Marvel Villains' 10 Most Impressive Displays Of Power In The MCU's Avengers Movies

The Avengers movies feature some earth-shattering feats of power from their villains, contained within the series’ many show-stopping battles. As tentpole event crossover films that act as the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s biggest events, the Avengers movies go all-out with their villains. To sell audiences on threats that necessitate the Avengers assembling, the MCU will often go out of its way to give each major antagonist some truly nightmarish feats of power.

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Some of these displays of strength are relatively straightforward, with planet-busting attacks, astounding feats of durability, or overwhelming battlefield prowess making the Avengers’ many villains a force to be reckoned with. Other impressive moments are less showy, but ominously powerful nonetheless, with capabilities like mind control or hacking routinely making their way into the Avengers films. Even if some Avengers villains are stronger than others, each of the major antagonists in the series gets at least one terrifying moment to shine.

10 Thanos’ Snap

Avengers: Infinity War

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By far the most iconic and memorable feat of power done by any MCU villain, Thanos’ fateful Snap at the end of Avengers: Infinity War was strong enough to create an entire cinematic pop culture event. After slowly gathering all six Infinity Stones, Thanos makes good on his promise to erase half of all organic life in the universe. With a mere snap of his fingers, the Mad Titan finally accomplishes his goal, causing half of all organisms in existence to crumble away into dust.

What makes this brutal attack so impressive, aside from its obvious sheer scale and efficiency, is the impact it has continuously made on the world of the MCU even after being reversed by the Hulk’s own snap. The Blip has continuously been a source of strife for the revived heroes, with the fallout of the attack still forming terrorist organizations like the Flag Smashers in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. With just a single display of power, Thanos irreversibly altered the entirety of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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9 Thanos Throws A Moon

Avengers: Infinity War

Even before he was able to gather all six Infinity Stones, Thanos was a potentially world-ending threat, as proven by his battle with Doctor Strange, Tony Stark, Star-Lord, Drax, Mantis, and Spider-Man on Titan. In the ruins of his homeworld, Thanos was able to prove the strength of just two stones, the Power Stone and the Space Stone. Using a combination of both of them, Thanos is able to wield an entire celestial body as a weapon.

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Clenching his fist, Thanos wreaths the lunar surface of one of Titan’s moons in purple Power Stone energy, disrupting its very orbit. From there, he’s able to break apart the satellite’s crust and fling a rain of devastating rocky projectiles down on the heroes, nearly killing Iron Man in a veritable meteor shower. Revealing he is capable of affecting the surface of an entire planet at once, Thanos’ attack on Titan implies a strength that few heroes could ever hope to match.

8 Thanos Rewinds Time Only To Kill Vision Again

Avengers: Infinity War

Of all the Infinity Stones, the Time Stone is arguably one of the most powerful. Controlling the very flow of time itself, the Stone had long been closely guarded in Doctor Strange’s amulet, the Eye of Agamotto, by the Sorcerer Supreme for centuries. Thanos demonstrates just how powerful the artifact can be in the wrong hands during the Battle of Wakanda. To prevent yet another Stone from falling into Thanos’ hands, Scarlet Witch is forced to tearfully kill her own lover, destroying the Mind Stone while still embedded in Vision’s head, killing him in the process.

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To her shock and horror, Thanos is soon able to use the Time Stone to rewind time, bringing Vision back to life, only to kill him again by prying the Mind Stone out of his forehead. Not only is this a terrifying display of power on behalf of the Time Stone, but it showcases how adept the Mad Titan had become at using the ancient cosmic MacGuffins. With only a handful of Infinity Stones, Thanos was able to overpower even a being as strong as Scarlet Witch.

7 Thanos Uses The Stones To Destroy The Stones

Avengers: Endgame

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His goal being accomplished, Thanos actually gives up on ever welding the Infinity Stones again in the time-skip between Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. The sole exception is a burst of cosmic energy that appears on the Avengers’ radar shortly after the snap, indicating that Thanos had once again used the all-powerful energy sources. Upon tracking him down to his simple farm life, the Avengers are able to wrestle an answer out of the seemingly retired Thanos – He used the Stones to destroy the Stones.

It should go without saying that destroying an all-powerful cosmic artifact that has been around since time immemorial is no light matter, but Thanos somehow still managed to accomplish it. The heavily-scarred alien warlord also emphasizes how the act nearly killed him, leaving him weak and his body badly burned. The fact that Thanos was not only able to accomplish this gargantuan task, let alone survive it, is nothing to take lightly, even if he technically did it off-screen.

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6 Ultron Lifts A City

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Even if he was dispatched within the same movie he was introduced, Ultron was no villain to take lightly in the Avengers rogue’s gallery. While the What If…? version of Ultron had some immensely more powerful feats when it came to describing the rogue A.I.’s latent power, his eponymous live-action film still gave the robotic despot some impressive displays of power. By far the most impressive of them all was his near-pass at destroying the Earth itself, building a massive device that lifted an entire city like a world-ending meteor.

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Intending on bringing the city of Novi Grad crashing down on the Earth’s surface, Ultron very nearly annihilated all sentient organic life on the planet, killing thousands in the attempt. It says a lot that Iron Man and Thor’s efforts in stopping the doomsday device resulted in one of the other most powerful feats in an Avengers movie on the heroes’ side. Like Thanos’ snap, even if Ultron’s plan didn’t technically succeed, it still seeded the fallout that would eventually divide the Avengers with Baron Zemo and the Sokovia Accords.

