The Marvel Cinematic Universe and its surrounding franchises have had an interesting year for villains in 2024, for better and for worse. Marvel’s 2024 releases had a wide range of quality regarding their villains, running a broad gamut of antagonistic excitement. While there were a few notable standouts, as a whole, 2024’s Marvel villain adaptations left something to be desired compared to previous years.
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Despite the Marvel Cinematic Universe only releasing a single film and two live-action TV series in 2024, there were still plenty of villains to step out from under the franchise’s red banner in the last year. 2024 saw the arduous end of Sony’s cinematic Spider-Man spin-off universe as well, not to mention the release of unique animated projects like What If…? and X-Men ’97. Between all of these features, Marvel has been able to have some memorable and not-so exciting bad guys show up on screens both big and small.
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12
The Apex
What If…?
The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s only consistent animated series, What If…? has gotten flack ever since its first season for its wasted potential in terms of possible storylines covered. Rather than answering fascinating questions Marvel fans may have lingering in the back of their minds, the series has instead been content to show the same old characters over and over again in only slightly varying circumstances. No villain better represents the epitome of this problem than The Apex from season 3’s first episode, What If…The Hulk fought the Mech Avengers?
Created by Bruce Banner as a way to rid himself of The Hulk once and for all, The Apex is a massive creature that towers above any other terrestrial being in the MCU. As a villain, The Apex has little personality of his own, acting as more of a force of nature that the ragtag band of C-List Avengers have to form together with their new robots to defeat. With no real character to speak of, all that’s left is a fairly generic monster design that looks like something left on the chopping room floor from the Pacific Rim kaiju.
11
The Watchers
What If…?
The Watchers have shown up several times already throughout What If…?, which makes sense considering that the series’ narrator, Uatu, counts himself among them. A race of nigh-omnipotent, omnipresent beings sworn only to observe the dealings of the mutliverse without ever interfering, The Watchers are some of the most powerful cosmic entities introduced to the MCU. In the climactic finale of What If…?, Uatu’s counterparts finally decide to step in and take an antagonistic role over the fact that he constantly breaks the species’ one important rule.
The three named Watchers that serve as the series’ ultimate villains, Executioner, Eminence, and Incarnate, are all quite forgettable villains by most metrics. It may be cool to see such powerful foes represented in the MCU, but the three Watchers don’t feel especially menacing or even as difficult to defeat as they should. The Watchers may have been more memorable than a big, scaly Hulk, but only just barely.
10
The Foreigner
Kraven The Hunter
Taking the Sony Spider-Man spin-off universe out with a whimper, Kraven the Hunter snuck in at the tail end of 2024, bringing with it a couple of legacy Spider-Man villains to square off against Aaron Taylor-Johnson’s superhuman predator. By far the least noteworthy of the two of them was Christopher Abbott’s The Foreigner, an obscure character even by Sony’s standards. The Foreigner is the secondary antagonist of Kraven the Hunter, serving as a sort of mini-boss for Kraven to deal with before making his way to The Rhino.
The only thing that stands out about The Foreigner is his vague, poorly-explained superpowers, which allow him to briefly stun his foes by way of ocular hypnosis. This gives Kraven more trouble than most other targets, but isn’t especially memorable compared to even other Sony universe villains. The Foreigner is played well by Christopher Abbott, but in truth, the actor isn’t given much to work with, ending up a fairly forgettable minor antagonist in an already forgettable superhero story.
9
Ezekiel Sims
Madame Web
It’s almost difficult to remember that Madame Web did indeed premiere in February of 2024, bringing with it a bizarre villain in the form of Ezekiel Sims. A sort of evil take on a character with Spider-Man powers (sans the genius of Peter Parker, meaning that he isn’t armed with webshooters), Ezekiel seeks to kill Madame Web and the three teenage girls who will grow up to become heroes who ultimately dispose of him. Donning a suit of his own eerily similar to Peter Parker’s future costume, Ezekiel sets about his grisly work with determination.
