The 30 best Marvel villains ranked
We're counting down our favorite supervillains across Marvel's movies and TV series, including Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3's High Evolutionary
Film Lists Kevin Feige
When it comes to complicated villains, Marvel has an unparalleled rogue’s gallery, both in the pages of its comics and onscreen. After all, what would our favorite superheroes be without worthy villains to fight? Sometimes the bad guys can be even more compelling than the heroes. We can’t help it if they look like they’re having more fun. No matter who you’re cheering for, the conflict between good and evil—and those who walk the line between the two—is why we keep coming back to superhero movies, again and again.
The latest phase of MCU films has introduced some of the most intriguing villains yet, including Namor in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Kang in Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, and now the High Evolutionary in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3.
So where does the mad scientist responsible for the creation of Rocket Raccoon and Adam Warlock rank among Marvel’s best villains? The A.V. Club has selected characters from the MCU as well as Marvel’s television shows and movies that exist beyond the MCU. This isn’t meant to be a complete listing of all the Marvel villains, just the ones who stand out to us, either because of the actor’s interpretation, or the nuance of their characters—or a combination of both.
145 Comments
What a weird list order. You have Magneto twice, which doesn’t really feel fair (I mean, if you’re combining MCU/Sony Spidey villains into a single entity, it seems like you could at least realize that technically Fassbender and McKellen are playing literally the same character, not even different multiversal incarnations of the character; they’re the same guy).Also, I get that everyone still loves to hate AoU, but Ultron is absolutely one of the more memorable villains and his place on this list is kinda ridiculous. Does anyone really remember Shang Chi’s dad more than Ultron??The inclusion of low-rent TV villains (Jigsaw? Really?) over film villains like Andy Serkis’s Klaue (he was extremely compelling despite his unfortunate lack of screen time), or Jeff Bridges’s Obadiah Stane (if for no other reason than he kicked off the whole MCU villain trope of “the hero but bad” – plus it’s Jeff freaking Bridges), and Michael Keaton’s Vulture, is just…oof.
I’m here wondering how Rebecca Romijn’s Mystique made the list, let alone the top half.
Romijn brings a quiet charisma to the roleI am now trying real hard to remember any single line she had in three movies.
Only time I can remember her actually talking as herself was to the anti-mutant senator in the first film right when they captured him.
I thought she was truly a mysterious character, I think playing her as so emotionally removed made sense. tbh I think she’s a better Mystique then the other movie one, and I would have loved a deeper arc.
I’m happy for Romijn’s Mystique to get a mention. In a film that has to set up the premise of mutants as inhuman, possibly frightening beings, a dark blue shapeshifter does a lot of heavy lifting. That she conveys so much without speaking is a huge part of the performance.
I think the reason she is on the list is because Rebecca Romijn was hot as hell and mostly naked.
Well he did write “quiet” charisma. But yeah, she just walks around looking cool/sexy most of the time.
Eh, Wenwu is the best acted villain in the entire MCU, and one of the most human and tic/quipless–the latter feature being astounding in the franchise. He’s not particularily important, really, but I certainly remember him more than Ultron.
Does anyone really remember Shang Chi’s dad more than Ultron??
Well, I do, because I didn’t bother seeing the Ultron movie, and also Tony Leung had approximately ten times more charisma than Simu Liu and Awkwafina put together*.*Not that they weren’t delightful themselves, but this is what Hollywood gets for casting Hong Kong movie legends as less-important characters — the leads suffer noticeably in the comparison.
I think Tony Leung was good as Wenwu, I just don’t think the villain did much, or had much of an arc. It was your typical obsession and redemption at the last minute. It’s not Leung’s fault, he just wasn’t served by the script I don’t think.
Tony Leung demonstrates, to me, why the biggest villain issue the MCU has js killing them.He was an amazing villain. Human and understandable, with an obvious and clear motive. He had a warmth underneath the evil, or vice versa.
The Sony spidey villains are fair game thanks to No Way Home.
