There are plenty of high-speed heroes with lightning-fast reflexes in the MCU but only one of them is the fastest. The question is, just who exactly is that person?
Ask any Marvel fan who they think may be the fastest hero off the top of their head and you’ll get mostly the same answers – Quicksilver, Thor, and Captain Marvel. But if you dig a little deeper you’ll find some more obscure speedsters like Whizzer, aka Speed Demon or Speed and you’ll probably see why we don’t hear about them anymore. Besides having very basic names, these “fast” heroes have been outpaced by so many Marvel heroes since (Speed Demon’s top speed is only 165 miles per hour). They also aren’t in the MCU either, I just put them in as a little trivia for those who find it interesting.
Now, back to the more relevant MCU characters; all of these heroes have shown that they are more than capable of going pretty fast, but who’s the fastest character we’ve seen on screen so far? And are there any others yet to join the MCU who could be even faster? The truth is, the answer isn’t so simple.
Thor
He’s a god so he’s definitely pretty fast. His Asgardian physiology means that he’s capable of much more than most of the human characters in the MCU. He’s able to travel pretty fast, making use of Mjölnir, however, without his hammer can he really move that fast? We can’t really count the hammer because then we’d have to count every character who has a spaceship, like Peter Quill or Rocket.
There’s no doubt that Thor’s reflexes and speed are certainly better than most in the MCU, but he’s definitely not the fastest without his hammer. He’s not even the fastest with his hammer.
Quicksilver (Pietro Maximoff)
The obvious choice for the fastest MCU character, his power is literally speed, that’s all he’s known for. In the comics, the fastest we’ve seen him is 7,673 miles per hour. It would take him a little over three hours to run the circumference of the Earth. He can even run on water and he’s so fast he was able to take out the Avengers almost single-handedly in Age of Ultron. We’ve seen his speed in action and it’s pretty hard to compete with, surely a hero literally called Quicksilver must be the fastest in the MCU.
Captain Marvel (Carol Danvers)
Captain Marvel received superhuman abilities from a light speed engine test that went wrong. She was exposed to cosmic energy that transformed her into a human-Kree hybrid. As such she has super-human abilities, being much stronger and faster as well as being able to fly and shoot photon blasts from her hands – among other things. In the comics she’s been shown to be faster than Quicksilver as she was able to catch up to him even after he had a head start, although she did admit that she could only maintain such a speed for a short amount of time.
Photon (Monica Rambeau)
Monica’s body was changed on a molecular level after coming into contact with Wanda’s Hex multiple times in WandaVision. Her powers allow her to change into X-rays, Gamma energy, cosmic rays, and more. In the comics she’s able to transform into light form, meaning she could potentially travel the speed of light. However, this ability has yet to be seen in the MCU.
Where the information contradicts
Here’s where things get tricky as the MCU and information from the comics start to contradict. As we have seen in the comics, Captain Marvel is able to go over Quicksilver’s limit of 12,348 kilometers an hour, but she can’t maintain such a speed for long. However, we’ve seen in the MCU (and comics) that she is more than capable of flying through space between different star systems. In order to do that she’d have to be traveling over the speed of light, otherwise there’s simply no way of her traveling the distance.
Obviously this raises lots of questions. Is Carol Danvers making use of the interstellar jumps we see the ships do in Guardians of the Galaxy? Do these jumps work for just one little person? Or does it have to be a whole ship? There’s an article published by Inverse that calculates just how fast the spaceships go in GOTG. They worked it out to be about 11,000 light years per minute. Can we assume that Captain Marvel can match that speed? If so then Monica’s ability to travel at the speed of light is nothing. But then again, if that’s the case and she can travel that fast, why is it so hard for her to keep up with Quicksilver? Surely she wouldn’t even be breaking a sweat.
And then there’s other characters who we’ve seen flying solo through the cosmos in the MCU such as Adam Warlock. He travels through space from the Sovereign to Knowhere in GOTG Vol.3; presumably these two places are very far apart. According to most sources his speed on an Earth-like atmosphere is 770 miles per hour. However, he can enter natural space warps to travel at interstellar speeds.
Okay, now things are getting even more confusing. So does Captain Marvel use space warps like Warlock? Can we count that? Technically they’re not being aided by any tools like how Thor uses Mjölnir, but then if space warps work like worm holes then they’re not really the ones doing the traveling as both are simply using holes in space time to travel around.
For simplicity let’s just look at how fast these characters can travel in an atmosphere. If that’s the case then the competition is really between Carol Danvers and Monica Rambeau. Although we can’t say for sure whether Rambeau can go lightspeed as we haven’t seen it in the MCU yet; so far it’s only theoretical.
Characters outside the MCU
So that makes Captain Marvel the winner – at least for now. It’s worth bearing in mind that in the comics there are plenty of characters capable of going faster than Carol Danvers – heroes like the Silver Surfer who partakes in interplanetary travel regularly. His speed is actually pretty crazy; he’s capable of traveling at around 500,000 lightyears a second when on his board. No other Marvel character even comes close to that, but it will probably be a while before we finally see some Silver Surfer action in a Marvel movie.
Other characters, like Sentry have also been known to surpass the speed of light in the comics, so Captain Marvel has some serious competition. But right now neither of these characters are in the MCU so we’re not counting them. Although it won’t be long, we could be seeing Sentry as soon as next year with Beef actor Steven Yeun rumored to be playing the hero in Marvel’s Thunderbolts.