There aren’t many positive things to say about Ezekiel Sims, from his strange method of finding his future killers’ identities to the bizarre voice-over dubbing that plagues Tahar Rahim’s already stilted performance. Ezekiel is just one of many, many aspects of Madame Web that simply don’t work. Still, he does manage to be quite intimidating in certain scenes, with the concept of an evil Spider-Man being novel enough to wring out some wall-crawling horror.
8
Mr. Paradox
Deadpool & Wolverine
Another secondary antagonist, Mr. Paradox is easily the least-memorable character of Deadpool & Wolverine‘s stacked cast of cameos. A high-ranking member of the Time Variance Authority of Loki fame, Mr. Paradox is the one to pull Deadpool into his multiversal adventure in the first place, though what he tells the Merc with a Mouth is simply a front for his own nefarious ends. It turns out that Mr. Paradox is something of a holdover from Kang’s administration of the TVA, hoping to return to the bureau’s “old ways” with his Time Ripper device.
Mr. Paradox works well enough as a bumbling secondary villain to bristle and Deadpool’s cutting barbs, his slick suit and posh British accent bumping up against the character’s unruly antics. His betrayal is among the easiest to see coming of any MCU twist villain, even if the development isn’t exactly intended to be a shock. Mr. Paradox doesn’t exceed his villainous expectations, but he certainly meets them, being well-acted and fun to watch fail in the face of both Deadpool and Cassandra Nova.
7
The Hood
What If…?
What If…? received the pleasure of introducing a highly-anticipated original Marvel character from the comics in 2024. Enter What If…1872?, an episode of the anthology series that pulled a similar trick to the episode What If…the Avengers assembled in 1602? by taking familiar Marvel characters and flinging them into the distant past. This time around, a Wild West version of Shang-Chi and Kate Bishop go up against The Hood, a mastermind criminal using a magical cloak to pursue her own horrific goals.
The Hood may have initially meant to premier earlier in Ironheart, which was delayed from a 2024 release to an alleged 2025 debut. This could explain why the episode does a poor job of explaining the mythos of The Hood, though the character does work in the story as a supernatural threat on the American frontier. The ultimate reveal of The Hood’s identity may be somewhat obvious, but as far as What If…? villains go, The Hood is a memorable and unambiguously evil big bad for the bottle episode.
6
The Salem Seven
Agatha All Along
Image via Disney+
The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s only live-action series in 2024 to introduce a brand-new villain, Agatha All Along delved further into the MCU’s catalog of powerful magic users with the Salem Seven. A mysterious coven of witches with a unique hivemind, the Salem Seven consists of seven masked witches with their own animal-themed codenames, including Snake, Coyote, Owl, Crow, Fox, and Rat. Their leader is the enigmatic Vertigo, a witch with an ancient personal vendetta against Agatha that manifests as the group attacks her new coven during their journey on the Witches’ Road.
The Salem Seven are a creepy and unsettling bunch of antagonists responsible for some of the most entertaining scenes in Agatha All Along, from their spooky early appearances to their climactic defeat. The group even manage to deal some harsh blows to Agatha’s coven along the course of their journey, making them one of the MCU’s more successful villains of 2024. Still, most of the masked members don’t have much in the way of personality, making them easily forgettable and replaceable in the grand scheme of things.
5
Knull
Venom: The Last Dance
Excitement for Knull’s appearance in the Sony Spider-Man spin-off universe was high going into Venom: The Last Dance, with Knull being one of the few Marvel Comics villains on par with the likes of Thanos that Sony could flaunt in its arsenal. An alien god and the original creator of the symbiotes, Knull is by far the most menacing of any antagonist to appear in the Sony Spider-Man villain solo movies. In Venom: The Last Dance, it’s revealed that Knull is out for a mysterious codex contained in Venom that would allow him to escape from his alien prison.
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Sadly, Knull doesn’t end up having much of a presence in Venom: The Last Dance, only being occasionally cut to as he sends the monstrous Xenophages to Earth in pursuit of Venom. When he does appear, Andy Serkis’ motion-capture talents are as potent as ever, and the relatively comic-accurate design makes for a chilling sight. If only he had more of an actual active appearance in his debut film, Knull could’ve easily been the strongest Marvel villain to come out of 2024.
