Before we begin - major MCU spoiler alerts for this video.
You’ve been warned.
Now that Thanos has snapped his fingers and half of all living beings have been dusted,
it’s hard to imagine any of the past MCU antagonists being much of a threat.
But once Thanos is out of the way - here’s hoping?
- whoever steps up to the plate next has some titan sized shoes to fill.
While it’s likely that the MCU will integrate a new big bad - hopefully of galactic proportions,
if you know what I mean - it’s likely that the films throughout phase 4 and phase 5 may
feature some familiar fiends that are alive and kicking - or, at least, to our knowledge.
Who knows who else could’ve been dusted?
So, with all that mind, we’re jumping into speculation land with our list of the top
10 Marvel Villains Still Lurking in the MCU.
10 Zemo Helmut Zemo is one seriously dangerous man,
as we saw first hand in Captain America Civil War.
While he wasn’t responsible for instigating the Accords that initially caused the rift
between the members of the Avengers, he fuelled the fire, setting Iron Man and Captain America
against one another.
Zemo, unlike his white supremacist counterpart in the comics, sought revenge after the events
of the Battle of Sokovia, where he lost his family in the destruction and chaos.
Like many others, he blamed the Avengers.
Zemo assassinated T’chaka, the King of Wakanda at the time, and framed Bucky Barnes as responsible
- Steve Rogers came to his defense, whereas Tony Stark, who had signed the Accords, wanted
him caught.
This unraveled the team, with members having to choose a side, and ultimately led to them
facing off against one another.
Later, Zemo lured Cap, Bucky, and Tony into his trap to reveal that Bucky had been the
one who killed Tony’s parents, and you can imagine how Stark took that bit of news.
Where we last left off with Zemo, T’Challa had prevented the character from committing
suicide, leading to him being locked up in a containment cell at the HQ of the Joint
Counter-Terrorist Centre.
When Everett Ross mocks him about his plan failing, Zemo responds with, “Did it?”
And he’s spot on - it really didn’t fail, to the point where in Infinity War, Tony still
hasn’t made up with Cap.
Although now that both heroes are on separate planets and half of the universe is now dead,
they may see beyond their differences.
Regardless, a mastermind like Zemo is not a threat to be taken lightly - his mind is
what makes him so deadly - and we wouldn’t be surprised if he popped up in the MCU in
the future.
9 Justin Hammer Hammer first appeared in Iron Man 2 as a supporting
villain, trying to make use of Whiplash to get the upper hand on Tony Stark.
While the character came off as more of a nuisance than a threat, Hammer has been spending
a whole lot of quality time with himself - and a much younger boyfriend - in a prison cell,
and he definitely has a bone to pick with Stark.
His last name though is what interests us the most - during the Dark Reign and Siege
story arcs between 2008 and 2010, Norman Osborn created an organization by the name of HAMMER,
which replaced SHIELD.
Since SHIELD has fallen in the MCU, it’d be curious to see if Justin were to return,
or if Osborn popped up in the MCU, if HAMMER would come into play.
8 Ronan the Accuser - making a return in Captain Marvel
You’re probably thinking, wait, what?
Ronan the Accuser is dead, fool!
Yes, that’s true, he was killed off in Guardians of the Galaxy vol 1.
But the character makes this list because he’s actually making a return to the MCU
in the upcoming Captain Marvel film, which is set in the 90’s.
This should be interesting, since Ronan is Kree, and we know that the original Captain
Marvel, Mar-Vell, will be in the film, portrayed by Jude Law.
How he’ll fit into the mix is curious, but many suspect that it will address the Kree
Skull war plot from the comics, and perhaps dive deeper into the Kree-Nova War, too.
While we don’t know how large of a role Ronan will play, many fans are hoping that
he’ll have a bit of a better characterization - some felt that the film didn’t really
do him justice.
Although he did give us this fantastic moment in the films, and then this even better moment
that, for obvious reasons, didn’t make the cut.
7 Baron Mordo In Doctor Strange’s debut MCU film, Baron
Mordo is an ally of his rather than an antagonist.
While the two have very different perspectives - and Mordo ends up going separate ways from
Strange by the end of it, disillusioned after learning that the Ancient One had been pulling
energy from the Dark Dimension.
In the comics, it’s Mordo who wants to kill the Ancient One and wants to become Sorcerer
Supreme, and even at times, he worked with Dormammu.
In the film, during the post credit scene, we see Mordo visit Jonathan Pangborn - the
man who led Strange to the Ancient One in the first place - and he steals his energy,
stating that Earth has too many sorcerers.
It’s safe to assume that Mordo could return if Doctor Strange gets a sequel and that he’s
on a mission to stop magic from ‘perverting’ the natural order of things.
