The 30 best Marvel villains ranked

Despite his longevity, the comic-book Electro isn’t exactly a Hall of Fame-caliber bad guy. He’s mostly known for his electrical powers, garish costume design, and little else. That changed with The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s spin on the high-voltage villain, fueled by a dynamic visual redesign and Jamie Foxx’s sympathetic portrayal of Max Dillon as a sweet-natured electrical engineer with a fanboy’s obsession with Spidey. Though his revamped origin story—zapped by electric eels—is rife with ridiculousness, there’s poignancy and pathos in Max’s corruption by his escalating power levels and increasing alienation. Returning for Spider-Man: No Way Home, this time in the MCU proper, Foxx further refined Max’s vulnerabilities AND he came closer to the classic Steve Ditko costume design—in energy form, at least. On-screen and on the page, expect a more human, relatable Electro to become the standard. [Scott Huver]

After Frank Castle brutally scraped Billy Russo’s handsome face across shards of broken mirror during the second season of The Punisher, fans looking for a screen-accurate take on Castle’s comic book nemesis received a major surprise when Ben Barnes debuted his fully villainous incarnation. Instead of the heavily scarred, puzzle-piece visage familiar to comics fans, Billy’s face was less significantly disfigured—instead, it was his psyche that had been irreparably ripped to pieces. Although some old-school fans felt let down—see Dominic West’s version of the role in Punisher: War Zone for a more literal spin on the character—Barnes’ Jigsaw emerged as a far more emotionally complex villain, more wounded on the inside than externally. He also proved to be a better fit for the grim, gritty, and more grounded environs of The Punisher’s dark corner of the MCU. [Scott Huver]

She-Hulk’s Titania is a modern antagonist modeled after the closest thing we have to mid-tier villains in real life—social media influencers. In the Disney+ series, Titania attacks Jennifer Walters both physically and legally, but she’s more of an annoyance than a threat. Titania may think of She-Hulk as her nemesis, but (as Don Draper would say) Jen doesn’t think about her at all. The series didn’t always use the character as well as it could have, introducing her in the first episode as a motivation for Jen to hulk out in court only to set her aside until episode five. Titania’s storyline eventually involved her suing for the rights to use the “She-Hulk” name, forcing Jen to question whether she even wanted it. If She-Hulk gets a second season (and we hope it does), it would be nice to see Titania have her own arc beyond being a device to move Jen’s story forward. [Cindy White]

Whether you believe Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. is MCU canon or not, timing the end of its first season with the release of Captain America: The Winter Soldier sent the show in a new and more interesting direction. The film revealed that S.H.I.E.L.D. had been infiltrated by Hydra and gave us a wide view of the organization’s fall, but on the show, we got to see what that looked like from the point of view of the loyal agents directly impacted by these events. It involved a multi-episode arc in which the team was shaken by the discovery that Grant Ward, a member of the team since episode one, was double agent working for Hydra. It wasn’t just a shocking plot twist; his betrayal felt personal. Ward would spend the next season and a half as a constant thorn in the side of his former teammates, sometimes working with them, sometimes against them, but always in his own interest. Then, in season three, an ancient and malevolent entity known as Hive takes over Ward’s body and he becomes a different kind of enemy altogether. [Cindy White]

For a guy with such an unassuming presence (or maybe because of it), Baron Zemo has wreaked a lot of havoc in the MCU. He orchestrated the conflict between Tony Stark and Steve Rogers that led to their split in Captain America: Civil War, kicking things off by killing King T’Chaka in order to frame the Winter Soldier for it. It was all part of an elaborate scheme to get revenge on the heroes he blamed for the death of his wife and family in Sokovia. Zemo would later form a temporary and uneasy alliance with Bucky and Sam in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier to stop a group of violent activists hopped up on super-soldier serum. He’ll work with anyone if it suits his goals, though it’s never a good idea to trust him. Or his butler. [Cindy White]

