This Valentine’s Day, Marvel made it social media-official with the cast of the new Fantastic Four movie, formally introducing us to the First Family: Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and—wait a minute, who’s this little guy? Oh, that’s just H.E.R.B.I.E.
Marvel Entertainment shared an adorable piece of promo art featuring the cast of the new Fantastic Four movie, set to arrive on July 25, 2025. Pedro Pascal is Reed Richards, Vanessa Kirby is Sue Storm, Joseph Quinn is Johnny Storm, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach is Ben Grimm. The artwork calls back to the early days of the team and features retro costumes and details, including what looks like a copy of LIFE magazine in the Thing’s hands and a framed photo featuring him in human form as astronaut Ben Grimm. While these details are giving the internet plenty to chew on, we shouldn’t overlook the Fantastic Four’s little robot friend in the bottom-left corner:
That little guy is H.E.R.B.I.E., which stands for Highly Engineered Robot Built for Interdimensional Exploration. Back in January, Marvel reportedly began looking for an actor to voice the robot in the upcoming film.
H.E.R.B.I.E. was introduced in Fantastic Four #209, published by Marvel Comics in 1979, and he is exactly as described on the tin: He’s a highly engineered robot built for interdimensional exploration by Reed Richards, a.k.a. Mr. Fantastic himself. Richards created H.E.R.B.I.E. with the help of Master Xar, the brilliant scientist from the planet Xandar, with the goal of using the robot to locate the planet-eating supervillain Galactus. At the time, they hoped Galactus would help them destroy another bad guy: Sphinx.
H.E.R.B.I.E.’s story is actually kind of wild and reminiscent of J.A.R.V.I.S., the artificial intelligence developed by Tony Stark that eventually became Vision. In the Fantastic Four comics, the villain Doctor Sun transfers his consciousness to H.E.R.B.I.E. and uses the robot to do his dirty work before switching over to control the computer system in the Baxter Building, the headquarters of the Fantastic Four. H.E.R.B.I.E. ends up sacrificing himself by jumping into the computer system and destroying it, defeating Doctor Sun.
Now that the MCU has largely moved on from Tony Stark and Vision, it seems like H.E.R.B.I.E. could be filling a similar role. Given Marvel’s recent run of creative and commercial disappointments, it wouldn’t be surprising for the studio to return to the beginning of the MCU, revisiting the stories and concepts that made it so successful in the first place. Comic books do it all the time.
In Iron Man 2020, a series of comics published by Marvel in 2020, Valeria Richards—daughter of Reed and Sue Storm—liberates H.E.R.B.I.E. by removing the features that prohibited him from making his own choices. H.E.R.B.I.E. leaves the Fantastic Four and joins the AI Army to fight for robot liberation from Arno Stark (in this timeline, Arno is the brother Tony never knew about—it’s all very soapy), who uses the Stark company and its resources to oppress AI. That storyline seems particularly ripe for MCU adaptation, especially with growing concerns over the real-world proliferation of AI. Then again, the MCU tried a similar plot with Ultron, which wasn’t the biggest hit with fans.
(featured image: Marvel Entertainment)
