Marvel has no shortage of outstanding villains. Like the best heroes, they come from all walks of life. They can be someone on the street who just wants to lash out at society or interdimensional beings intent on destroying the cosmos themselves. There are no limits to the range of power that villains can have in the Marvel Universe. However, sometimes that can be tricky to interpret in cinematic terms.
There are dozens and dozens of heroes in the MCU at this point and, therefore, dozens of villains as well. This universe is getting exponentially bigger on screen as each new movie and TV show releases. Because of this ever-expanding number of characters, there’s no better time to look at some of the most powerful Marvel villains as well as the weakest that the MCU currently has to offer.
In this list, the villains too powerful for the MCU will come from the pages of the comics themselves, whereas we’ll be drawing from the movies and shows of the MCU to date to look at the characters that are potentially too weak to really pose much of a threat. Sometimes, a villain can be a great threat to one single character, but not to the Marvel Universe as a whole.
It’s tough to balance a rich world like this with characters that present a real and lasting threat. Marvel has been great at it so far, but the villains on this list represent both sides of a delicate spectrum.
Here are the 15 Villains Too Powerful For The MCU (And 15 Current Villains Who Are Way Too Weak).
30. Too Powerful: The Beyonder
The Beyonder is the cosmic being that plucked the greatest heroes and villains of the Marvel Universe to pit them against one another in the ultimate battle of good and evil, just to see who would win, in the classic Secret Wars.
While that might be a cornerstone Marvel story, this character’s god-like level of power would make him unmatched if he were to appear in the MCU.
Because of that, the universe will have to continue on without him and without a direct adaptation of Secret Wars for the foreseeable future.
29. Too Weak: Shocker
Shocker is a great character, the everyman villain of the Marvel Universe. Things never really go well for him. He’s become something of a joke because of how often Spider-Man foils his plans. In the MCU, this character’s already been somewhat disposable.
The first Shocker was destroyed and passed the mantle on to another just during the span of Spider-Man: Homecoming. He’s so street level and largely unsuccessful in everything that he does, that there’s really not a place for him in the MCU, especially considering that the MCU’s Shocker didn’t even design his weapons on his own and has no idea how to upgrade them.
28. Too Powerful: Galactus
Many fans would love to see Galactus once the Fox characters are integrated into the MCU, especially after Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer infamously depicted the villain as a giant cloud. However, he would provide a real challenge for the MCU.
He’s an enormous and unstoppable cosmic entity, not to mention the fact that his near-destruction of Earth would be too similar to events that have already been seen in the MCU. When Galactus first came to Earth in the comics, it was a huge deal because it was the first real Marvel event. However, there have already been bigger events in the MCU dealing with villains who aren’t even as powerful.
27. Too Weak: Whiplash
No one is necessarily expecting this character to make a return, considering the fact that Mickey Rourke has been very publicly outspoken against just how much he hated working with Marvel. Nonetheless, Whiplash was a seriously underwhelming villain who never posed too great of a threat.
He had so little impact that the final fight with him in Iron Man 2 felt much more like an afterthought than any kind of main event.
While definitely an intelligent character, there was no point in the movie that he actually felt like any kind of real, physical threat to Tony Stark.
26. Too Powerful: Mephisto
Mephisto might potentially be in the Marvel Cinematic Universe somewhere, considering that there have already been at least three Ghost Riders, but he’s never been introduced outright and it’s possible that the MCU’s version of Ghost Rider could still take a completely different route.
As it stands, this character is way too powerful to make his way into the MCU in its current form. He’s Marvel’s own Devil and his skills for deal making are unmatched. The problem is that these deals can result in not only great loss for the heroes of Marvel, but retcons like One More Day that fans have come to loathe.
25. Too Weak: Kaecilius
While not an overly memorable character, Kaecilius worked well enough for Doctor Strange because the titular hero was still training and figuring out his powers. But ultimately, Kaecilius was just a messenger for the real threat, Dormammu.
While he drew power from the dark dimension, that was Kaecilius’s only real strength, and there was nothing to suggest that he was really any better at it than any of his followers. Doctor Strange and Wong have both already seemed to surpass the level of power that Kaecilius displayed in the film.
24. Too Powerful: Lady Death
Many fans were expecting, or at least hoping, to see Death in Infinity War because of her ties to Thanos. However, that obviously didn’t happen.
In the comics, Thanos was in love with Death to the point that he would eliminate half the cosmos just to please her, and when that didn’t impress her, he made a female version of himself to be his companion just to make Lady Death jealous.
This really couldn’t have been directly adapted to film. At the end of the day, Death is the living embodiment of unshakable mortality and too powerful to really have a part to play within the MCU.
23. Too Weak: Nightshade
Reimagining Nightshade as Mariah Dillard’s daughter was a great move for the second season of Luke Cage, especially as raw as that relationship turned out to be, with Mariah explaining that while she was capable of love, she would never be able to feel that for her own daughter.
By the end of the season, Nightshade came into her own, but her strength is essentially just poisoning people, which wouldn’t cut it with most heroes in the MCU. Tony Stark has something built into the Iron Man suit to automatically deal with poison and stronger characters might be completely immune to it.
22. Too Powerful: Molecule Man
Molecule Man has the power to reshape all of reality to his will and, if he wanted to, he could destroy it just as easily. While not one of the most talked about villains in the Marvel Universe, he is definitely one of the most powerful. His unstable powers and even sometimes unstable mental state make him a huge risk.
There’s no telling what he’d be capable of if really focused all of his concentration into something. If this character ever made it into the MCU movies, the threat he would pose would be staggering, even to Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. Because of that, it’s likely he’ll continue to remain on the comic page.