5 Ultron Takes Over The Iron Legion

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Inhabiting a pure Vibranium body with finger beams, gravitational pulses, and powerful physicals, Ultron’s primary physical form is no light threat. That being said, the sentient program’s true threat comes in his hacking abilities, which while less flashy, presented in the Avengers with one of their biggest hurdles to ever overcome. In a matter of moments, Ultron is able to hack into and completely take over Iron Man’s Iron Legion, retrofitting the army of autonomous suits into a metal army of his own design.

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It goes without saying that Tony Stark’s technology is by far the most advanced tool at the MCU Earth’s disposal, with one man’s designs single-handedly raising the tech level of the series to a science fiction level. That makes it all the more impressive that Ultron was able to so quickly overcome Stark’s cyber defenses, which were surely among the most advanced on the planet. If it weren’t for J.A.R.V.I.S.’ quick thinking, he could’ve just as easily hacked into every nuclear warhead on the planet to annihilate humanity in nuclear armageddon, a possibility Bruce Banner vocalizes.

4 Ultron Decimates JARVIS

Avengers: Age of Ultron

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Another terrifying showcase of Ultron’s digital superiority, one of his most impressive feats of power is performed only moments after his own birth. Upon coming online, Ultron is introduced to the world and his primary objective by J.A.R.V.I.S., Tony Stark’s faithful A.I. companion. Like the Iron Legion, J.A.R.V.I.S. is no easy target when it comes to cyber warfare, a complex program capable of decrypting S.H.I.E.L.D. files with little issue, quickly swapping out nuclear launch codes, and providing Tony with a wide range of services.

Upon being faced with Ultron, however, the processing power of J.A.R.V.I.S.’ sibling proved to be too much for his codebase to handle, being dismantled in mere moments by Ultron’s fury. Luckily, J.A.R.V.I.S. was able to quietly back up his memory to the internet, preserving his “life” to later be integrated into the personality of the hero, Vision. Still, this feat of Ultron’s superiority when it comes to electronic warfare isn’t to be overlooked.

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3 Loki Controls Hawkeye’s Mind

The Avengers

Compared to the likes of Ultron and Thanos, Loki isn’t the most powerful villain the Avengers have faced. Though he later saw a massive increase in power thanks to the development of his truly godly time-warping powers in his own self-titled series, Loki’s threat in the early MCU was limited to illusion magic and the weaponization of legendary artifacts. One such weapon Loki used to great effect was the Scepter, a staff containing the Mind Stone long before it was implanted into Vision’s skull.

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The Scepter was capable of firing off respectable blasts of energy, but the weapon’s most terrifying use case in Loki’s hands was the ability to totally mind-control most living beings with a mere tap to the heart. Loki was able to completely dominate the minds of both Hawkeye and Erik Selvig, causing them both to dutifully carry out Loki’s bidding with little say in the matter. If it wasn’t for Tony Stark’s arc reactor somehow blocking the Mind Stone’s control, Loki would’ve likely been the victor of the first Avengers movie.

2 Ebony Maw Overpowers Doctor Strange

Avengers: Infinity War

The most powerful of Thanos’ zealous soldiers, the Black Order are nearly just as alarming threats to the Avengers as Thanos himself is, with most of them requiring multiple heroes working together to take down for good. Some of the few villains just as strong as the MCU’s heroes pound-for-pound, the Black Order has some intimidating members, from the burly, monstrous Cull Obsidian to the deadly pair of Proxima Midnight and Corvus Glaive. However, arguably the most powerful of the bunch was also the most unassuming, the alien known as Ebony Maw.

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A powerful telekinetic, Ebony Maw hardly seems annoyed with the heroes as he makes short work of Doctor Strange. The Sorcerer Supreme is no slouch in combat, but the elegantly floating squid man makes easy work of his various tricks, belittling him as an amateur magician fit to perform for children. He doesn’t even give the pursuing Spider-Man a glance as he slaps him with a sign, genly floating back up to his ship with Strange (and the Time Stone) in two. For effortlessly defeating some of the Avengers’ strongest members, Ebony Maw deserves more respect.

1 Scarlet Witch Mentally Devastates The Avengers

Avengers: Age of Ultron

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Scarlet Witch’s journey throughout the MCU has been a turbulent one, first appearing as a villain, then becoming a hero, only to turn villain again before a buzzer-beater redemption that ultimately got her killed. In her first appearance, Wanda Maximoff is far from hitting her stride as a reality-warping powerhouse, but still gives the Avengers quite the run for their money in her first confrontation with them. Utilizing her deadly psychic abilities, Scarlet Witch is able to incapacitate half of the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes with devastating visions of their greatest fears.

Tony Stark is hit with a devastating vision of the future in which The Avengers have been defeated, while Captain America is painfully hit with the nostalgia of the time period he was displaced from. Meanwhile, Black Widow is transported back to the traumatic Red Room of her childhood, whereas Thor gets an ominous portent of Ragnarok in Asgard. The impact of emotional damage vs. raw physical strength isn’t one to be underestimated, and the ability to send The Hulk on a mindless rampage is incredibly dangerous to the Avengers.

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