Marvel Cinematic Universe Villains: Good to Evil
By Ayden Russell
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is one of the most popular… not to mention profitable..
film franchises of all time, with over 20 films spanning across a little over a decade.
The superheroes shown in them inspire and captivate audiences to this day…
Showing us the power of good and inspiring us to be better people...
But what about the villains?
There is a lot of evil in the MCU…
But how do they stack up?
If evil were a competition, we want to know who’s the grade-school-bully and who’s
truly the most awful, evil being to have been featured on the big screen.
I’m _______ with WickedBinge, and this is MCU Villains: Evil-to-Most Evil.
Now then, we’ll be starting with the least evil and working our way up the ladder to
see who sits atop as the most evil villain in the MCU.
So let’s start out with The Winter Soldier.
Making his debut in the aptly named film, is at the bottom of our list.
What with the cyborg arm and the Alex Mason style activation code, he’s just a really
cool villain…
Pun intended.
Bucky Barnes obviously doesn’t still carry the banner of villainous counterpart to captain
america, but his short span being a heel did stir up some drama in the MCU, culminating
in the Iron Man/Captain America dispute that breaks up the Avengers.
He’s really not that evil, since all of his villainy can be expunged with the whole
brainwashed thing.
The somewhat forgettable secondary antagonist of both The Incredible Hulk and Civil War,
Thunderbolt Ross is a forgettable pawn of the United States government, and unless you
consider taxes evil, then he isn't that bad.
Although we do hate paying taxes…
Sure, he authorizes lethal force against Bruce Banner and only stirs tension amongst the
Avengers, but he’s kinda just doing his job, and there’s no overtly sinister intentions,
so he doesn’t really rank all too bad... certainly when compared to the rest of the
list..
Ant-Man and the Wasp was the anticipated sequel to the widely popular Ant-man, obviously,
and one of it’s ‘villains’ was Ghost.
She, like others before her, doesn’t have bad intentions.
She actively was a nuisance in the plans of Hank Pym, but she only wanted to be cured
from her lovecraftian-style quantum degenerative disorder.
Once Ant-Man agrees to help cure her by refueling capsules of quantum energy for her to harness,
she steps off the pedal.
It may also be noteworthy that she has had a pretty traumatic childhood...
Even for a Marvel character her background is dark.
Moving onto The Mandarin.
No, not the small orange.
There are technically two mandarins’ on this list since two people occupy the role
in the MCU, but the second one we’ll get to later.
We’re talking about Trevor Slattery, the paid actor who is merely a pawn for the real
Mandarin.
He grossly overestimates what money and fame are worth after selling his face to the Ten
Rings terrorist organization and becoming the TV anarchist superstar that taunts Iron
Man on the daily, but other than the close association to the group, he doesn’t do
anything overtly negative, so he’s mostly in the clear.
Next up, Helmut Zemo, a very sad man with very sad, but very reasonable motives.
The family-less terrorist with a bone to pick with the Avengers is somewhat justified in
his efforts to try to tear apart the avengers from the inside.
Wherever he sees hate and evil in the world, it seems that it only gets worse when the
avengers get involved.
His government, homeland and family are all destroyed in part by their actions, so as
far as a villain goes, he has understandable motives.
However, blowing up buildings, brainwashing people and organizing kill squads is not a
reasonable reaction to these events.
Sorry man, hope you get the help you need <3
The coolest villains seem to be the ones that are reasonable i think, because now we’re
on to the Vulture.
He only wanted money and security for his family, and the fact that he had to steal
Chitauri weaponry and sell it on the black market to do so is just collateral damage
to him.
Sure, it obviously isn't the right thing to do, but he had a daughter to raise and wanted
the best for her.
Threatening teenagers and armed robbery is a big no-no though.
Most Marvel fans agree that Abomination was a pretty bad villain, just not on the villainy
scale.
His entire motivation was hating Bruce Banner, and he had no real long term plans other than.
Going on a rampage through NYC was a small side effect of the super soldier serum he
took, but he didn't seem to be under complete control of his actions there.
Other than reckless behavior, arrogance, and a lust for power brought on in part by these
experimental therapies, he is just a soldier doing his duty to capture a fugitive.
Iron Man 2, arguably one of the least entertaining movies in the MCU features Whiplash.
