The superheroes of the MCU have many enemies, but some of their strangest battles have been against other versions of themselves. In recent MCU movie and TV properties, MCU heroes battling alternate universe doppelgängers have become rather frequent, although they usually are a way to showcase a hero’s character development by having them contend with a less mature counterpart or one who made different choices, resulting in a drastically different path. The winners of these fights can make fascinating statements about a character’s multi-film journey by not only showing who is victorious but how they’re victorious.
A common complaint with the Marvel movies, particularly in the early phases of the MCU, is that the heroes are well-defined but their villains are bland by comparison. Numerous MCU supervillains disprove this point, with the Green Goblin, Thanos, Doctor Octopus, Xu Wenwu, and many others being the best possible counterarguments. Throughout the MCU’s crossover films, however, superheroes often fight each other due to factors like misunderstandings, mind control, or a heroic character initially opposing their eventual allies. In Captain America: Civil War, the duplicitous Helmut Zemo engineers a conflict between two ideological groups within the Avengers, resulting in a massive battle between them in an airport and a more personal fight between Iron Man and Captain America in the third act.
Beginning with Avengers: Endgame, time travel and alternate realities became increasingly prominent in the MCU, resulting in superheroes fighting their own multiverse counterparts or themselves from other points in their timelines. As with previous superhero fight sequences, the matchups are often expressions of the heroes’ internal struggles as they fight counterparts who made significantly different moral choices, past versions of themselves with different loyalties, artificial doppelgängers, or even alternate personalities in one case. Even without factoring in MCU multiverse variants, the winner of each fight often determines which iteration of an MCU hero made the right choices or what the current version of a character has learned over the years. Here's every MCU superhero who has fought themselves.
Captain America vs Captain America – Avengers: Endgame
A few of the Avengers travel back in time to 2012 to steal three Infinity Stones during the Battle of New York. The plan hits one of several snags when Captain America runs afoul of his 2012 counterpart, who believes that he’s Loki in disguise. Since Captain America’s past self has no idea who he’s truly fighting, he gradually gains the upper hand on his mainstream counterpart, until the latter distracts him with the revelation that Bucky is still alive, allowing present-day Captain America to incapacitate the 2012 version with the Mind Stone. Captain America is well-known for fighting honorably, but his arguably underhanded way of defeating his past self (as well as his deception when taking the Mind Stone from Hydra agents) shows that he's become open to compromises under the right circumstances.
Nebula vs Nebula – Avengers: Endgame
Although Nebula doesn’t fight her 2014 self in the strictest sense, she has two violent interactions with her in Avengers: Endgame. Upon being captured by this alternate 2014’s Thanos, the current, reformed Nebula is brutally beaten by her past self, who remains loyal to her abusive adopted father. Although the present-day Nebula tries to appeal to her past counterpart’s potential for redemption (which she herself embodies), she ultimately kills her 2014 counterpart. It was a shocking but necessary scene, with present-day Nebula knowing how devoted she’d been to Thanos at the time and proving that, despite her timeline’s Thanos praising her in his final moments, she no longer harbored loyalty to the Mad Titan.
Loki vs Sylvie (Loki Variant) – Loki
There are numerous Loki variants in the Loki Disney+ series, and the God of Mischief from Endgame’s alternate 2012 becomes an ally of Sylvie, a Loki variant who seeks revenge on the Time Variance Authority (TVA) for ruining her life. When Loki and Sylvie finally discover the true power behind the TVA, He Who Remains, the two fight over the decision to either kill him or oversee the TVA in his place. By this point, Loki has changed significantly, aware of his demise in Avengers: Infinity War and having shed his megalomaniacal tendencies over the course of the series. Loki ultimately loses his fight with Sylvie because he lets his guard down in an attempt to prove his trustworthiness to her, but Sylvie simply cannot trust anybody, even her variant, so she betrays him, sending him through a time door and killing He Who Remains.
Vision vs White Vision – WandaVision
Two replicas of Vision fight each other in WandaVision, with the first being a creation of Wanda Maximoff’s Chaos Magic and the second, known as White Vision, being manufactured by SWORD and activated by the same magic. Programmed to destroy Wanda and her Vision, White Vision, who lacks the original’s memories, attacks them both and becomes locked in a stalemate with Wanda’s Vision. Rather than defeat White Vision in combat, Vision convinces him that they are both worthy (and equally unworthy in a sense) of being considered the original Vision, and Wanda’s replica shares his memories with White Vision, causing him to abandon his SWORD directive. This is a fitting victory for Wanda’s version of Vision, as he used his own sense of logic to defuse his melee with the SWORD version, turning the latter into an ally and allowing himself to become truly reborn.
Scarlet Witch vs Wanda - Doctor Strange 2
The mainstream MCU timeline’s Scarlet Witch doesn’t directly fight the Wanda Maximoff of Earth-838, but she does use the cursed power known as Dreamwalking to take over her alternate universe counterpart in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Although powerful, Earth-838’s Wanda was no match for the Earth-616 version, who became the Scarlet Witch and fully unleashed her Chaos Magic, leaving the former powerless against her. Toward the end of the film, the two truly encounter each other without any possessions, and their fight is quite brief with the more powerful Scarlet Witch blasting her Earth-838 counterpart away. Earth-616’s Scarlet Witch is ultimately defeated not by force, but by the realization that her alternate universe children are terrified of her.
Doctor Strange vs Sinister Strange - Doctor Strange 2
The mainstream MCU’s Doctor Strange similarly battles a villainous multiverse counterpart with a mystical third eye in Doctor Strange 2 known as Sinister Strange. Sinister Strange, like the Scarlet Witch, studied the cursed Darkhold and became a master of its dark magic, making him more formidable than Doctor Strange. The heroic Strange didn’t beat Sinister Strange by overpowering him, however, but instead outsmarted him, detonating a concentrated combination of spells in front of Sinister Strange and sending him plummeting to a gruesome impalement outside of Sinister Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum.
The Hulk vs Bruce Banner - Multiple Movies
The Hulk and Bruce Banner don’t fight in a literal sense, but they constantly compete for control, with Banner only finally finding a compromise by the events of The Avengers, where he indirectly established that he constantly maintains a degree of anger, reducing the risk of Hulk being violent (via an unintended transformation). When transforming on his own terms, Banner ensures that Hulk fights the right beings, famously assisting the rest of the Avengers in their battle against Loki/the Chitauri. The two once again form a compromise in Endgame, where they finally combine into “Smart Hulk,” mixing Banner’s brains with The Hulk’s strength, seemingly ending their feud for good in the MCU.
