Marvel movies have been around for some time now, and viewers have gotten to know the villains that star in these films. In some cases, audiences come to love villains as much as they love the protagonists of these films. Occasionally, they’ll even love a villain even more than they like the main heroes.
The MCU has even introduced their fair share of villains ripped straight from the pages of the comics, but not all of them have been successful. In fact, there have been many cases where a Marvel villain has long overstayed their welcome.
10 Loki Has Died Many Times, But Never Stayed That Way
Even though Loki is a fantastic character, he is also a victim of a trope that too many comics properties, both on the page and in the silver screen, suffer from. He dies and comes back all the time. This frequently happens to characters in the comics.
In fact, it used to be said that only three people in the comics would stay dead: Uncle Ben, Jason Todd, and Bucky Barnes. Obviously, over the years, only one of those has even remained so (and even then, people still try to bring Uncle Ben back all the time). Loki may be great, but he makes death mean significantly less in the MCU than it would otherwise.
9 Thanos Showed Up Early & Never Stopped
After The Avengers was first released, a few fans were excited— and most were bewildered— to see Thanos’ appearance in the film’s post-credits scene. He truly seemed to appear out of nowhere.
From that point on, however, Thanos was the MCU’s main villain— the puppet master pulling the strings behind everything, it seemed at some points. The Infinity Saga became about defeating Thanos, which took up a lot of the time main heroes like Tony Stark and Steve Rogers had left in the franchise.
8 Red Skull Unexpectedly Returned After Everyone Thought He Was Done
Red Skull appeared early on in the MCU. He made his first appearance as the main antagonist fighting against Captain America in Captain America: The First Avenger. However, it seemed that he died in this film, and fans had no reason to believe this wasn’t true. In fact, it may still be true.
Despite this, Red Skull did appear in Infinity War and Endgame. It was completely unexpected that Red Skull returned at all; while it was interesting that Red Skull became a Stonekeeper, it was surprising that it was Red Skull, of all villains, who returned in this role.
7 Zemo Finished His Story Just To Come Back For More
Helmut Zemo had perhaps one of the MCU’s best arcs as a villain in Civil War. Even though the franchise hadn’t built up the dynamic between Tony and Steve to be quite powerful enough to carry this plot in the movies, the plot orchestrated by Zemo— and his reasoning behind it— were absolutely incredible.
After he was taken down by Black Panther at the end of the movie, fans didn’t anticipate his return to the MCU any time soon, if ever. However, Zemo will be appearing in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, proving that nobody ever leaves the MCU for very long.
6 Ronan Didn’t Need To Make Extra Appearances
Like many other Marvel villains, Ronan the Accuser was a great villain for his movie, and he didn’t really ever need to come back into the franchise. He fulfilled his role well, but the franchise struggles to move on, especially from its successes. As such, Ronan was brought back into the MCU fairly quickly, and reappeared as his younger self in Captain Marvel.
He even vowed in that movie that he would eventually come back to fight Captain Marvel; though this seems unlikely now, stranger things have happened in the MCU. It may be that fans haven’t even seen the last of Ronan in this franchise.
5 Mystique Has Held A Starring Role In Nearly Every X-Men Movie
Magneto is arguably the best villain of the X-Men movie franchise. However, at his side (almost) always, was Mystique, causing just as much mayhem as Magneto himself. Even when the franchise moved backwards into prequels that eventually rebooted the franchise, Mystique had a starring role.
If anything, Mystique got more of a role in the new timeline within the X-Men movie universe. She constantly went back and forth between the “good” guys and the “bad” guys, and has taken up a lot of space that could have been well-used by a number of other villains from the X-Men comics.
4 Ultron Overstayed His Welcome The Second He Arrived
Many fans were bewildered that the second Avengers team-up movie was Avengers: Age of Ultron. The “Age of Ultron” storyline is not considered to be one of the best in Marvel Comics history, so the fact that it was adapted so quickly into the franchise was a bit of a shock.
However, it was even more surprising that the MCU fumbled the story so badly. Age of Ultron is arguably the MCU’s worst movie, not just its worst team-up movie, and Ultron was poorly executed as a villain. He shouldn’t have shown up in the first place; the fact that he stuck around for a whole movie was just overstaying his welcome.
3 The Mandarin Just Hasn’t Been Handled Well In The MCU
Because the Mandarin is such a complex and popular villain from Marvel Comics, fans were wondering how, exactly, the character would translate to the silver screen. When it was revealed in Iron Man 3 that the Mandarin was not, in fact, the Mandarin, but just an actor, it was something of a letdown.
However, fans were so disappointed that Marvel released an MCU One-Shot called All Hail the King that stated that there was a real Mandarin— which has never been dealt with since. The MCU doesn’t know how to handle the Mandarin, but that doesn’t stop it from trying continuously.
2 HYDRA Has Been A Problem From The Beginning
HYDRA was introduced as a concept early on in the MCU, and has been used ever since as a nebulous villain. In fact, HYDRA is more of a scapegoat than anything.
For a while, HYDRA was used to push the bad guys onto the “bad government,” so the “good government” guys could come in and save the day. HYDRA pops up frequently as a problem in the MCU, especially in Captain America’s plotlines.
1 Thunderbolt Ross Never Refers To His Introductory Film
While Thaddeus Ross, perhaps better known as “Thunderbolt” Ross, was introduced in The Incredible Hulk, audiences probably wouldn’t be able to tell based on the way the character acts later in the franchise. Ross never refers to the events that introduced him to people that are more than human.
Even worse, Ross never even brings up his own daughter, and barely ever acknowledges Bruce Banner as a character. If Ross is going to stick around for so long in the MCU, he should at least acknowledge where he came from and why he’s present at all.
0 Comments