While I disagree on some of your points – the real Mandarin is definitely a better villain than Ultron – you’re absolutely right that there’s no reason to include Magneto twice. They could just mention both actors in the one entry.And the exclusion of the Vulture is unforgivable.
I mean, Spader was great and I enjoyed the Ultron performance…but he lost to the Avengers every time he physically fought them in this film (three by my count), so that’s got to knock him down a few spots.
I mean most of the times (other than his final defeat) that Ultron physically fought the Avengers, his goal was to distract them and keep them occupied, which he was very successful at. His possessed Iron Legion drones kept the Avengers busy while the main drone escaped and allowed Ultron to send his consciousness into other bodies. Then in South Africa, he and the twins successfully distracted the Avengers and unleashed the Hulk while Ultron made off with the vibranium. The whole point was he had an endless supply of drones, so “physically” defeating him was basically useless unless you were able to cut him off from the internet, which only Vision was able to eventually do during the final battle.
Fair point, and his wasn’t a terrible plan overall (until the whole ‘jet this island into space’ bit where it started falling apart). But still, in the comics he was much more of a physical threat that at least won a few battles (and even the whole thing in one alternate universe setting) even when his plan was to distract them overall–and man, that is always Ultron’s plan, isn’t it?
Twice but not for the Bullseye in Daredevil Series.
I didn’t expect Legion to count in this ranking, but now since Lenny/The Shadow King is in here, she/he/it is way way way too low (1st season version anyway).
cheers to that
Hot Take: Killmonger was a bitch.
Going to need to see your work on that.
He was a violently racist sociopathic terrorist who murdered his own people and wouldn’t be considered as a misunderstood anti-hero if he wasn’t Black.You’re welcome.
To break down your argument point by point:
violently (Yes this comic book villain uses violence)
racist (mad at white colonials)
sociopathic terrorist (vintage un-bitch like behavior)
murdered his own people (Yes he sought revenge against his people who abandoned him and all other Africans)
wouldn’t be considered as a misunderstood anti-hero if he wasn’t Black (Oh I see where this is all coming from now)
O, you mistakenly thought this was an actual discussion and not just bored trolling. My bad.
How so?
I never understood the love for Killmonger, especially among women. He’s just about the biggest misogynist in the MCU. He kills his girlfriend for no reason, bullies and is rude to women throughout the movie. Plus, the man has no chin!Don’t even get me started on the dumbest monologue that people inexplicable love…That crap about throw him in the ocean like his ancestors. If they jumped overboard:A) They weren’t your ancestor, just a dead branch on the family treeB) They weren’t the strong ones, the ones who survived the trip and perpetuated their family lines were.
It reminds me of women stanning Daemon Targaryen while calling Criston Cole an incel.Hell it reminds me of women protesting outside the prison on the eve of Ted Bundy’s execution. His crimes were very much anti-women.
He speaks to getting vengeance for the wrongs against the African diaspora. So it’s pretty easy to understand.
Well, obviously Loki and Thanos.I’d say the rest are Killmonger (Although not enough was done with him) and Agatha Harkness (Really just because of the little song in the penultimate episode of Wandavision but also because she might be a fun character in the near future).
I’d agree that Loki is one of the most interesting villains. He might win the sexiest Marvel villain (along with Killmonger).
When you say Marvel, you mean Marvel movies. Wish that was in your headline. Came here expecting comics. Disappointing.
Gor the Butcher is too high up as that whole movie was so bad it dragged down Bale. Bale if he had more around him could have made that roll way better.Yeah Dr. Ock was the best of the Spider-man villians (as Spider-man 2 is to me the best or 2nd best comic movie ever) but I would say Loki as #1 as well.
I totally agree. Love and Thunder is not a good movie actively made worse by HOW GOOD Bale is in it.
It was like he didn’t even know the rest of the script, as his performance is truly head and shoulders above the rest of that movie.