4
Rhino
Kraven the Hunter
The primary antagonist of Kraven the Hunter and a more famous foe of Spider-Man, Rhino appears in live-action for the second time in 2024. In Kraven the Hunter, Rhino is Aleksei Sytsevich, a Russian mercenary who kidnaps Kraven’s brother with the goal of taking over their father’s expansive drug empire. Embodying his nickname, Aleksei is capable of transforming into a horrific rhinoceros-human hybrid creature through the use of a special serum.
Alessandro Nivola is entertaining as the bombastic villain, whose ridiculous final appearance as Rhino is admittedly quite comic-accurate. He serves his purpose well as an antagonist who can match both Kraven’s tactical mind and his physical prowess, albeit at the cost of a bizarre biological transformation. Rhino is a memorable and present threat, even if his design implies that some comic book characters simply don’t work outside the boundaries of a drawing. Nivola is at least a marked upgrade from Paul Giamatti’s Rhino in The Amazing Spider-Man 2.
3
Bastion
X-Men ’97
Though several iconic villains come and go throughout the first season of X-Men ’97, the ultimate big bad of the series’ first run of episodes is easily Bastion. Bastion represents the absolute pinnacle of the Sentinel robots that plagued the X-Men for generations, a techno-organic being with powers rivaling even the strongest Omega-level mutants. With a seething hatred for mutants baked into his very consciousness, Bastion very nearly succeeds in wiping mutantkind off the face of the planet, trampling over the lives of many innocent humans to do so, as well.
From his deviously vile voice performance courtesy of Theo James to his terrifying technopathy and ability to imbue normal people with a sort of Sentinel hivemind, Bastion is one of Marvel’s most deliciously horrific villains in 2024. It takes everything the X-Men and other mutants have to overcome his threat, a boast few others can share even in the animated Marvel continuity. The only downside to Bastion is his convoluted origin story and muddled motivations that rely on heaps of background knowledge from the comics and X-Men: The Animated Series, poorly-explained in X-Men ’97.
2
Cassandra Nova
Deadpool & Wolverine
Another legacy X-Men villain finally making a pop culture breakthrough in 2024, Cassandra Nova was one of the most fascinating original additions to Deadpool & Wolverine. As explained in the film, Cassandra Nova is essentially the evil twin of Professor Charles Xavier, gifted with mutant powers just as overwhelming as his own, if not more so. In the MCU, Cassandra Nova comes to rule over the Void after being dumped there by the TVA, amassing a legion of lackeys amid her fortress carved out of a giant-sized Ant-Man’s bones.
Cassandra’s powers are intimidating enough to balance out the comedic tone of Deadpool & Wolverine, from her ability to instantly flay the skin off of an unwitting Human Torch to her body-horror method of violently reading minds. Emma Corrin is brilliant as the bald baddy, with enough of a fear factor to overcome Deadpool’s jokes while still throwing out the occasional zinger of her own. Compared to the rest of Marvel’s 2024 slate, Cassandra Nova is hard to beat.
1
Death
Agatha All Along
In fact, the only entity able to eclipse Cassandra Nova in terms of raw villainy is none other than Death herself, made manifest in Agatha All Along. The literal embodiment of entropy and decay in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Death is played by Aubrey Plaza, first appearing as an Earthy witch by the name of Rio Vidal. After joining Agatha’s coven to replace a fallen witch, her true nature as one of the MCU’s most important cosmic beings is revealed, making for a welcome surprise to the WandaVision follow-up.
In truth, Death is less of a villain and more of a natural force, though Aubrey Plaza manages to imbue her with some wonderful personality. It’s quite captivating to watch her complicated relationship with Agatha unfold over the hundreds of years the series ends up covering, leading to an important breakthrough with the MCU’s first sapphic kiss. A playful but powerful and even maniacal character, hopefully audiences haven’t seen the last of Lady Death in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
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