Is it enough to say that he “never misses”? Colin Farrell’s Bullseye is maybe the most memorable part of an unremarkable film, and 2003's Daredevil is maybe the most 2003 movie ever made, with its steely blue color palette (why isn’t it red?) and Evanescence-laden soundtrack. Farrell breaks through the nu-metal with a live-wire performance that borders on camp. His garish take, which pretty much boils down to “man who never misses,” isn’t particularly insightful to the human condition, but he does seem like the only one in this movie having fun with the implausibility of the character. Plus, he kills a racist old lady and seems to gain sexual gratification from it? Yeah, you’re not getting a lot of that in the MCU. [Matt Schimkowitz]

Mallory Jansen’s performance as AIDA (which stands for Artificially Intelligent Digital Assistant) in the fourth season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was astonishing, and continues to be underrated. The character evolved from a basic L.M.D. (or Life Model Decoy) to an advanced AI who was able to overcome her programming through the power of the Darkhold. She trapped Agent Coulson and several members of his team in an alternate virtual reality called The Framework, a world where Hydra beat S.H.I.E.L.D. and they had no memory of their previous lives. Going by the name Madame Hydra, or Ophelia (Madame Hydra’s real identity in the comics), she installed herself as the authoritarian ruler of this dystopian society. But AIDA’s real agenda was to trick Agent Leo Fitz into building her a human body (technically, an inhuman body) in the real world. What she didn’t count on was that her new body came with an overwhelming wave of sensations and emotions she didn’t understand and couldn’t control. Jansen makes both the unfeeling robotic version and the unstable chaotic mess of a human wholly believable, and terrifying. [Cindy White]

This entry is a little tricky, given that we’re talking about a shape-shifting psychic “demon” with a tendency for deception and theatrics. But if you’re looking for a truly memorable Marvel villain turn, it’s hard to top Aubrey Plaza as the temporary host for classic Professor X nemesis Amahl Fahrouk, literally dancing her way through the twisted mind of Xavier’s poor, damaged son, David Haller, in Noah Hawley’s Legion. Navid Negahban would later take over the part in the waking world, but Plaza—and the horrifying blob of CGI known as the Devil With Yellow Eyes—made for a hell of an introduction for the character in the show’s first season. [William Hughes]

Though not as iconically charming or surprisingly compelling as some other Marvel villains, Ultron deserves a shoutout for his weird villain arc: He starts as a shambling mess of garbage who is actually very scary, and he later becomes a nigh-invulnerable super robot with an army of machines who has the chatty, disaffected personality of a mechanical James Spader. He’s not particularly scary, but it is a fun choice, and he actually managed to kill an Avenger (or at least an honorary Avenger)—which is more than can be said about Loki. An alternate version of Ultron even got the Infinity Stones and nearly destroyed the multiverse on Disney+’s What If…?, but that doesn’t make him any more compelling. [Sam Barsanti]

If there’s a way to include Kurt Russell on a list, you have to do it, right? We’re so glad he agreed to be Ego in the second Guardians Of The Galaxy movie. We can’t imagine a better choice. As a celestial and a living planet, Ego could appear in any human form he wanted, so why not pick Kurt Russell? In a meta sort of way, Russell was playing himself, or at least Ego’s version of him. It’s complicated. Anyway, his attempts at fatherly connection and bonding with his son Peter Quill (Chris Pratt) won us over too. So, like Peter, we were just as devastated when we found out that Ego was a murderous megalomaniac who wanted to “grow and spread” until he replaced everything in the universe with himself. Russell really makes the turn work, and he has the gravitas to pull it off like no one else. [Cindy White]

As with his in-the-comics-only brother The Collector, your mileage for Thor: Ragnarok’s villainous Grandmaster will vary pretty much entirely on how you feel about his performer; in this case, Jeff Goldblum, running with his condescending smarm at something close to its maximum setting. Like much of Ragnarok, Goldblum’s gladiatorial dictator is mostly just there for fun (Goldblum’s as much as anyone else’s), schmoozing with Loki, casually bullying Thor, and just generally seeming to have a Hel of a good time. [William Hughes]

