Jeff Goldblum portrays the character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Thor: Ragnarok (2017) and in a cameo during the closing credits of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.

[3] Although his exact origin is unknown, he is one of the oldest living beings in the universe, coming from one of the first intelligent races to evolve after the Big Bang.

Death suggested he use the heroes' lives instead, but, unwilling to break his promise to never again manipulate them, he instead sacrificed his own life to resurrect the Collector.

[8] The Grandmaster returned from beyond his grave to plague the East and West Coast Avengers during one of their annual games of baseball, reasoning that, since he was dead, he was free from his vow to leave Earth's heroes in peace.

After he and the Collector tricked the teams into battling each other, the Grandmaster succeeded in his true plan: to capture Lady Death and usurp her powers.

He forced the Avengers to participate in a competition with the Legion of the Unliving in order to stop a series of powerful bombs, the fate being all of creation.

As the Grandmaster was preparing to force the pair to fight the Legion again, Hawkeye convinced him to lay it all on the line with one last game of pure chance.

This incident is what led Death to ban the Elders from dying, confirmed by the Grandmaster in the issue's final panels, just before he expresses interest in the Avengers' renewed baseball game.

[18] The Grandmaster later recreated his Squadron Sinister, with new incarnations of members Doctor Spectrum and Hyperion, to contend against Baron Helmut Zemo's Thunderbolts.

He has been using this Squadron to destroy several sources of extra-dimensional energy, known collectively as the "Universal Wellspring", apparently to prevent Zemo from controlling them.

[20] The Grandmaster returns, promising the Hulk the revival of his long-lost love, Jarella (though this has been thought in the past to be beyond his powers), if he participates in a battle to the death with a team of his choice.

However, the Grandmaster takes them from different points in time (specifically, moments when their greatest loves were lost to them), and sets them against a team gathered by the Collector called the Offenders (which is composed of Red Hulk, Baron Mordo, Tiger Shark, and Terrax).

[23] Eight months after the "Secret Wars" storyline as part of the "All-New, All-Different Marvel," the Grandmaster competes against Collector on Battlerealm (a location which is made up of the remnants of Battleworld) in a new Contest of Champions with the prize being an artifact called the Iso-Sphere.

[24] During the "No Surrender" arc, Grandmaster forms his version of the Lethal Legion to go up against Challenger's Black Order in a contest that involves Pyramoids.

[30] It has been implied that the Grandmaster can, and in some cases has, used highly advanced technology to augment his abilities and perform feats that might be normally beyond him.

The Grandmaster possesses a cosmic life force which renders him virtually immortal, including immunity to aging, disease, poison, and imperviousness to conventional injury through regeneration of any damage.

He can utilize his cosmic life force for a variety of effects, including levitation, the projection of blasts of cosmic energy, teleportation across space and time and alternate dimensions, adjusting his size, control time to interact with beings moving at superhuman speed, or transformation and rearrangement of matter on a planetary scale.

[citation needed] The Grandmaster appears in media set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), portrayed by Jeff Goldblum.