16 years in, everybody has problems with the MCU, and a perennial favorite gripe is that the franchise’s villains are vanilla, same-y, and shockingly killable.
Today, we turn that frown upside-down. We celebrate the times when the Marvel Cinematic Universe got it right, offering fans an antagonist who was memorable, frightening, and above all, a real weirdo. We rank all of the MCU’s creepiest, most upsetting villains, ranked from Wilson Fisk all the way up to Wilson Fisk.
Honorable mention: Darren/M.O.D.O.K. from the trailer for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania
It’s not fair to judge a product based on an unfinished first look. Life’s not fair. Grow up.
There was so much speculation going into Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. Fan-favorite character M.O.D.O.K. was set to make his unlikely debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and a convention-exclusive trailer had fans spinning their wheels over what sounded like a dramatic departure from the mechanized organism that they loved. What should have been a fleshy, oversized head in a gold hoverchair seemed doomed to reach the silver screen as a metal oversized head in a gold hoverchair. Why don’t you just take away our birthdays while you’re at it, Disney?
But then, hope: A split-second shot in the official trailer for the threequel, featuring M.O.D.O.K. as a glob of pasty white face with tiny limbs poking out of him. Fans rejoiced. Then they took a second. Then they paused the trailer, zoomed in, and took a good, hard look at what was — as they’d requested — a guy’s honking gob, made digitally disproportional with real first-draft precision. He looked, in these scant few moments, like someone had built a prison made of Snapchat filters and trapped Corey Stoll inside. Stricken and upset, a troubled fan base shook off the image, comforted by the knowledge that this was in no way indicative of the quality of the effects that we could expect from the theatrical release of Ant-Man 3.
Number 1: Wilson Fisk
For longer than you’ve been alive, the Marvel Comics stable of characters has been built on punch-up: One person has an idea, Stan Lee takes credit for it, and someone else piggybacks, making adjustments and reimagining details. Sometimes, that’s meant fresh-faced writers doing full glow-ups on previously unloved properties. In more recent years, it’s been a matter of finding the right actor to breathe life into what could have been a one-shot nobody character.
In the case of Wilson Fisk, both things happened. The Kingpin of Crime started life in the comics as a real also-ran Spider-Man villain, whose most memorable features included wearing a double-breasted jacket and looking kind of like Sydney Greenstreet. He had a cane with a laser in it sometimes. Loving crime didn’t set him apart from other supervillains, and “criminal mastermind” isn’t the sort of superpower that keeps the kids tuning in. He was nobody’s favorite.
Then a young, not-yet-a-gigantic-bummer Frank Miller came along and took over a run of Daredevil comics, introducing grim, thoughtful reconsiderations of characters who’d spent the last 20 years providing insulation for comic book shelves. His Kingpin was quieter. He didn’t waste time with melodrama. When he learned Matt Murdock’s secret identity, he didn’t commission a suit of plasma armor and show up at the law office to challenge his nemesis to a duel. He used his connections to have Murdock audited by the IRS and kicked out of his apartment.
And that’s the version of Wilson Fisk that we got in the MCU. Like Miller’s Fisk, he doesn’t jump at the chance to gloat and twirl his mustache. He manipulates, sometimes for decades, to get what he wants out of people.
So much of what works about Fisk is thanks to the show-stealing, surgical performances turned in by Vincent D’Onofrio. Across three series, the character’s writing has been on point more often than not, but even on the off days, the instability that D’Onofrio brings to the role has made him one of the most quietly unsettling forces on television. Like a sedated, physically imposing Nicolas Cage, he gestures strangely, looks around uncomfortably, letting you know at your core that something terrible is about to happen without ever giving a hint as to what that might be.
With Echo in the rearview and the Kang saga in disarray, Wilson Fisk is set up to become one of the most important figures in the MCU moving forward. Rumors have been making the rounds that he’s the franchise’s next Big Bad – the street-level Thanos that fans expected from The Defenders. D’Onofrio has said for years that he wants to see his character go head-to-head with the studio’s A-listers. We should be so lucky.
