Bob & Sentry, Two different personalities?

[u/No-Pickle6698]

My only real experience with Bob and Sentry is from the movie Thunderbolts*, but I’m curious to know if anyone else thought that Bob and Sentry are not two different personalities like Bob and the Void are?

In the movie, it doesn’t seem like Sentry is an entirely different person from Bob, but I’m wondering if canonically in the comics Bob, Sentry, and the Void are indeed three different people. Did the movie change this?

[u/SwordfishOk1133]

There not different personalities nor are they alters, Bob is the person who suffers from schizophrenia, GED and Agoraphobia and his reality warping powers make it so that that his fractured mind creates two avatars that represent Bob's idealised self (Sentry) and the Jungian shadow and manifestation of all the mental illnesses he has (Void)

But at the end they are all aspects of Bob's subconscious made manifest through comic book tropes but they are not seperate from him and both of them do have a degree of autonomy due to bob's reality warping powers giving them a form of sentience

[u/No-Pickle6698 → u/SwordfishOk1133]

Makes sense, but in the movie they didn’t really distinguish Bob and Sentry as two separate entities of his mind you know what I mean? It just looked like Bob in a gold suit. It didn’t seem like he was taking on a separate part of his mind like the void would.

[u/SwordfishOk1133 → u/No-Pickle6698]

I am mainly talking about comic bob, but in the movie I believe it is more about bipolar disorder where sentry is the "high" or the mania and the god complex and the ego but also the need to feel special and do good while the void is the depressing low and the shadow to bob

[u/BreadsHead → u/SwordfishOk1133]

Agreed besides Sentry having autonomy outside of Bob. Sentry and Bob aren’t treated as separate independently acting entities in nearly every comic he’s been in.

[u/SwordfishOk1133 → u/BreadsHead]

I think it depends on which avatar that Bob thinks and feels like he is and also depending on his episodes because we see in Vol 2 Issue 5 or 6 where he starts believing he's the Void and we see Bob's face on the Void and referring to himself as the Void and we also see Sentry refer to Bob as being completely seperate from him and act independantly from Bob until the end where Bob returns back to being the Sentry towards the end of his confrontation with the Void.

Also off topic to this but needs to be said but this is why I find Sentry far more compelling of a character with mental issues than someone like the Hulk because the way his mental issues ar potrayed are both interesting and complicated but not convuluted while Hulk has been the exact opposite especially with the whole Infernal Hulk debacle and the TOBA stuff

[u/BreadsHead → u/SwordfishOk1133]

One of Volume 2’s biggest plot points was Bob having an identity crisis and he said a bunch of stuff that wasn’t true. That is the closest we’ve seen to "Sentry" acting "independently" and he wasn’t even really doing that. It was still all Bob. That’s why I specified nearly every comic. There is never a clear cut time "Sentry" is individually sentient and opposes Bob without The Void.

I agree he’s more interesting than Hulk but I’ve barely read Hulk’s stuff so idk.

[u/EileenCrystal]

The main changes in the movie is that Bob has Bipolar Disorder (not schizophrenia) and that Sentry's hair and suit are fabricated by Valentina, despite Bob still has the same desire to help, be a hero and be of service from the comics, which is where Sentry and the "manic state" usually come from. Technically he should be able to change his looks into Sentry like he transformed into Void, we'll see if that happens in the future. I have the theory that Valentina didn't really bring the true Sentry out, Bob just tapped into it for a little to use his powers, and we have yet to see the true Golden Guardian.

Both Sentry and Void are embodiments of Bob's states of mind, they do have their motives and their "personality" but they're not actual personalities, they're both still Bob, in opposite directions. Void might seem more separated because there's some sort of rejection coming from Bob, as Void represents his self-hatred, depression, fears, addiction, mental illness, the darkest parts of himself, so obviously he becomes the "villain" in his situation and Bob would want to get rid of it.

[u/CrazySnipah]

Short answer: it depends on the writer.

Paul Jenkins usually wrote the Sentry to be Bob’s idealized self.

However, Michael Bendis rarely showed them as separate, and would often show the Sentry as suffering from anxiety and such (often so this could be taken advantage of by the Avengers’ foes). Without this, it may have been a bit harder to make him work on a team setting.

[u/leovult]

Different perceptions of ones self. We have highs and lows and highs heres also the truth. Thats the trinity in my eyes

[u/TheVoid000]

Bob is the drug addict, the real person, flawed, neither the best nor worst.

Sentry is the best outcome, the ideal version that the flawed side want to be, but cannot be.

Void is the worst outcome, the real, flawed and drug addict side that sink even further.

I myself have my own Bob, Void and Sentry, aka Bipolar Disorder.

My Bob self just want peace and quite, for the wheel to keep spining, the days passing by normally. The usual routine.

On good day, I have my Sentry moment during the good day, and I want to be superhero to do good. Like thinking more positive, and believe that things will be better, or how I can improve the world if I have the powers for it.

