Although the Marvel Cinematic Universe is known for having a villain problem that it hasn’t really fixed in over a decade, it has introduced various villains who earned the hate of the audience due to their evil or controversial plans. The MCU has become the biggest connected universe in the superhero genre, more so now that it’s also covering TV shows linked to the movies, and as such, it has introduced a variety of characters – heroes, allies, and villains, whether human, alien, or some interesting mutations. The MCU’s biggest strength when it comes to characters is its heroes, but when it comes to villains, it hasn’t exactly been the best.

The MCU’s first villain was Obadiah Stane in Iron Man, and though he’s not the most memorable villain in this universe, he set a formula that the MCU hasn’t been able to get rid of, making way for the MCU’s infamous “villain problem”. Even if many MCU villains have had underwhelming stories, they have earned the hate of viewers for their evil plans and actions and how they affected this universe’s heroes – and here are 12 of the most hated MCU villains to date.

12 Mysterio

Quentin Beck a.k.a. Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) was introduced in Spider-Man: Far From Home. Quentin Beck was a former employee at Stark Industries who developed holographic technology while working for Tony Stark, only for the latter to take the designs and use them for other purposes. Beck was fired from Stark Industries and wanted revenge, so he joined forces with other former Stark employees and with weaponized drones and his hologram technology created the “superhero” Mysterio. His revenge led him to befriend Spider-Man to take the technologies Stark had left him, and though he was defeated by the web-slinger, Mysterio’s final act was revealing Spider-Man’s identity to the entire world and blaming him for all the destruction and deaths he had caused.

11 Gravik

Gravik (Kingsley Ben-Adir) was introduced in the Disney+ TV series Secret Invasion. Gravik was a Skrull and the leader of the radical Skrull Resistance, as he grew disillusioned and spiteful of Nick Fury after he failed to deliver on his promise to find the Skrulls a new home. Gravik was the one responsible for the Secret Invasion, launching covert terrorist attacks and trying to manipulate humanity in order to trigger a self-destructive nuclear war, all with the purpose of ending humanity so the Skrulls could take Earth as their new home. In order to achieve all this, Gravik created an army of Super-Skrulls, and he used Avengers’ DNA on himself to make himself stronger and nearly indestructible.

10 Red Skull

Johann Schmidt a.k.a. Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) was the head of HYDRA, a special weapons division of the Nazi Schutzstaffel. Schmidt was a confidant of Adolf Hitler and aspired to become the superior man, leading him to use the prototype of the Super Soldier Serum on himself, which disfigured him and turned him into Red Skull. Red Skull wanted to use the Tesseract to fulfill his plans of controlling the world and tried to destroy the United States during the war with nuclear weapons. However, when he touched the Tesseract with his bare hands, he was teleported to Vormir, where he became trapped in a sort of purgatory and became the Stonekeeper, advising those who sought the Soul Stone.

9 Alexander Pierce

Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford) was introduced in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and he was one of the leaders of HYDRA. As such, he ordered the assassinations of Nick Fury, Steve Rogers, and Natasha Romanov, and had the Winter Soldier under his control thanks to the many memory wipes Bucky went through during that time. Pierce planned to use Stark-built helicarriers and high-tech weapons to kill anyone who could be a threat to HYDRA’s plans of world domination, labeled “Project Insight”.

8 Ultron

Ultron (James Spader) was the villain of Avengers: Age of Ultron, and is also one of the MCU’s most infamous villains – still, it can’t be denied that his plans were truly evil and scary. Ultron was an artificial intelligence created by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner with the purpose of serving as a peacekeeping program. When Ultron was activated by the Mind Stone, it became sentient and was corrupted by the Infinity Stone, leading Ultron to deem humanity as the real threat. Ultron decided that the only path to peace was to commit extinction-level genocide against humans, and for that, he created a device that would lift the city of Novi Grad, Sokovia, in order to create a meteoric impact when crashing into Earth, thus destroying humanity.