21. Too Weak: The Tinkerer
The Tinkerer was a surprising, old-school Spider-Man villain to make his way into Spider-Man: Homecoming. In the movie, he served a great purpose, designing tech for the Vulture and the Shocker, as well as designing all of the tools they needed to pull off their various heists.
However, as a villain, Tinkerer isn't exactly powerful.
He never even shared a scene with Spider-Man in the movie and if he had, he’d have been taken out in one punch. There’s really no hero in the MCU that Tinkerer would be able to pose much of a threat to on his own.
20. Too Powerful: Onslaught
With the X-Men posing to finally make their way into the MCU, it’s worth looking at what characters could be picked for future films that haven’t necessarily been seen before. One of the most powerful X-Villains ever, Apocalypse, has already made it to the big screen. Going more powerful than that might be a mistake.
Onslaught, for example, probably wouldn’t work within the MCU. A psionic cross between Professor X and Magneto, Onslaught nearly destroyed the Marvel Universe as a whole and briefly spelled the end of both the Avengers and the Fantastic Four.
19. Too Weak: Turk
Turk is a low-level thug and that’s all he’s ever been. He’s fought to survive on the seedy street corners and back alleys of the MCU, appearing in nearly all of the Marvel Netflix shows to date. He’s almost identical to his comic counterpart, but as a villain, he might be too powerless for the MCU.
New York nearly got destroyed a couple of times over at this point, and it’s almost surprising that Turk wasn’t taken out by fallen debris. Even in his own little dark corner of the Marvel Universe, it’s surprising that he hasn’t met his end at the hands of the Punisher.
18. Too Powerful: Tyrant
An enemy of the Silver Surfer, Tyrant is another immensely powerful cosmic being. It’s impossible to imagine that he would ever really make it into the MCU, but if he did he’d be a nearly impossible threat to beat.
Tyrant is a living machine created by Galactus in his own image and gifted the full range of the power cosmic, something that the almost unstoppable Silver Surfer possesses only a fraction of.
The only way to defeat him is for Galactus to strip him of that power and if that weren’t to happen, it would spell the end of the universe.
17. Too Weak: Aldritch Killian
The end of Iron Man 3 bizarrely tried to give Killian credit for being the “real” Mandarin, though the Marvel One Shot “Hail to the King” disproved that brief claim. While Killian is the main villain of Iron Man 3, he’s no more powerful than anyone else with Extremis in their bodies.
It takes a bit more to defeat him in Iron Man 3, but one well placed missile does the trick. Killian isn’t one of the more well remembered MCU villains and though his plan was ambitious, he didn’t wind up posing that huge of a threat. He appeared to be completely destroyed too, so it seems unlikely he’ll ever be popping up again.
16. Too Powerful: Zom
Zom is an extra-dimensional being of immense power. He claims that he was created simply to destroy life, but the interesting thing about him is that the methods and circumstances of his creation are actually completely unknown.
Nobody really knows that much about Zom or where he comes from. They only know that he is incredibly hard to defeat and is capable of unleashing devastating amounts of destruction. If Zom made it into the MCU, the threat would be extremely hard to overcome, even with the heroes assembled on the screen so far.
15. Too Weak: Malekith
Malekith, leader of the Dark Elves, made his debut in Thor: The Dark World, where he also seemingly met his end. There’s been no further appearance of the character since that time. Christopher Eccleston has been extremely outspoken against Marvel and his time working on the movie, so it’s hard to imagine he would ever return.
Fans aren’t exactly clamoring to see him come back, either, as the villain has widely been perceived as the most underwhelming MCU antagonist to date.
While highly skilled, he didn’t pose that great of a physical threat to Thor when it came down to their final battle.
14. Too Powerful: The Void
The Void is a nightmarish entry that is essentially an alternate personality of the extremely powerful hero, Sentry. The Void can only really be stopped by Sentry regaining control. No matter how powerful the other heroes, their powers cannot do anything to contain this nightmare entity.
This villain would be too complicated for the MCU for several reasons. It’s unlikely that Sentry would ever make his way into the movies, and The Void couldn’t exist without him, for one thing. But both of them are just too powerful for the movies as they currently exist. Sentry could solve any problem thrown at them, and the threat of The Void would be too big a liability for the team.
13. Too Weak: Iron Monger
The ending of Iron Man seemed to suggest that Iron Monger somehow survived his fall and was taken into S.H.I.E.L.D. custody. While it’s possible that Jeff Bridges would want to return at some point in the future, it’s also incredibly unlikely.
With the way Stark’s tech has advanced with over forty suits since the one he fought Iron Monger in, the battle would be over in seconds. Iron Monger would not last a minute against the Iron Man that fans now know, and he was not a young man when he first donned the suit a decade ago.
12. Too Powerful: Mangog
Like many of the most powerful Thor villains, Mangog was initially defeated by Odin before being banished. He and his race attempted to invade Asgard and so he became imprisoned beneath it. Mangog is the last surviving member of his race.
Mangog is a big and brutal creature and his ultimate plan is extremely simple. He seeks to wield the Odinsword, which has the power to end the universe.
Why Odin would even have a sword capable of ending the universe is another matter, but with its power, Mangog would bring an end to everything. After the devastating loss seen in Infinity War, this would almost be too huge a threat.
11. Too Weak: Abomination
It’s surprising to even think about, but Abomination is ultimately too weak for the MCU. Many weren’t overly thrilled by his appearance in The Incredible Hulk, but the character still remains alive and has been referenced multiple times on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.
It’s hard to imagine that this character would ever make another appearance in the MCU. Hulk was evenly matched with Abomination when they fought and has only drastically increased in strength since then. It’s hard to imagine Hulk being nervous for this fight after fighting the likes of the Chitauri and Surtur.