Scarlet Witch should have been the most compelling villain if they didn’t decide to do such a rush job on her after Wandavision. This show about trauma in conflict with the prescribed forced and linear narratives of happiness causing serious harm to the individual and those around them, counter balanced with her suddenly just being pure evil? Where did the grey space go lol lol.
The character that had a mental breakdown questioning everything she was doing in life when she accidentally killed a dozen people in Age of Ultron now just straight up murdering hundreds of people felt a little rushed yeah.
They pretty blatantly explain that the Darkhold warps you into evil.
Is there anything less interesting than a thing that makes a hero character eeeeeeeevil
I’ll allow it in this case as she at least has a history of it from AoU. You could argue that her stint as a hero was actually the anomaly. She was always “power from mysterious influential thing + ends justify the means”.
The fact that they use a MacGuffin to handwave her descent into evil doesn’t change, or excuse, the fact that it’s a handwave.
The frustrating thing is noone thought to check in on her. Not after Vision died, not after the Westview incident.
I watched WandaVision right before Doc Strange 2, and was like oh, ok, we’re doing this now. That lady’s a bad guy now.
It’s not so much that she turned heel (it’s hard to come back from taking over a small town), it’s that she seemed to come to grips with all of this loss and grief, and then is consumed by the evil magic book in a post-credits scene (that I almost missed). It was a pretty sudden and dramatic pivot to inter-dimensional murder witch since we’re still in her corner at the end of her show.
yes, I think the arc would have made sense eventually, but it just felt lazy that someone dealing with so much internal conflict is suddenly pretty non-conflicted because she read an evil book.
She was all right but she’s no Jobu Tupaki in the same way that Doctor Strange 2: The Multiverse of Madness was no Everything Everywhere All at Once.
nobody will ever top Jobu Tupaki.
I’m going to add that Doctor Strange 2 came on the heels of Spiderman: No Way Home, in which we saw the titular hero bend over backwards to save not just 1, but 5 super villains from their own evil tendencies.
I’d have ranked Killgrave much higher. I consider him the creepiest villian on the list since he easily blends into regular society, has a power that essentially there’s no defense for and is motivated solely by greed, ego and his own entertainment with absolutely zero concern of consequences for anyone else.
So here’s my little rant about ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’: there’s that scene where America steals some food from a street vendor (she thinks it’s free), and the guy angrily demands they pay up. To get out of the situation, Strange casts a spell that causes the vendor to punch himself in the head over and over again. He casually says this will last three weeks.If this sounds at all familiar, it could be because we see pretty much the same thing done in ‘Jessica Jones’, this time by Killgrave, the show’s resident sociopathic rapist and murderer. Killgrave takes a bunch of magazines from a newsagent, and when the guy confronts him, tells him to throw his own hot coffee into his face, which the poor sap has no choice but to do.So why is the MCU trying to pass one of these things off as the work of a hero and the other as the act of a sadist? Even if they both want to avoid confrontation as quickly as possible, they have other options; Killgrave could have just told the guy, “You’ll happily let me take these”, and it’s hard to believe Strange couldn’t fine a less violent spell to use. (Sleep spell? Illusory money?) The only real difference is that Strange’s response is arguably worse: a face-full of hot coffee is bad, but at least it’s over quickly, whereas the food vendor has to take punches to the face for three weeks.
Did you notice who the street vendor was? Look it up. This was a joke for film buffs.
I know it’s Bruce Campbell from Raimi’s ‘Evil Dead’ films. I’m still not sure that has to include Strange acting in exactly the same way as a mind-controlling rapist. Campbell was in the Spider-Man films as well, and Peter didn’t throw a pumpkin-bomb at him.
I think the idea is that it’s really Raimi doing that to his old pal Bruce Campbell, sort of an Evil Dead Joke, since the Deadites did something pretty similar to Ash. But yeah, it does make Dr. Strange seem like an asshole.
I mean, even with it being Raimi’s buddy…he’s got a pretty solid point.
MoM is a bad, lazily written movie.
