp exists in the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man universe, as well as the universe of Andrew Garfield’s Amazing Spider-Man films. It also exists in the Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man Earth. But we learned in Spider-Man: No Way Home that Oscorp does not exist in the MCU. But what if O.X.E. is what might have become Norman Osborn’s company in the MCU? And the “O” in O.X.E stands for Osborn? “Osborn Xenochemisty Enterprises” perhaps?
Let’s say Norman Osborn founded such a company, one that was bought by Valentina. So no actual company named Oscorp ever technically existed in the MCU. But post-Thunderbolts*, the MCU Norman Osborn might take back control of O.X.E. and rename it to Oscorp. He could then become a legitimate threat to Peter Parker going forward. And we honestly wouldn’t hate it if Colman Domingo played Norman in the MCU, since he voices him in the cartoon. The world of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is very similar to the MCU, so we could totally see it. Whatever happens next, we doubt this is the last we’ve seen of O.X.E. in the MCU. You just can’t keep a good shady corporation down.
Content shared from nerdist.com.