How a Celestial’s Head Became Knowhere

Knowhere wasn’t always a city.

Long before the Guardians of the Galaxy ever used it as a base, it was the severed head of a Celestial – and in Marvel Comics, Knull was the one who cut it off.

Knull Went to War With the Celestials

According to Knull’s comic-book origin, he existed in the primordial darkness before the universe took its current form. Then the Celestials arrived and began spreading the “Light of Creation.”

Knull hated it.

So he created a living weapon from his own darkness and attacked them. Marvel describes Knull as waging war against the Celestials after they disturbed his endless void.

During that war, Knull managed to do something almost unimaginable:

he decapitated a Celestial.

The Severed Head Became Knull’s Forge

The other Celestials retaliated by banishing Knull deeper into the Void, but the giant severed head went with him.

Instead of abandoning it, Knull used the Celestial’s remaining cosmic energy as a forge.

Inside the dead god’s head, he refined his living blade into All-Black the Necrosword — the same weapon that would eventually fall into the hands of Gorr the God Butcher. Venom (2018) #4 later established that this exact severed Celestial head would eventually decay and become Knowhere.

So before Knowhere became a space station, it was basically Knull’s workshop inside the corpse of a Celestial he had personally killed.

Then Knull Lost All-Black

Knull continued traveling across the universe and killing gods with All-Black.

Eventually, he fought another god and crash-landed on Gorr’s unnamed homeworld. While Knull lay incapacitated, Gorr took All-Black, beginning his own transformation into the God Butcher. Marvel directly connects this encounter to Thor: God of Thunder #6.

Knull eventually moved on and created an entire race of symbiotes, while the Celestial head he had left behind remained floating through space.

Over an enormous amount of time, that corpse decayed.

And eventually, others moved in.

The Corpse Eventually Became Knowhere

By the modern Marvel era, almost nothing remains of the Celestial’s original identity.

Its gigantic skull became Knowhere, an inhabited outpost at the edge of the universe. The Guardians of the Galaxy eventually established their base there, with Marvel explicitly describing Knowhere as an ancient Celestial’s detached head.

So Knowhere’s origin is much darker than the movies initially make it seem.

It wasn’t simply a Celestial that happened to die in space.

In the comics, Knull killed it, cut off its head, used the corpse to forge one of Marvel’s deadliest weapons, and then abandoned it.

Billions of years later, people built a city inside what was left.

That city became Knowhere.

One important distinction: this is the Marvel Comics origin revealed through Knull’s mythology. The MCU has confirmed that Knowhere is a dead Celestial’s head, but it has not confirmed that MCU Knull was responsible for killing that Celestial.