Killgrave is far and away the most evil, disturbing villain in the MCU. Just in the confines of the show (which was darker than anything else the MCU has even flirted with) he was absolutely horrifying. Just the implications of what he can do are terrifying enough, honestly, and the show really went all out with him (as did Tennant).
And the fact that he’s not just getting people to do things and then goes home and relaxes for a bit. He forced Jessica and who knows how many other people into actual intimate relationships with him, which is just terrifying. It’s one thing for someone to make you throw coffee in my face. It’s another when they force you to live with them, have dinner with them, have sex with them and care about them against your will.
“Put a bullet in your head, Patsy.”
He was fucking terrifying.
Did AV Club leave out Keaton’s Vulture just to get more clicks from people looking for him on the list?
Geez I can’t believe I missed him not being on the list.
Yep that’s a bit of an odd omission.
It was such a great twist. When I first saw the movie and it gets to the bit where Adrian opens the door to Peter, my first thought was “Did the Vulture kidnap Liz’s family?” Because it was so not what I had seen coming that he would be her dad. And then you realise that him being so close to Peter’s personal life is even scarier.
I know the internet is always in love with Keaton’s Vulture but I don’t find it that memorable.
I can send you daily reminders so you remember better.
Thanks homie
No problem bro! Here to help!
It’s probably more memorable than friggin Mystique though
I think it deserves a mention if for no other reason than his “twist” reveal before the dance.
I liked him quite a bit, but I think the “dad talk” scene really makes the character. I remember some of his other scenes, but he and Holland knock that one out of the park
Looks like they only had Mysterio as the token ‘Villain that the Stark family made because of how they treat people’.
eh, my first thought reading this comment was “oh yeah, he did play a bad guy didn’t he?”—-problem is the next two Spider-Man films that came out were both better than that one (not by much, mind you, and that one was really well done).
No love for Cottonmouth? Easily top five for me.
Cottonmouth is absolutely fantastic. I just started a rewatch of Luke Cage and I’m dreading his death.
Honestly Luke cage has some good villians except for Luke’s brother every other villian was awesome Cottonmouth was mesmerizing, Mariah Stokes was awesome, Stokes was funny, and Bushmaster was my favorite
I prefer Fassbenders Magneto to Mckellen, but I can see how people bring it down after the movies make him go through the same character arch again and again in the 3rd and 4th films.
It’s kind of a toss up for me. They’re both great.Fassbender’s Magneto shows us how the character became who he is but was still conflicted by loyalty to his friend Charles while Mckellen’s Magneto shows us an aged and jaded Magneto. You see both the rage and the sad, weariness in this version. He’s more focused and committed to his cause.
I saw Black Panther last night and rank Namor much higher, certainly higher than Hela. His actions always felt on the knife edge of justified. I won’t say more because I’m not an asshole and most people haven’t seen the movie yet, but I found him incredibly compelling with a pretty great backstory.
I liked Ultron. He was a wise ass.“This is the part where I tell you my evil plan.”
Him an Hela managed to do something thats really hard to do with proper villains , make them actually funny. I would happily have put Blanchetts Hela at number one purely for the “WHOEVER I AM?? did you not listen to a word I said” delivery.
Hela was what Galadriel would have been if she had kept the One Ring.
I don’t think I’ve enjoyed anyone chewing the scenary in an MCU film as much as her. She really elevated this film (easily the best Thor movie, and really it’s not even close).
That was a great example of what happens when a top professional actor is given access to the pulpiest of melodramatic material. Just go all the fuck in.
“I think you’re confusing peace with quiet.” He had a lot of great lines. But I guess including him would be seen as approving of Joss Whedon’s crimes for some reason.
How is Zemo so low?? Not only did he actually succeed in dismantling the Avengers by playing them against each other but he was actually right about them. That left unchecked they have done lots of damage to the world and they needed some oversight, especially Stark. Zemo is top five easily.
He’s underrated, definitely did the most damage but I guess he’s not as colorful. Also, they kind of pulled off Red Skull perfectly (twice). And Robert-freaking-Redford was more compelling than anyone on Agents of SHIELD.