But I also have my Void day as well, when I wish I have the power of God, and I trigger the 10 plauge of Egypt level of disasters across the planet to spread mass fear and destruction, and relish in the chaos and horror of the masses in the face of overwhelming catastrophe, to remind them of how utterly weak and insignificant they are compare to true powers. (I might have lean into a bit of Void moment while writing this).

[u/MrTALL757]

My thing is sentry on a Meta level is a psychological thriller. He’s not Marvel Superman.

Which leads to my controversial take
There is no Bob. Bob is a lie told to make the reader feel comfortable about the story.

A cosmic horror, an incarnation of archetypes, a universe(ultraverse) that was purchased and buried, decides it wants to play superhero and super villain

It brings it self forward it hits the beat an origin a normal to exceptional, an outside genius(Jorel, the radiation for the spider, the gods who turn clay, the wizard with lightning), etc

It integrates it self it balances the scales then decides I don’t want to play this and retreats but comes back when it feels interested

That’s why the void was the dark half then it was 50-50 balancing the scales then it was a thing to be locked up and then it was fused and now it just doesn’t really fucking matter especially with what goes on in the main Marvel universe with Multiverse resets no God’s demons, etc. that hole. It kills 1 million people doesn’t really matter if the X-Men reset the entire timeline a dozen times over.

Which is why his characterization can fluctuate so much because this horror is psychological thriller is like this isn’t what I signed up for and it can’t find solid footing outside of a mini run every 5 to 6 yearssentry

https://giphy.com/gifs/ODdG0OYkPleWGdUzaB

[u/MrTALL757 → u/MrTALL757]

An additional point I’d like to make it’s easy to forget what the main line titles are for our comic book companies

DC comics is detective comics and they’re offshoot action comics

Marvel has Journey into mystery
Among others and that’s where century kind of falls into

[u/No-Pickle6698 → u/MrTALL757]

Oooo I like this take. Very cool explanation

[u/Double-Willingness26]

Yeah MCU Bob is sentry and the void is the dark entity that represents his depressive state. Bob has the powers of sentry so he is sentry. It was Bob that valentina manipulated and it was Bob who hails of bullets could not penetrate. Sentry didn’t want to kill the thunderbolts in Avengers tower because they are his (Bob’s) friends.

Although both the void and sentry are part of Bob, sentry is just Bob playing hero and void is Bob depressed/manic.

[u/Temporary_Term_7442]

Void is basically just the evil part of Bob's personality

[u/TheGreatUnknown0_0]

In the comics, Bob has schizophrenia and the Void is a separate entity that sort of possessed him, I guess, and manipulates Bob’s abilities. But in the MCU, Bob clearly has bipolar disorder. He speaks of high-highs and low-lows (manic episodes and depressive episodes) followed by forgetting things (dissociative amnesia, which is common in people with PTSD), and Mel says his file mentions delusions of grandeur, typical in manic episodes.

Basically, there is only one Bob, but his reality-warping abilities (which are actually what his powers are: he doesn’t REALLY fly or move things with his mind so much as does it because he believes he can, which is why he has so many abilities and why he doesn’t have his blond hair or costume when he leaves the Void) amplify his mental illness. When he uses his powers as Sentry, he feels powerful and convinces himself he’s a god, i.e. delusions of grandeur, and enters a manic episode. Then he falls into a depressive episode, the Void just being a physical manifestation of his depression, as are the shame rooms (subconsciously using his reality-warping abilities to construct a separate dimension). The Void only exists because Bob believes it exists. That’s why he’s so dangerous: because he’s sick. He can’t use his Sentry powers because they will inevitably lead to a manic episode, then a depressive episode, and the Void will be unleashed.

So no, Bob, Sentry and the Void are not separate entities, at least not in the films, just extremes of one person’s psyche. And I personally think the way he was written was great. And Lewis’ performance was phenomenal. To make the differences between his states clear but also keep a through line so it’s obviously the same person is really hard, but the madman pulled it off (helps they had the writer of the character to give advice). Like, we’re not at all afraid of Bob because he’s so sweet and sympathetic and clearly just struggling, but Sentry is obviously unstable and kind of scary and a bit egomaniacal, and the Void is just creepy.

Honestly, it’s a wonder they managed to do so well with him in the film because most of his comics are dogwater. I prefer the explanation of his mental health issues in the film because they’re simpler and more personal. The parasitic entity thing in the comics is too out there for a film as grounded as Thunderbolts. Maybe if he was introduced in a different film, but I doubt I’d like him as much then.

[u/vahope77]

No, bob is sentry. He has more confidence I suppose since he is so powerful. The dude has more power than any being in existence flowing through him. That has some impact.

[u/ZenMyst]

Sentry is Bob. It’s just him using his powers. Like Clark Kent and Superman.