Many of the villains on this list have a fun side, or a softer side, or some kind of redeeming quality that makes you want to like them, even root for them sometimes. Not the High Evolutionary. We’re talking about a mad eugenicist who performs tortuous, invasive experiments on animals and intelligent creatures without a shred of empathy for the pain and suffering he causes. He considers himself a god, and all the other living beings in the universe are merely his playthings. Though he claims to be working to create a perfect universe, his standards are so impossibly high no one could ever live up to them. “He didn’t want to make things perfect,” Rocket astutely observes in Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 3. “He just hated things the way they are.” As one of the High Evolutionary’s creations himself, Rocket understands that better than anyone. [Cindy White]

In comic book movies, the recasting of Magneto and Professor X was probably the most significant since Val Kilmer took over for Batman. These actors are canon, integral to the acceptance of superhero fiction in the mainstream. Sir Ian McKellan and Sir Patrick Stewart lent credibility to these movies, and their efforts were not undermined by their replacements, particularly Michael Fassbender’s Magneto. In X-Men: First Class, Fassbender leans into his Inglorious Basterds training by hunting down and killing Nazis. Is there a better plot for a movie? McKellan may have nailed the world-weariness of Erik Lensherr, but Fassbender’s fascist terminator actually made him scary, taking out bootlickers with nothing more than a little pocket change. [Matt Schimkowitz]

Out of the gate, the MCU take solved more than one problem: the foremost being that Shang-Chi’s original comic book sire was the classic pulp villain Fu Manchu, back when Marvel briefly licensed the character; it also made sense to incorporate the long-lingering mystery of the Mandarin, the villain hinted at after a bait-and-switch in Iron Man 3 with the verbose actor Trevor Slattery (Ben Kingsley). Since both Fu Manchu and the Mandarin originally drew upon and perpetuated offensive, outdated cultural stereotypes, it was shrewd to reconceive the character as 21st Century crime kingpin Xu Wenwu, with a backstory equally in line with Chinese legends and Hong Kong cinema. Leung’s magnetic performance infused the character with equal parts menace, gravitas, and a simmering streak of nobility. The MCU approach will no doubt endure as a definitive take on Shang-Chi’s father, as both a formidable adversary and an empathetic figure. [Scott Huver]

Mysterio, you will always be famous. His final words caused total upheaval and eventually the arrival of, among other folks, Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield’s Spider-Men in No Way Home. However, even before Jake Gyllenhaal’s alter ego is vanquished in Far From Home, Mysterio is a delightful chaos machine whose tricks and lies ruin Peter Parker’s well-deserved European vacation. Positioned as a hero from another Earth, it turns out Quentin Beck is a former Tony Stark employee seeking revenge in the wildest of ways. It’s easy to see Mysterio’s impact in the multiverse of it all, but even within the film itself, he gets a strong and surprisingly funny arc—remember his maniacal laughter once he gets Peter’s AI glasses and his real purpose is revealed? Extraordinary. [Saloni Gajjar]

Both a byproduct of the impulse to create villains with identifiable motivations and a benefactor of heavy-hitter casting, Christian Bale’s Gorr the God Butcher is the best Marvel baddie in years. Driven by vengeance after his people’s deity laughs at the unimaginable loss of a child, Gorr carves a bloody path across the multiverse in Thor: Love And Thunder using a badass weapon (that admittedly is poisoning his soul) to exact his brand of justice upon the powerful who dismiss those who worship at their feet. Not since Killmonger has an MCU adversary felt so full of rage, pain, and righteousness, and Bale amplifies all of those emotional dimensions while also giving him a haunting, unforgettable look. [Todd Gilchrist]

When he first appears in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Namor seems like he’s fighting a just cause—he just wants to protect his underwater kingdom from an invasion of surface dwellers. Of all people, the Wakandans can relate, since the two kingdoms actually have a lot in common. Like Wakanda, Talokan has survived this long by keeping its existence a secret, and both owe their survival to a cache of vibranium. This could make them natural allies, except for one little difference. Namor only values the lives of his own people, and believes the best way to protect them is to wipe everyone else out. Tenoch Huerta does a great job of selling Namor’s initial charisma, but that’s the stuff of pure villainy. [Cindy White]

The thing about Kang, this early in his introduction to the MCU, is we reserve the right to change his ranking in future. We met a character going by He Who Remains in Loki season one, who claimed he was a variant—an important term in the MCU’s upcoming multiverse-jumping phase—of the villainous Kang the Conqueror. Then in Ant-Man And The Wasp: Quantumania, a sinister version of Kang claims he was exiled to the Quantum Realm. Stick around post-credits for possible explanations of the character’s origin story and trajectory. Once referred to by Kevin Feige as “the new iconic villain in the MCU,” nearly all versions of Kang are obsessed with alternate timelines and realities. That ties neatly into the multiverse theme of phase 5, culminating in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty, due in 2025.

