The focus of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has always been the marquee superheroes at the center of each comic book blockbuster, but that’s often left the villains feeling more than a little underdeveloped as a result. Of course, there’ve been some seriously notable exceptions to the rule, but the history of the franchise is littered with one-dimensional bad guys that have never posed a threat to a single hero never mind the entirety of the Avengers.
The Iron Man trilogy, The Incredible Hulk, Captain America: The First Avenger, both Ant-Man movies, Doctor Strange and even Black Panther all featured antagonists who were thinly-veiled mirror versions of the title character, all of whom felt hard done by and used their similar powers and technology to try and make a name for themselves, although Michael B. Jordan’s Killmonger still remains one of the franchise’s most memorable bad guys by far.
We’ll likely never see the MCU go full-blown Suicide Squad by crafting an entire feature where the villains are positioned at the forefront of the story, but new fan art from Leroy Fernandes imagines an alternate evil version of the Avengers battling Thanos, which you can check out below.
Based on how they fared in their respective feature films, businessmen Yellowjacket, Obadiah Stane and Vulture would be wiped out in seconds by the Mad Titan. That being said, assembling the likes of Abomination, Hela, Killmonger, Red Skull, Ultron and Ego the Living Planet to try and stop Thanos from gathering the Infinity Stones is an intriguing prospect that would make an excellent episode of Marvel’s What If…? examining what could happen if the bad guys had stepped up in place of the Avengers.