7 Arishem

Arishem the Judge is the Prime Celestial and the creator of the Eternals, a group of synthetic beings who Arishem sent to multiple planets to protect and help evolve sentient lifeforms. However, Arishem had ulterior motives, and what he wanted was for the Eternals to help these lifeforms evolve so they could power a Celestial seed inside the planet, thus making way for the birth of a new Celestial. Of course, the birth of a Celestial from the center of a planet meant the total destruction of the planet and all of its lifeforms. Arishem doesn’t care for the evolution and welfare of the different lifeforms across the universe, instead focusing on the creation of more Celestials.

6 Dreykov

General Dreykov (Ray Winstone) was the villain in Black Widow, and he was a high-ranking officer in the Soviet Armed Forces. Dreykov was also the overseer of the Red Room, also known as the Black Widow Program. This was a secret Soviet-Russian training program that involved kidnapping young women and turning them into elite spies and assassins through psychological conditioning and other intense types of training, which is why many girls didn’t survive the process. To make it even worse, the “Graduation Ceremony” consisted of more physical and mental tests, as well as subjecting the women to involuntary hysterectomies.

5 Kang the Conqueror

Kang the Conqueror is the main villain in the MCU’s Multiverse Saga. His real name is Nathaniel Richards, and he’s a scientist from the 31st Century who discovered the multiverse’s existence – but so did some of his variants. Kang joined the Council of Kangs, a group of variants of Nathaniel Richards who got together to control the multiverse. Kang considered that the council’s actions were destroying the multiverse, so he challenged his variants and sought to conquer as many worlds as possible, naming himself Kang the Conqueror. The council banished Kang to the Quantum Realm, where he tried to use Janet van Dyne to rebuild his Time Sphere and continue his plans of multiversal domination, and he tried to escape the Quantum Realm again during the events of Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.

4 Ego

Ego the Living Planet (Kurt Russell) was the villain of Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Ego was a Celestial and the biological father of Peter Quill and Mantis, and he planned to remake the universe through an omnicidal extinction-level event known as the Expansion. For it, Ego planted “seeds” on various planets to terraform them into new extensions of himself, eradicating all other life in the universe. However, Ego needed another Celestial for this, so he traveled across the universe siring children on humanoid aliens in an attempt to produce a celestial heir. Ego hired the Ravagers to abduct some of these offsprings and bring them to him, but as none proved to have inherited his Celestial DNA, he killed them. Peter survived because Yondu never delivered him to Ego, and the Celestial revealed to his son that he was responsible for his mother’s death.

3 Kilgrave

Kilgrave (David Tennant) was the villain in the TV series Jessica Jones. Kilgrave was experimented on by his parents since he was a child in order to treat a neurodegenerative disease, but the treatment ended up giving him the ability to control people’s minds. Kilgrave was cruel and used his power to manipulate others, as he did with Jessica Jones, who he used as his sex slave and to kill other people. Jessica eventually broke free, but Kilgrave wanted revenge and made killing her his new mission. Kilgrave didn’t care who he had to manipulate and kill in order to get to Jessica Jones, and he was a truly evil and sinister man who represented various fears and dangers from the real world.

2 Thanos

Thanos (Josh Brolin) was the bad guy to defeat in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, and his plans for destruction covered the entire universe. Thanos wanted to bring balance to the universe by wiping out half of life in it, as he believed its massive population would use the universe’s entire supply of resources, leading to its death. To achieve this, Thanos acquired the Infinity Stones and didn’t care how many planets and people he had to destroy in order to get them. Thanos achieved his goal at the end of Infinity War, leading to the vanishing of various MCU heroes, but his snap was reversed in Endgame and he was ultimately defeated.

1 High Evolutionary

The High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) was introduced in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and he quickly earned the hate of the audience. The High Evolutionary is a geneticist who wanted to create a perfect species out of what he considered lower life forms, thus building his own ideal society. For this, the High Evolutionary experimented on a variety of creatures from across the universe, subjecting them to truly horrible and traumatic processes. Many test subjects didn’t survive, and those who did were left with modifications and mutations, as happened to Rocket Raccoon. The High Evolutionary never showed remorse for all the damage he did and never cared about how many beings he had to kill in order to create his perfect species.