And without throwing a punch at any of them.
Because his plan was as convoluted and dumb as it gets.
Can’t argue with results.
It wasn’t? He found something that would make the group break apart and have Tony never trust Captain America ever again.
What’s convoluted about it? He used Bucky to turn Steve and Tony against each other using nothing but the truth about the past.He knew enough about both to know their weaknesses and exploited them successfully.Not only that, but in the aftermath of his plan’s success he destabilized Wakanda, allowing Killmonger to come in and do his thing…and the Avengers being broken was what allowed Thanos to ultimately succeed.
Zemo’s definitely one of my favourites. Part of that is Brühl’s performance, which I think is nicely underplayed, but it’s also because he’s kind of the supervillain answer to the idea that it’s not the powers that make the hero but the character. We all know that Captain America is truly a hero not because of the serum, but because Steve Rogers was a good man to begin with. Similarly, Zemo is nothing special as a man, but his determination and his love for his family – twisted by grief and pain – drive him to take down a team of literal superhumans.
He’s evil Marvel Bruce Wayne. Or Marvel Lex Luthor.
Plus, unlike most other villains, he dances.
The list and the criteria are a bit wack but I feel like Kilgrave should be higher. His aims were banal but his methods were so terrifying. The idea of his mind control and how it’s described, that’s such a violation. Being forced to do something terrifying or painful while a corner of your mind screams in horror, yeesh.Kingpin, too, he was not to be messed with. He’s a chessmaster. Even way back in the early episodes, he dispatched Wesley to try to compromise Nelson & Murdock before they could become an issue. He co-opted NYPD and, later, the FBI as his protection, as his enforcers. He was almost untouchable.
God Butcher 14? I have not read any of the comics featuring the God Butcher, but I hope he’s more formidable in the comics than he was in the movie. Nick Nolte’s version of Absorbing Man, the Abomination, Red Skull, Deacon Frost, Nomak, Ronan The Accuser, Klaw were all greater villains.
He has a plan that, sure, would kill an enormous number of people, but also has some very trenchant points about the global effects of Wakanda’s isolationist policies!I think this is the closest any pop culture writer/film critic has ever come to acknowledging that Killmonger’s plan not only would not have worked, but would have caused a global-scale version of the sectarian violence that plagued Iraq after the US invasion. And he would have known that, since destabilizing governments had been his literal job.
Just one note on #7: Yes, he’s wearin’ that dumb Power Rangers mask, but he’s scarier without it on.
Things went kablooie, and before you knew he was tryin’ to kill everyone.
Hive was my favourite due to the quiet meditative ending overlooking Earth and that in his own misguided way, it was all just to make the world a better place.
Wakanda Forever literally came out today, and you didn’t think that needed spoiler warnings?!
How did this guy not make the list?
He had pretty nifty powers. Ears like a cat, eyes like a rodent…
One of only two Marvel characters who had Broadway shows based on them. Gotta count for something.
Took me a second. Take your star.
I think Scarlet Witch is too low. Thanks to WandaVision, she was developed and built up in a way that most MCU villains aren’t, and she was all the more compelling as a result. Not to mention that Olson is a pretty versatile actor. I don’t feel the same way about Hela, for instance. Blanchet is great but I find the character to be two dimensional within the MCU.
You put KILMONGER ahead of THANOS? ARE YOU FUCKING SHITTING ME?!!?? And why is Namor even on the list at all???? People’s love of Black Panther is fucking ridiculoaus. Thanos shouldve been #2, at least.
Black Panther was ranked #1 Best MCU character in last weeks list, so this comes as no surprise.
And the best Marvel villain? You guessed it. Frank Stallone!
Baits in MCU people on the release day of Quantumania then throws Colin Farrell’s Bullseye at us. lol close.
Where’s Dr. Rice, from Logan?
These lists are terrible on purpose, right?