One complication in that plan involves actor Jonathan Majors, who has portrayed all the variants of Kang introduced so far and has been accused of domestic violence. Majors denies the charge and Disney has yet to comment publicly on the matter. Still, early on in the MCU, Marvel swapped out Terrence Howard for Don Cheadle as James Rhodes, with little effect on the quality of the films. So it wouldn’t be out of the question to do the same thing with Kang, preserving an interesting character while distancing the company from the controversial actor. [Jack Smart and Jen Lennon]

No one’s having a better time in the MCU than Agatha Harkness (well, until the end of WandaVision, that is). The Disney+ series slightly pulls back the curtain on Agatha’s thirst for magic—it’s why she arrived in Westview, after all. She just had to know about (and steal) Wanda’s power, which allowed her to brainwash a whole town and manifest two kids. In the process, Agatha is established as a snarky, cunning, and inventive villain, arguably the most fun baddie in the MCU so far. That’s in large part due to Kathryn Hahn’s pitch-perfect casting. After all, who else in Marvel’s empire managed to get their own Emmy-winning song? It’s no wonder Kevin Feige decided to give her a spin-off. Look for Agatha: House Of Harkness, coming soon to a small screen near you. [Saloni Gajjar]

Based on her shapeshifting abilities, Raven Darkhölme, a.k.a. Mystique, is one of the coolest mutants in the X-Men films. And when Rebecca Romijn’s version of the character arrives, already using her powers for evil, you know she’s going to crush it as an antiheroine. Mystique is comfortable in her skin in these films, and her unmatched confidence makes her instantly likable, even while she’s impersonating politicians to do Magneto’s bidding. Romijn brings a quiet charisma to the role, particularly when Mystique is stripped of her powers in The Last Stand because of the cure. [Saloni Gajjar]

Fans can, and do, debate whether Wanda Maximoff’s turn to the dark side post-WandaVision was the right path for the character to go down. What’s harder to deny, though, is what a compelling villain the Scarlet Witch made in this year’s Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness. Elizabeth Olsen gave her all in a heel turn that provided so many of the things that Marvel villains have sometimes lacked: screen presence, a kick-ass and diverse powerset—and a relatable motivation that left fans able to root for her a bit, even as her monstrous deeds built up. [William Hughes]

A great power can beget a great villain, and everything you need to know about Zebediah Kilgrave (eschewing his very literal Marvel Comics nickname, The Purple Man, for his appearance in Netflix’s Jessica Jones) comes from this: He can make anyone do anything, anything, that he tells them to do. David Tennant takes that idea and runs with it, crafting one of the sleaziest performances of his career—while also evoking just the tiniest bit of sympathy from the realization that the kid probably never had a chance to be anything but the monster he became. [William Hughes]

It’s not going too far out on a limb to say Cate Blanchett changed MCU antagonists forever. As Hela in Taika Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok, she brought the signature gravitas and charisma we might expect from an Oscar-winning actor. But the performance wasn’t about prestige—she was just having a blast in lycra and mascara. (Part of the novelty of this bad guy, of course, was that she wasn’t a guy; it shouldn’t have taken Disney this long to consider gender parity in this universe.) The most remarkable thing about Blanchett’s ability to make us root for the vengeful and violent goddess of death is the simplicity of the character’s premise: something about being Odin’s secret child, and in prison? It doesn’t matter, because when Hela busts Thor’s hammer to pieces, Blanchett manages to upstage some of the MCU’s most iconic characters in one of its most fun films. [Jack Smart]