We'll make this short, he’s a criminal that wants money, he is paid to make weaponry to
fight iron man, he loses, he dies, crime never pays kids.
Sonny Burch is the really forgettable evil-ish antagonist of Ant Man and The Wasp.
I Couldn't remember who he was, what he did or what happened to him despite watching this
movie twice sooooooo it kind of speaks volumes about how evil he is.
Like many others, he likes money.
He's a shady black market guy who tries to steal all of Hank Pym’s toys for profit,
so he gets put in time out big time.
Next up, Obadiah Stane, the second coolest bald villain in the MCU.
He did a stellar job of introducing top notch villainy to the universe and his almost sadistic
hatred of Tony Stark’s genius and rise to madness is deeply entertaining and terrifying.
At one point he torments Tony Stark after basically unplugging the dude’s life support.
Not very nice.
Next up we have the tragically underutilised Crossbones, thorn in the back of the establishment.
He gets pretty upset after Captain America drops a helicopter on him, so yeah, not fun.
He was a Hydra agent for most of his arc, but he did a little good in saving Captain
America once.
That does cold comfort, since later he dies suicide bombimg him, inadvertently starting
a lot of drama that unfolds of the reat of Civil War, since his bomb kills a lot of people
with the help of the Scarlett Witch.
Aldrich Killian is the twist villain that everybody saw coming, he gave off major Hans
from Frozen vibes.
He talks all smooth about filling people's brains with technology all elon musk style
but also operates a terrorist organization and gets cool fire powers with the purpose
of destroying Iron Man because he said something mean to him once.
Dude’s a literal psychopath, no debate there.
Moving our way deeper into darkness and evil… we have Klaue... a minor villain that plays
roles across several of the MCU films who cannot catch a break.
Everytime he teams up with someone in an attempt to steal or buy vibranium they end up betraying
him.
He’s a black market dealer who kills people, the sign of a not so good egg, and he also
steals resources from poor african countries to sell it to the robot overlords.
We’re at the stage where most of the people have no supernatural powers, but more raw
physical strength and/or a cool suit.
Yellow Jacket has one of the coolests suits, decked out with lasers and shrink rays.
He wants money, big surprise, but he hurts a lot of people to steal the Pym Particle
technology, including threatening Ant Man’s own child.
Bad guy, but what do you expect from a wasp.
Mysterio may not be the most evil on this list but boy was he cool, I mean the guy wears
a fishbowl on his head and still manages to look awesome.
He had an incredibles style Syndrome vibe going on in that he pretends to have superpowers
so that he can become really popular and make a profit.
His whole plan involves becoming the next iron man and ushering in a new age of superheros.
The least coolest Hydra agent in the MCU, Alexander Pierce is the more white collar
criminal with roots to the Nazi party.
While not the most impressive villain, his plan to kill 20 million people with shield
helicarriers in order to achieve peace through a new world order definitely kinda sucks especially
if you're one of the 20 million people.
Red Skull is a literal Nazi official, which may speak to why he is such a weirdo.
He doesn't really care about Hitler or Germany, however, and his position as the leader of
Hydra contrasts his allegiance to any nation.
His main goal is world domination, not ethnic cleansing, but still world domination is pretty
screwed up by itself.
He gets really close to dropping tesseract powered bombs on America and making a new
world order, but is spirited away by the Tesseract before it can happen.
Fan favorite Loki of Asgard was the MCU’s first major villain, starring in the first
of many Avengers films and sparking the fire that would lead to an interconnected franchise
of films.
In self banishment from his homeland of Asgard, he originally just wants his own place to
rule, mainly, earth.
Not many civilians actually die in his assault on New York, in fact he never even leaves
central Manhattan, but it was done in malice so that makes him evil.
He does some trickery here and there on Thor and eventually secures some redemption in
both Ragnarok and Infinity War, but his position in this list is fluid as we don't know what
shenanigans he may pull in his upcoming Disney+ series.
Onto the lesser known or cared about villain in Dr. Strange, Kaecilius.
Former Sorcerer turned baddie, he has his reasons to be my at the Ancient One, after
all, he's right, she does draw power from the dark dimension which makes her a hypocrite.
Where he goes wrong is where he sacrifices his entire planet to a chaotic elder deity
that is the literal incarnation of evil.