I can already tell what kind of order this list will take. TV show villains have an obvious drop in quality. Agatha Harkness and The Purple Man being exceptions. Exceptional casting. I really think Baron Zemo should be higher. The guy achieved his goals and the Avengers had never been the same since. Cap and Iron Man never really made up. They just teamed up when they had a common goal.
As an extra note: Xu Wenwu is probably my favorite villain. A combination of both Fu
Manchu and Mandarin. Both tired and possibly too stereotypical to exist
in today’s world. The movie telling the tale of this villain is both
beautiful and tragic. Unfortunate we will never see him again, but he’s
seriously one of the better iterations the MCU has brought to us.
In the real world, Doom would top this list. However, Marvel has failed Doom multiple times. How can they fail Doom and live? Also, I liked Hugo Weaving’s Red Skull. I liked Arnim Zola, too.
At least they cast a noted buffoon to play the accursed Richards, and showed how quickly his feeble intellect could be dispatched.
Another recycled piece linked on the front page, huzzah!
How is it remotely a “relatable motivation” to want to commit genocide for imaginary children that never existed?
Couldn’t Thanos have used the infinity gauntlet to just keep creating more resources? It’s not like he’s gonna die of old age. They should have just gone with his motivations from the comics: wants to impress Death. Acting like Thanos gives a shit about balance and resources was always weird.
If you’d ever met imaginary children you’d understand.
Shadow King under Ultron? Besides the dancing, besides the multiple iterations SK appears as and besides the mental terror Lenny induces, the showdown with Behind Blue Eyes stayed with me. In that moment and in the moments pending David’s betrayal and manipulation of Syd, you already are starting to doubt the narrative you started with and all of it comes from how each character fights (in probably the most creative portrayals of psychic combat ever animated) and how David’s desperation for love and success will drive him to be “the bad man” that SK has all but alluded to. Ultron I remember meeting the corporate synergy quota for singing a song from Pinocchio. I get it.
So none of the Iron Man villians or even The Abomination made the list? And if we are including the X-Men, William Stryker is a pretty compelling villian.
Yeah I mean…for me Killian was more memorable than Mystique or Colin Farrell as Bullseye. Hell I’d forgotten he had played him. I think the guy who played Bullseye in the Daredevil tv show as much better. Farrell looks fucking ridiculous.
I really feel like Red Skull should be somewhere on the list.
You seem to have mixed Hela and Killmonger’s positions up .
My god the She-Hulk show was awful though. Like damn.
Please stop ranking things.
Missed one.
Spoilers for Thor 4: the ending totally ruins Gorr’s character. He flips from “I hate the Gods so much I will do literally anything to end them” to “I will entrust my beloved daughter into the care of a God” in half a second based on a not convincing monologue.
I feel like at some point, *someone* has got to edit the slide with Kang, as it pertains to Majors’ performance and how he could carry it forward in future movies. Because, uh… not sure if y’all have seen your own headlines, but I’ve got some news for you…
Just saw Guardians 3 and I’m surprised how similar they made Kang and High Evolutionary. They’re both African-American, Shakespearean-ish actors who dress in purple and talk real low and calm before GETTING REAL LOUD.
Wait so Vulture didn’t make the list but Bullseye and Jigsaw did?
Tony Stark should be there. From War Profiter, Ultron Creator, The Accord Supporter/Creator until he finally redeem himself in Infinity War: Endgame.
The Shadow King she/he/it is way way way too low …
Maybe it’s just me but I HATE these slideshows. You can’t just click through them because the text and the image don’t sit neatly in even a huge browser window – you if you want to read them you have to scroll up and down every single time you want to advance a page. Or, you can do what I do and realise that 9 times out of 10 it’s a shameless attempt to maximise pageviews and it doesn’t need to be a slideshow at all, so just go to another site instead.
io9 used to be my first stop on the internet. I can’t remember teh last time I saw something that was worth my attention.
Doom would be at the top of the list if they hadn’t failed Doom multiple times. How do the fail Doom and live?
Oh my god, this site is so bad at these lists. Do you people actually watch the films/tv?