Before Thanos could personally murder Thane, the Avengers arrived and confronted the Black Order. Maw secretly freed Thane and offered him the chance to flee or to embrace his destiny as Thanos’ son. Thane chose the latter and unleashed his powers to trap Thanos and Proxima Midnight in amber.
Pleased with his new protégé, Maw directed Thane to take a ship and leave the Earth behind to carve his own legacy in the stars. Maw also had Thane track down Trynka in order to relive Thanos’ war with Ego. Shortly thereafter, Maw and Thane became involved with J’Son of Spartax and his plans to use the Black Vortex to give himself and his followers cosmic powers. Thane was among those who submitted to the Black Vortex and emerged with even greater abilities than before.
The combined forces of the Guardians of the Galaxy and the X-Men ended J’Son’s ambitions for Spartax, but Maw and Thane remained free to pursue their own plans. They soon returned to the Black Quadrant, a territory in space that was firmly under the command of Thanos. In the Mad Titan’s absence, Corvus Glaive had turned it into his own empire. Maw and Thane’s attempt to unseat Glaive proved to be short-lived, as the boy was stripped of his powers and both were imprisoned.
Maw used his way with words to convince Glaive to free him, but he left Thane behind and made no attempt to rescue him. Several months later, Maw and Glaive were reunited with the other members of the Black Order as pawns of the Challenger. The Grandmaster assembled a new Lethal Legion to fight them, as he and the Challenger used Earth as their battleground. To make the game more interesting, several members of the Avengers were allowed to oppose both teams.
The Avengers proved to be more than a match for the Black Order, and they even defeated the Challenger himself. In the aftermath, the Grandmaster approached the Black Order as they pondered their next move. It is currently unknown if Maw or the other members of the Black Order accepted the Grandmaster’s offer to join him.