Said Evil Mastermind can usually come up with good plans to defeat your enemies. The Evil Mastermind probably has plans in mind to screw you over as well, but if you're lucky, they'll wait to unveil those until after your enemies are dealt with.
Case in point, Thanos. At the end of Thanos Imperative #5, Thanos and the Guardians of the Galaxy are battling Cancerverse Mar-Vell and his Revengers, mystically-enhanced versions of Thor, Ms. Marvel, Captain America, Iron Man, and Giant Man*. Mar-Vell and Thanos are enemies, regardless of which universe each hails from, so they squared off. It's at the end of the issue that Thanos drops the bombshell: He isn't here to destroy Mar-Vell, he's here so Mar-Vell can grant him death. Since Thanos is the Marvel Universe's Avatar of Death, that's precisely what Mar-Vell needs to do to rid the Marvel Universe of Death forever, thus enabling his masters to gain a stronger foothold in the Marvel U.
As "Oh, crap!" moments go, that was a good one. I was pretty surprised, and definitely worried - until I remembered this is Thanos. During Annihilation, even when Thanos was Annihilus' research and development guy, he installed a failsafe so he could cut Galactus loose if he needed to turn on Annihilus**. From what I recall of Thanos Quest (his hunt for the Infinity Gems), it was largely Thanos appearing to take one approach to victory, but really having another strategy in mind entirely. Back-up plans and duplicity are part of who he is.
Right before Mar-Vell and Co. showed up, he was trying to psychometrically determine how the Necropsy goes. That's the ritual Mar-Vell used to destroy his universe's Thanos (destroying Death in the process), it's what he'll use to destroy this Thanos, and it's what Thanos has to use to destroy Mar-Vell if he's going to reset the balance and thwart the Many-Angled Ones. The problem was he spent a page and a half trying unsuccessfully to get the Guardians to scram***, and by the time he abandoned that strategy, Mar-Vell had arrived. There was no time for him to discern what he needed to do. He and Mar-Vell are evenly matched, but the Guardians are massively outclassed power-wise, so the odds they could drive off the attackers long enough for him to figure it out are slim.
The beauty of this is Thanos will get Mar-Vell to show him exactly what he needs to do to Mar-Vell. It can work because he didn't warn the Guardians, and they know how angry he is about being alive again, about how even Drax with an antimatter charge couldn't kill him. They haven't yet seen any indication Thanos can be killed, but if there was something that could do it, a mystical ritual designed to eradicate Death would be a pretty good bet. So they're going to be convincingly distraught, which sells it to the bad guys.
It took me until today to realize Thanos can pull this off because he knows the Necropsy really can't kill him. Prior to that, I figured he was banking on his power being sufficient to escape being the subject of the ritual, and instead sacrifice Mar-Vell.
* Quasar teleported in with the rest, but I didn't see him during the fight.
** Don't feel too bad for Annihilus, though. He was planning to double-cross Thanos, too.
*** It occurs to me now, but it's interesting that he would tell them to leave, rather than simply killing them. None of the Guardians of the Galaxy present have the means to kill him. It's iffy whether Mantis and Cosmo can shut his mind down if they combine their powers. He doesn't think he needs them, and he's Thanos. Yet he gave them the opportunity to run, which would get them out of Mar-Vell's line of fire.
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