Thanks to the success of Marvel movies, fans the world over know that Thanos has plenty of "children" to call his own. Gamora and Neubla are his adopted daughters, and his notorious Black Order are classified as even more "children" in Avengers: Infinity War. But in the comics, one child of Thanos stands apart from the rest of his more.... metaphorical offspring.
Thanos has just one verified, living, biological child named Thane -- who takes after his father in more ways than one. Needless to say, fans of Marvel movies will be quick to hope that Thane is a logical next choice for villain in the new MCU. But even if some elements of Thane's story do overlap with the confirmed future of the MCU, his story is his own. And to know it, fans need to understand just where he came from.
Long before Thane tried to kill Thanos in recent comics, the boy first appeared in New Avengers Vol 3 #10 back in 2013, making him a relatively new character in the Marvel universe. When a group of Inhumans come into conflict with Thanos, one of the Inhuman women returns home carrying Thanos’ child. When Thanos learns he has a long-lost son, he begins scouring the universe to find him, disguising his mission as standard universal conquest. Thanos demands offerings of all the boys from ages 16 to 22--the estimated age range of his son--from the planets he invades in the hopes of finding him.
Thanos’s search eventually leads him to Earth, where Ebony Maw manages to find Thane, but the boy has not yet been exposed to Terrigenesis--the process by which the Inhumans activate their abilities. Once he is, Thane’s appearance changes from that of a normal human to the purple-skinned look of his father. Maw proceeds to trap Thane, and when Thanos arrives, he tells Thane he plans to kill him. Family reunions are the worst.
However, when the Avengers arrive to stop Thanos, Maw decides to release Thane as a way of testing his abilities. Thane defeats his father by using his powers to trap him in an amber construct, leaving him in a perpetual state of “living death." Maw then becomes a sort of mentor to Thane and trains him with the goal of making him better than Thanos ever was. Thane later reappears in the Thanos series from 2017, where he unites with Death herself to try and kill his father once and for all after Thanos escapes his amber prison. With the help of Death, Thane becomes the new host for the Phoenix Force, but he is ultimately defeated by Thanos. Needless to say, it would be impossible to directly adapt Thane’s origin story to the MCU... now that both Ebony Maw and Thanos are dead, and the Inhumans TV series was cancelled. But that doesn’t mean Thane won’t be introduced at all.
With the Mad Titan gone, the MCU is in need of a new grand villain, and who better to fill Thanos’ shoes than his son? It’s also been reported that the Inhumans may be rebooted into the MCU with the upcoming Ms. Marvel TV series, which could pave the way for Thane. And who knows? Maybe Maw managed to survive being blasted into space (plot-critical villains have come back from more certain fates, especially in the MCU to date). Maw returning to mentor a young Thane into becoming the next major antagonist of the MCU could be both interesting and comics accurate.
It would be a nice change of pace to see the villain have to work his way up, as opposed to Thanos, who was already an accomplished intergalactic warlord by the time he first appeared on the big screen. Also, with the X-Men set to join the MCU in Phase 4, Thane acquiring the Phoenix Force could be a good way to tie everything together down the line.