Thanos was an all-powerful titan in the Marvel Cinematic Universe but post-Infinity Saga projects are finally taking him more lightly.
While Thanos actor Josh Brolin has teased the possibility of the Mad Titan returning to the MCU, a new cosmic villain must be introduced so that the MCU movies don’t get too repetitive. The multiple ways to alter the Marvel Multiverse can be a convenient cheat code to resurrect Thanos, but that would just undermine Iron Man’s final sacrifice in Avengers: Endgame. In an era of superhero fatigue and Marvel’s critical and commercial setbacks with recent projects, it’s all the more important to forget Thanos and move forward. The MCU is thankfully achieving this by toning down Thanos’ threat level.
The MCU’s Post-Endgame Thanos Treatment Means He Couldn’t Be The Same Villain Now
His Many Deaths Trivialize His Villainy And Infinity Stones Might Not Be That Powerful Anymore
Before Thanos made his full-fledged entry in Avengers: Infinity War, his threat level was teased through numerous post-credits scenes in the previous MCU movies. But now that his villainous plans of universal mass destruction have been fully fleshed out, the Avengers and other Marvel characters are finally getting past the effects of the Blip. Current MCU titles are undermining Thanos’s terror now, be it through the multiple deaths of Thanos in Marvel’s What If..? or trivializing the Infinity Stones in Loki. In Thor: Love and Thunder, the community of New Asgard even established an ice cream parlor cheekily named Infinity Conez.
Among Thanos’s many deaths in the MCU, the post-Endgame ones often play out with darkly comic undertones or depict him as a weaker villain. For instance, Ronan the Accuser (previously depicted as an underling of Thanos) easily killed him in an off-screen death in What If’s season 2 premiere. Throughout What If…?, Thanos is sliced in half by Infinity Ultron, turned into a zombie, and even snapped out of existence by a human villain like Killmonger. In Loki, the Infinity Stones are used as paperweights by TVA agents, implying that the Marvel Multiverse might have way more powerful cosmic artifacts.
What Villains The MCU Can Introduce To Replace Thanos In Its Future
Kang Is The Obvious Replacement But There’s Scope For Galactus And Others
The most obvious villain to succeed Thanos seems to be Kang the Conqueror, considering he and his variants have already appeared in post-Endgame projects like Loki and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. While Kang can serve as the main villain in Avengers: The Kang Dynasty and Avengers: Secret Wars, his MCU future seems uncertain given actor Jonathan Major’s legal troubles and exit from the franchise. Still, there are already a handful of powerful Avengers villains the MCU has already teased. For starters, the upcoming Fantastic Four movie can feature Doctor Doom as an Earth-level villain or even tease the planet-consuming Galactus as a cosmic-level antagonist.
The villain group Serpent Society is supposed to appear in Captain America: Brave New World but even Norman Osborn could become a major threat to the Avengers after the events of Secret Invasion. While initially a Spider-Man villain, Osborn later went on to form the law enforcement agency H.A.M.M.E.R to hunt and exterminate unlicensed superheroes. For Avengers: Secret Wars, the higher-dimensional beings known as Beyonders can be introduced as they are the ones who orchestrated the events of the same-named comic storyline. Thanos can hence be replaced by many more villains in the future of the MCU.
