Heroes may hog the limelight, but let’s be fair—Marvel movies wouldn’t be the same without their villains. From tragic histories to maniacal smiles, the MCU has produced some of the most iconic bad guys blockbuster history has ever seen. And while they began a bit wobbly (who even remembers Malekith?), the villains gradually got as rich and intriguing as the heroes themselves. So who is truly above the rest, then? Let’s count down the MCU’s best villains because sometimes it’s okay to be on the side of the bad guy.
10. Wenwu (The Mandarin)
Iron Man 3 was filled with a ridiculous fake Mandarin, of which Wenwu is the exact opposite in Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings: a deathless warlord who is as merciless, tragic, and complex as a human being. By no means is Tony Leung the typical villain; he is absolutely heartbreaking, bringing to life in a flash of brilliance, an overlord who, ho in part, is a conqueror and is dominated by grief, trying to protect his family. It is through his slow, tragic downfall that he becomes one of Marvel’s most fascinating antagonists.
9. Green Goblin (Norman Osborn)
Willem Dafoe didn’t return in Spider-Man: No Way Home, which I consider as totally stealing the movie. His version of Norman Osborn is a miserable and fear-inducing character, a broken man who rips away Peter Parker’s naivety in the worst way possible. The glider, the laughing hysterically, the sadistic beatdowns. Dafoe’s Goblin gives us one more reason not to forget the classic villains who, at times, still hit the hardest.
8. Mariah Dillard (Black Mariah)
Not every great MCU baddie comes in a costume. In Luke Cage, Alfre Woodard’s Mariah takes a seedy politician and turns her into Harlem’s queen of crime, and it is terrifying. She is manipulative, ambitious, and eerily real. Her upswing (and downfall) is one of the best arcs of Marvel’s Netflix phase, and a reminder that the MCU’s street-level tales are as deep as the cosmic tales.
7. Namor
Pointy ears, winged ankles, and all—Wakanda Forever introduced Namor to the MCU, and he was immediately fascinating. Tenoch Huerta Mejía brought him beyond a caricature; he’s a protector and menace, a leader who will scorch the world if it will save his people. Multifaceted, charismatic, and intensely proud, Namor demonstrates the MCU has new ways to reimagine its old favorites.
6. Wanda Maximoff (Scarlet Witch)
Not many characters have had a tragic storyline like Wanda. Her descent into villainy, fueled by grief in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, is a break of the heart—one can’t help loving and pitying her at the same time, even as she rips apart the whole multiverse. She really isn’t mean because she is mean; she is a broken mother who yearns to relive her pain. And it is precisely that fact that provokes such fear in her.
5. Loki
Is he a bad guy? An antihero? A god of mischief just doing his thing? The answer is all of the above, and that’s why Loki is one of the MCU’s favorite characters. He’s gone from spearheading an alien invasion in Avengers to being a time-manipulating savior in Loki, all slippery, charming, and unpredictable. No list of the greatest Marvel villains is complete without him.
4. Erik Killmonger
One of the things about Killmonger (as played by Michael B. Jordan) in Black Panther is that you cannot stop thinking about how maybe everything he does is not entirely bad. Killmonger is crazy, of course, but at the same time, he has all the rights to be so—his rage is a result of neglect, death, and systematic subjugation of which he was a part. His way most likely will be over-the-top, but he is not a pretender with his pain. MCU is thus left with a villain who has the most powerful combination of sympathy and harshness to bring him to the top 5 of most unforgettable villains.
3. Kilgrave
David Tennant’s Kilgrave in Jessica Jones is just the extremely terrified audience gets scared the most from, by not being the strongest but feeling the most real. His ability is minimal and repellent: complete domination by only one command-just his voice. The one that makes him extremely fearsome is not even the fact of what he does, but how coolly he does it. Kilgrave changes the superhero story to a horror one psychologically, and this happens to be memorable.
2. Kingpin (Wilson Fisk)
Kingpin by Vincent D’Onofrio is the one thing that is missing from the bad side, the classic pattern of a villain in the crime world—he is not only cold-blooded, very smart, and frightening, but also, he is charming. He set a new standard for Marvel’s TV villains when he first appeared on the Daredevil series, and with his return on Disney+, he is certainly not departing. He is the force, but at the same time, he is more than just the brain, being a pimp who pulls the strings of everyone and everything that is at his disposal.
1. Thanos
Of course, it isn’t a surprise. He was the villain in the background of the whole MCU until the time came to introduce him properly, and what he did was just to live up to it. So we got a villain, not only violent but also quite philosophical, through Josh Brolin’s motion-capture performance, that was his way of acting when he, in Infinity War, laid out his vision of halving existence as the only viable path. He succeeded in killing lots of people and, in the process, won our admiration. However, even when he lost, his reign over the MCU continued to be felt. Utterly unavoidable.
With a lineup ranging from cosmic overlords to street-level deceivers, the villains of Marvel are the special sauce that keeps the fans coming back for more. They are not perfect; on the contrary, they are quite complicated, messy, and, sometimes, even more interesting than the heroes. One can certainly be a fan of Iron Man, Thor, or Spider-Man, and yet, as a matter of fact, it is still hard to get the villains out of one’s mind long after the credits are gone.