But you know, we all make mistakes sometimes.
Star evildoer of the overnight blockbuster sensation and Oscar nominated hit, Black Panther,
Killmonger is not happy with the global suppression of his race.
His creed is to liberate through funding insurgency and taking over Wakanda, and he spent his
entire life killing for the military to train.
Now, ‘liberating’ the oppressed does sound nice, but starting a race war for it is not
so nice.
Fighting imperialism with more imperialism isn’t likely the best solution.
Originally supposed to be a good guy, Ultron takes a turn for the worse real quick.
He didn't see a way to protect the planet without ridding it of what he thought were
it’s greatest destroyers: humans.
It makes sense that he thinks this, he’s kind of right, in a sense.
However, his method of saving the planet does not involve sitting down and talking to world
leaders and working out their differences, but instead creating an A.I. army and turning
a small european country into a meteor to cause a global extinction of all life on earth.
But you know, save the turtles i guess.
Hela is the literal incarnation of death itself and still isn't at the bottom of this list.
That speaks volumes about how terrible some people on this list are.
Hela is partly justified in her hatred of Odin and his kin, but her tyrannical rule
of Asgard and disregard for the value of human life makes it plainly clear that her real
desire is to just bring suffering upon the people that abandoned her.
The SUPREME Intelligence, unaffiliated with the clothing brand, is out to get the lonely
Skrull in your area.
Why exactly do they want to do this?
Because the Skrull are supposed to be one of the only races that could possibly be a
threat to the Kree people.
So the Kree make a big old computer to plan the systematic extermination of the Skrull
and make a big propaganda machine to mill out racist militant citizens.
Luckily with the help of Nick Fury and Captain Marvel, I stuck in the bicycle wheels of that
plan.
For now at least.
Next, we present to you, Ronan, the Accuser.
He wants to commit genocide too, just aginst entire planets at a time, indiscriminatly.
It’s pretty wild how close he gets too, literally inches away from killing every person
on Nova including every member of the Guardians of the Galaxy.
He is defeated the way most genocidal maniacs are, in a dance off.
What a legend.
To his probable disdain, this list isn’t perfectly balanced, since Thanos, the mad
titan himself, is not in the dead center of it.
The dude almost got away with potentially justifiable motives, as in infinity war, all
he wanted to do was eradicate half of all life, everywhere.
That sucks, and is obviously a terrible plan that involves needless suffering, as many
have pondered why he didnt just double all of the universe's resources if he wanted to
end suffering from overpopulation.
It was not to be though, since in Endgame he reveals a new plan to just destroy the
universe and make a new one from scratch, which is so much worse.
While Thanos is usually considered the end-all blockbuster villain, he actually isn’t the
worst on the list.
In fact, he’s not even in the top three.
Bronze medal of evil goes to Malekith, dark elf god-dude.
His motives are that he’s turned on by night or something?
They don’t really explain all that well why exactly he does what he does.
Anyway, his plan to bring total darkness to the 9 realms and destroy light itself, killing
everything in the universe for his pure enjoyment is halted by a Thor/Loki team up, and he doesn't
get to frolic through the night in a field of dead flowers.
In second place, Ego the human planet.
Kurt Russell’s brilliant performance of the arrogant, flamboyant celestial is made
short work by Starlord’s live for his mother.
Ego’s plan was to, unoriginally, end all life in the universe.
His motives were also pretty awful, he felt lonely, i guess?
Anyway, he wanted to get rid of all the ‘mortal’ life and become the dominant species of the
universe.
It’s a really stupid plan that doesnt make much sense, especially since he fell in love
with a mortal woman, proving that he isn’t above the normal people of the universe.
What a weirdo.
NUMBER ONE BABY, NOT EVEN CLOSE.
Gold goes to none other than Dormammu, the omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being
of absolute evil from Doctor Strange.
Where other villains limit themselves in destroying one measly universe, my man Dormammu goes
a cut above and successfully has destroyed several, just because he can.
His ultimate goal is to invade every world in every universe, dragging each of them into
his dark dimension.
He can literally only be stopped by using the abstract concept of time against him.
So what did you think?
Who do you think is the most evil MCY villain?
It’s a tough decision, we know.
Make sure to hit that notification bell and binge our full Good-to-Evil playlist.
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