The first of Peter Parker’s surrogate father figures to try to murder him, Norman Osborn is a tragic villain in the classic mode. As played by Willem Dafoe in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (and then again late last year, in an unexpected reprise), Osborn is all charm and rage, a man smart enough to feel his brilliant mind slipping over the edge into homicidal madness—he’s a bit of a scientist himself, you know—but incapable of keeping the malevolent Goblin at bay. [William Hughes]

The most significant thing MCU Final Boss Thanos did during his tenure as Big Bad wasn’t the bit where he snapped his fingers, wiping out half the population of reality. No, it’s what came after when, true to his word, he laid down his weapons and tried to retire in peace (albeit in what turns out to be a not-so-grateful universe). Portrayed with a cold, weary nobility by Josh Brolin (with just a few sparks of petulant sadism for good measure), The Mad Titan is a true believer in the rightness of his plan to “balance” existence, which is exactly what makes him so iconic, scary, and, dare we say it … relatable. [William Hughes]

When Vincent D’Onofrio reprised his nefarious Daredevil character in Disney+’s Hawkeye, his return was met with collective cheers. That’s because of his incredibly scary turn as Wilson Fisk, a.k.a. Kingpin, a deadly foe to Matt Murdock and (let’s be honest) pretty much anyone else he meets. Packed with a ton of snazzy white suits and emotional instability, this version of Kingpin doesn’t start out with his assigned moniker. Fisk is a well-connected crime lord whose love for Vanessa often drives his killer motivations. D’Onofrio transforms him into a riveting and dangerous enemy; his booming voice helps him dominate every scene he’s in. He doesn’t want to snap the universe in half like Thanos, but Kingpin still transforms into a uniquely chilling villain over three Daredevil seasons. Here’s hoping the reign of terror continues in Echo. [Saloni Gajjar]

No villain with a name so stupid (he’s a mercenary who “sells” death, get it?) should be this smart. But Michael B. Jordan’s Erik “Killmonger” Stevens—a.k.a. exiled Wakandan prince N’Jadaka—manages it, breaking the MCU’s long streak of lackluster non-Loki villains in the process. Get a load of this guy: He (legally!) claims the role of Wakandan sovereign from his cousin, T’Challa! 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! He made that girl bite through her retainer by taking off his shirt! Is it any wonder Black Panther seems as saddened as the rest of us when he’s forced to put Killmonger down for good? [William Hughes]

The mutant master of magnetism has always been one of Marvel’s greatest villains, with his darkest acts of violence fueled by supremely human emotions, and his turns toward good tinged by his taste for vengeance. Ian McKellen captured it all in the Fox X-Men films, laying out Magneto’s ethos of mutant supremacy with boundless charm—and managing the steely looks required to make a power that’s mostly “do a couple of arm gestures while the CGI folks do their thing” actually work. McKellen never lets you forget there’s a killer lurking beneath those honeyed words; he also makes it clear why Charles Xavier hopes eternally that his greatest friend might one day be redeemed. [William Hughes]

Of all the sympathetic mad scientists Peter Parker has fought over the years, Alfred Molina’s Otto Octavius has to be the most sympathetic—to the point that Marvel practically made a whole movie (last year’s No Way Home) out of a desire to save and redeem the character at last. And it’s hard to blame them: Then and now, Molina excels at both sides of Doc Ock, whether it’s the warm mentor figure trying to crack fusion power, or the cold-eyed psychopath he becomes once those pesky tentacles take full control. Spider-Man 2 is a movie of big, beautiful, broad emotions, and its villain is no different, whether he’s menacing helpless old ladies, or taking a last-minute turn back toward the light. [William Hughes]

The genius of Tom Hiddleston’s Loki is all in the way he carries himself—as though deeply, perpetually affronted by the bickering, chaotic, silly Marvel universe he’s been asked to rule above. It doesn’t hurt that Hiddleston can flip the character’s whole demeanor in a second; tyrannical and terrifying one moment, pathetic and hilarious the next, and always, way deep down, the little brother hoping his big bro will notice his latest scheme, or joke, or potential planet-crushing alien invasion. The quintessential MCU villain, Loki is a killer, a chew toy, a punching bag, and more; he’s also the franchise’s ultimate answer to the question “How far can you coast on charm?” with the answer apparently being to the end of time … and back. [William Hughes]