6 Frost Giants We were first introduced to the Frost Giants
in the first Thor film.
From the planet Jotunheim, one of the nine realms, they came into conflict with Asgard
after invading Earth - specifically, Norway.
They were crucial to Loki’s plan to deceive Asgardians - and his father Odin - into believing
that he rightfully deserved the throne - by double-crossing the Frost Giant’s king and
his biological father, Laufey.
Thor gets in the way of this and destroys the Bifrost Bridge, and in doing so, actually
ensured the survival of the Frost Giants, and they’re shown again the prelude comic
to Thor The Dark World as noting that the nine realms were slipping into chaos.
The very last mention we saw of them in the MCU was in the Collector’s Museum on Knowhere,
where the Collector had gotten his hands on a specimen of one.
From what we know, their species is on the decline, and ever since the events of the
first Thor film, they’re a pretty much-broken race.
And they have a bone to pick with the Asgardians, for sure.
While the two Asgardians they have the most beef with are now dead - Odin and Loki - we’re
sure they’re a desire for vengeance could easily be applied to Thor.
5 Zodiac Back when Iron Man 3 came out, on the blu
ray release, a one-shot short film was included on the disc, and it featured a story with
Agent Carter kicking some serious butt and getting her hands on something called the
Zodiac serum - a powerful and deadly liquid contained in avail with a symbol that looks
like the astrological Mercury symbol - that SHIELD would later say they destroyed, but
that a terrorist named Baker would discover still existed, and steal.
In Captain America: The Winter Soldier Infinite Comic, Captain America and Black Widow and
Crossbones apprehended Baker.
Now, in the comics, Zodiac is the name of a super-villain team, consisting of members
named after the astrological symbols.
Could this hint to a new team of villains somewhere down the line?
Likely not.
But there was one version of Zodiac who operated solo, during the Dark Reign story arc, who
was obsessed with ruling the criminal underworld.
4 Scorpion Scorpion is a villain ripe with potential,
primarily since we haven’t seen his full evolution into the character yet.
In the comics, Mac Garage is a Spider-Man villain who first appeared in The Amazing
Spider-Man issue 19 in 1964, and was a private investigator before becoming the test subject
of an experimental process that gave him his powers.
He’s outfitted with a club like tail, and he becomes quite the foe for Spidey, minus
the fact that the process has messed with his mind and made him insane.
In the MCU, he popped up in Spider-Man Homecoming, as a criminal associate of the Adrian Toomes’
Vulture, and in the mid-credits scene of the film, he’s really beat up and in prison
thanks to Peter.
He goes up to Toomes and says that he has friends on the outside who want to join forces
and kill Spider-Man, and inquires about whether or not Toomes knows his true identity.
Toomes denies it.
It seems incredibly likely that we’ll be seeing Mac as Scorpion in the Spider-Man sequel,
set to be released after Avengers 4.
3 The Mandarin When the Mandarin first appeared in Iron Man
3, fans were pretty disappointed.
It was revealed at the end of the film that he was all just a giant hoax.
But, then in the one-shot short film, All Hail the King and follows Trevor Slattery,
who posed as the Mandarin for Aldrich Killian, in a high-security prison, being filmed by
a documentary filmmaker named Jackson Norriss.
Norris turns out to be a member of the Ten Rings, a terrorist organization led by the
Mandarin and tries to kill Slattery for making a mockery of his name.
So that means that the real Mandarin is still out there, and who knows who he’ll affect
the MCU.
2 Grandmaster How could the MCU NOT bring back Jeff Goldblum?
Aside from that, the Grandmaster made for a great antagonist.
As an Elder of the Universe, he holds a whole lot of power, and despite having his subjects
turn on him in the Revolution during Thor Ragnarok, the Grandmaster was still alive
and kicking, or rather, trying to talk his way out of getting killed.
We have zero doubts that he’ll be making a return to the MCU in some way.
1 Red Skull Red Skull was the main villain in Captain
America the first Avenger.
And while we thought the character met his end there thanks to the Tesseract, he popped
up in Avengers Infinity War as the guardian of the Soul Stone on Vormir.
It was a cameo that surprised many a Marvel fan and answered any questions fans had about
where he was blasted off to - even though most figured he had just died.
Now that his spirit no longer has anything to guard, what has become of Red Skull?
One theory suggests that in Avengers 4, our remaining heroes will have to travel through
time, far enough back to obtain each of the Infinity Stones before Thanos can get his
hands on them.
And who will encounter Red Skull and the Soul Stone?
His nemesis Captain America.
There we have it, friends!
Which of these characters do you think is likely to return to the MCU?
Which ones would you prefer to never see again?
Let us know all of your thoughts in those comments!
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