Although they seem to have remedied the problem somewhat in recent years, one of the major criticisms of the Marvel Cinematic Universe for a long time was the franchise’s lack of compelling villains. Obviously, the movies are designed and sold on the strength of their title characters, but the lack of interesting bad guys made many of the studio’s comic book blockbusters feel as they were simply going through the motions and repeating the same formula over and over again.
Luckily, the MCU has been on something of a winning streak recently thanks to the likes of Black Panther’s Killmonger, Spider-Man: Far From Home’s Mysterio and, of course, Thanos, who lived up to his billing as the Infinity Saga’s end-of-level boss across the course of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame. That being said, on the other side of the coin, it would be hard to find many defenders of Doctor Strange’s Kaecilius or Ant-Man and the Wasp’s Ghost, but you can’t win em’ all.
With Phase Four set to mark a turning point for the franchise, with the introduction of the Disney Plus shows only deepening the mythology and tying everything together closer than before, the MCU faces a big task in creating worthy adversaries for both their old and new faces over the next few years, especially with ten projects set to shoot in 2020 alone. However, we’re now hearing that the studio may be rebooting one of the cancelled Netflix series’ villains to antagonize their roster on the big and small screen.
According to our sources – the same ones who told us that Han would be returning to the Fast and Furious franchise months ago, and that Disney were developing a sequel to Aladdin back in the summer – the Hand could be set for a comeback in the MCU. While their storylines weren’t particularly beloved by fans and seemed to drag on for far too long across Daredevil, Iron Fist and The Defenders, our intel claims that the mystical ninja organization will be steadily built up as a threat across various movies and TV shows, and could even be revealed as the ones pulling the strings for the bad guys in the planned Shang-Chi franchise. This would also give the studio a simple route to bringing both Daredevil and Iron Fist back into the fold.
Not to mention that it’s become a little tiring to see the MCU‘s heroes repeatedly battle faceless CGI armies, so the introduction of the Hand would at least add a human element to the third-act skirmishes that have become the franchise’s bread and butter. Hopefully Kevin Feige manages to handle the evil syndicate better than the Netflix shows did though, where it reached the point that relying on them to drive the story became more than a little stale by the end.
