A Somewhat Lackluster Betrayal

So Phyla did end up being the traitor Mantis spoke of back when Guardians of the Galaxy started. Unless Mantis was speaking of Adam Warlock becoming Adam Magus, but I'm not sure what Magus will do can be considered traitorous. Maybe I'm biased because I feel bad for her, but I felt like Phyla wasn't trying very hard to carry out her mission.

It seemed as though she was constantly starting fights, being more aggressive than necessary. She starts throwing down with Shi'ar at Starlin's in Knowhere. When Star-Lord is trying to convince the Inhumans to stop fighting, and Crystal is actually speaking in support of him, Phyla goes and holds her at swordpoint, then abducts her. Neither of those actions helped the Guardians case, and both of them lead to the team wasting time fighting the Inhuman Elite. Then once the Fault's appeared, and the team's once again confronted the Inhumans, Phyla was certainly cold upon learning Black Bolt is dead.

On the one hand, these could be her way of trying to waylay the Guardians. She's working for Lord Oblivion, he was once served by Maelstrom, who was always trying to destroy existence, so let's figure that's at least one thing Oblivion is after. This war could bring that about, and the Guardians of the Galaxy would try and stop it. So keep them busy fighting battles that won't accomplish anything. That way they make no headway on stopping the war, and maybe some of them get killed, which only hampers their efforts to make a difference even more.

On the other hand, she's so ham-handed about it as to make it too obvious she's up to something. Plus, when these brawls kick off, she's always right on the front line, so I wonder if she wasn't trying to get herself killed before she had to fulfill her promise. It would at least sort of look like she was trying to further Oblivion's plans, except whoops, she overreached a bit and now she's dead. Darn, guess she won't be able to kill the Avatar of Life after all.

Which brings me to another question: Why did she strike Warlock down when she did? Why not before he cast the spell that halted the Fault? The Fault would destroy everything, which I'm presuming is what Oblivion was shooting for, so shouldn't she have stopped that from happening? Or maybe Oblivion knew what striking Warlock down would lead to, and having Magus in charge of the Universal Church of Truth is actually a better path.

Could Oblivion simply have been working to restore balance? Maelstrom said that when Drax killed Death's Champion (Thanos) it tipped the balance too far in favor of life, and that too much life can lead to an end just as easily as too much death. Was Oblivion manipulating events to correct that, by turning a champion of life (Adam Warlock), into a champion of Death (Magus)? Would that be a goal of the Magus? I've never actually read any comics he was in, so I'm not clear on what his goals have been historically. He's not really Warlock's evil opposite, he's just Warlock's evil in a separate form, because warlock cast all good and evil out of his soul.