MCU fans debate which villain motivations hold up under scrutiny

Superhero stories continue to dominate the pop culture docket, and spearheading these efforts for decades now has been the Marvel Cinematic Universe, who first wedged Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark into our hearts back in 2008 with Iron Man, and haven’t dared looked back since.

The media giant that is Marvel Studios has been responsible for over 30 different films, shows, and now television specials thanks to Werewolf by Night. And with that many superhero stories comes an equal or greater number of villains to make up the MCU’s colorful rogues gallery.

Naturally, some villains will be written and received better than others, largely due to the different motivations that drive their antagonistic quests, with some of them passing the scrutiny test with flying colors, and others not even bothering to pick up the pencil. And with so many villains to scrutinize, the folks over at r/marvelstudios have taken to administering such a test to weed out the best of the best and the worst of the worst.

Surprisingly, the most contentious of the pack was Red Skull, with many pointing out that being a literal Nazi is about as bad a motivation as it gets, while others suggested that Red Skull is better defined by his Hydra affiliations, which really doesn’t paint him in any better of a light.

Other users suggested Ultron, who was tasked with creating world peace; a phenomenon that he concluded could only happen if no one was around to disturb it. He’s not technically wrong, even if global genocide will always be the furthest thing from right.

But the crown is perhaps shared by Taskmaster and Winter Soldier; being mind-controlled is a hard one to knock.

Indeed, MCU villains have a way of making a very loud splash, with the likes of Thanos, Killmonger, and Loki having made more rounds on the internet than we can keep track of, and the MCU train is far from making its last stop; for all we know, Feige has an adaptation in the works that will skyrocket our standards for villains and their motives to almost unreasonable heights.