Marvel Characters Who Would ABSOLUTELY CRUSH Thanos
Ever since Infinity War, the most talked about topic of Marvel’s MCU has been “who will/can defeat Thanos.” Now that Endgame is out however, we have our answer at last, and it’s a pretty damn good one. Still, this answer pretty much ends the conversion. So in honor of the Mad Titan’s reign as the MCU’s big bad for 11 years and for bringing together all of our favorite big screen heroes, we’ve decided to go over a list of characters -- some controversial, some absolute -- that could kick Thanos’ butt all over again.
Because the ever-memorable question of “who will defeat Thanos,” tended to be answered with characters who have yet to make an appearance in the MCU, we will also be plucking a few people who have -- as of this time -- only appeared in the comics. We’ll also be stripping Thanos of his full-powered Infinity Gauntlet, because at that point there’s little to no hope.
World Breaker Hulk (Comics)
The very first person we see Thanos handle handedly without any Infinity Stones in the MCU is the Hulk, a powerful statement as Hulk is recognized as the Avengers secret weapon of sorts. Still Hulk is toned down in this version of the MCU. He doesn’t have all of the absurd powers and abilities he has in the comics, powers like his World Breaker state for instance.
World Breaker Hulk is a state the Hulk enters whenever his anger runs so far away from him, that he radiates gamma energy. In this form, Hulk, with a single step, has the power to trigger worldwide earthquakes -- the monster has weaponized walking. Hulk’s strength in this form is such that he can even burn out the Sentry, Marvel’s equivalent of Superman. If this Hulk had gone up against Thanos in Infinity War he would have quite easily usurped him of the Avengers’ biggest threat.
Doctor Strange (MCU or Comics)
To say Doctor Strange is overpowered is a giant understatement. Without the use of any Infinity Stones, Doctor Strange is capable of manipulating space and matter with what seems like no effort at all. Thanos threw a singularity at Strange and Strange just turned it into butterflies. All of this power and this is just his MCU carnation. Doctor Strange is one of those many heroes who’s comic portrayal is more powerful than the movies. Strange’s magic is near limitless in the comics, but he wouldn’t need all of that power to take Thanos on without the Infinity Stones.
Like we said before, Strange turned a mini black hole into butterflies. Without the power of the stones behind him, what’s Thanos going to do to stop Strange from using whatever other convoluted spells he likes on him? As far as we know, Strange’s powers are only limited by imagination. Sure, the movies claim that more powerful magic can only be used by wielding relics, but when you’re capable of going blow for blow with an alien that’s using the physical embodiments of power, space, and reality, against you, you really don’t need anything else to beat them when their stripped of such objects.
The Ancient One (MCU)
The Ancient One, is arguably more powerful than Strange is at the time he battles Thanos on titan. As Strange’s teacher she had more knowledge over the mystical arts and different dimensions than he did. It’s also worth mentioning that she had nearly 500 more years of experience than Doctor Strange. So if Strange can do the things he did to Thanos with only about 2 years of being Sorcerer Supreme then it makes sense that the Ancient One could take it even further.
We didn’t get to see the Ancient One’s full power, but we can gleam enough from her title alone to figure out that she’s more than enough to take on Thanos if he doesn’t have the Infinity Gauntlet. She did, after all, render Professor Hulk complete useless with a single blow, whereas it took Thanos several clean hits to put Savage Hulk down for the count.
The Scarlet Witch (MCU or Comics)
Both in and out of comics, Scarlet Witch has proven herself to be a very terrifying opponent. MCU Scarlet Witch may not have all of the ridiculous abilities that her comics iteration does, but she doesn’t need them when it concerns Thanos. Scarlet Witch is almost like the Hulk in the sense that when you get her angry your life is in very real danger of being over, something two of the MCU’s biggest villains -- Ultron and Thanos -- have found out the hard way.
When Ultron killed Scarlet Witch’s brother, Quicksilver, she found him and pulled his “heart” right out of his chest with little to no effort. Note, Ultron had been juicing his body with, as Tony Stark so elegantly put it, “a vibranium cocktail” the strongest known metal in the MCU, the same metal that comprises Cap’s laws-of-physics-disobeying shield. Thanos was strong enough to destroy this same shield in Endgame, but when Scarlet Witch confronted him about murdering Vision, her lover, she nearly killed him. He only escaped by desperately calling down fire from his ships in the upper atmosphere, knowing full well he would be killing his own troops in the process.
Captain Marvel (MCU)
Here’s another female hero who can take Thanos one on one. It’s hard to debate whether or not Carol’s MCU version is stronger than her comics iteration, which is rare because the answer almost always tends to be the comics version, but MCU Carol is no joke. The MCU seems to have made Carol a weaker version of her comic iteration’s powered-up form known as Binary, a hero powered by a white dwarf star and that can manipulate energy in all of it’s forms.
MCU Carol seems to have no equal when it comes to raw power, with the only other possible individual being “Fit” Stormbreaker Thor. In Endgame Carol threw herself headlong at Thanos to stop him from using the full power of the Infinity Gauntlet. When he tried to overpower her the same way he did Captain America, he couldn’t, and when he tried to headbutt her in response, Carol didn’t seem to even feel it. The only reason Thanos didn’t end up with his entire arm being ripped off by Captain Marvel is because he had the good sense to pluck the Power Stone from the Gauntlet and use it on her, which she hadn’t expected. It’s safe to say that without the stones though, Thanos would have gotten destroyed.
Dormammu (MCU)
What do you know, another Doctor Strange character. This should be no surprise, most people tied to Strange are pretty overpowered, Dormammu is no exception. Dormammu is the ruler of of Dark Dimension. He’s so magically powerful on his own that he is his own dimension. The only reason Strange even defeated Dormammu was because Dormammu didn’t think Earth was worth the continued battle between his will and Strange’s. If Doctor Strange didn’t use the Time Stone the way he did then Dormammu would have destroyed him and the rest of the world without so much as a second thought, and would have done so with his own power, not one granted to him by another object.
Like Doctor Strange at this point in time, Thanos has no way to combat Dormammu without relying on the Infinity Stones. So if the two ever did do battle, Dormammu wouldn’t have much trouble defeating him.
“Fit” Stormbreaker Thor (MCU)
We did say he was the only other possible equal there is to Captain Marvel at the moment, so of course he appears on this list. If you’re wondering why “fit” appears before his name though it’s because fat Thor is no match for Thanos. He gets railed by Thanos in Endgame, and this happened despite him wielding both Stormbreaker and Mjölnir at the same time. If he was in shape however, this fight would have been an entirely different story.
Note Infinity War. In the movie, Thanos uses the full power of the Infinity Gauntlet, against an in-shape Thor, and Thor throws his Stormbreaker with enough force to cut clean through the gauntlet’s power like a hot knife through butter. Without losing any momentum, the axe then pierces Thanos’ skin effortlessly, and Thor uses his own strength to drive it further into Thanos’ chest.
If Thor wanted to, he could have aimed for Thanos’s head and killed him instantly. Did he have a sneak attack advantage? Yeah. Does it matter? No. Fit Thor still had to contend with all six Infinity Stones before reaching Thanos and did. Had Thor been at the full height of his power in Endgame, Thanos definitely wouldn’t have lasted as long as he did.
Galactus (Comics)
If the MCU wanted to introduce an even bigger bad than Thanos in their upcoming story arc, Galactus would be a very good candidate. Even in the comics, where Thanos is much more overpowered without the Infinity Gauntlet, Galactus is still considered an even bigger threat. This would work rather nicely too considering the MCU now has access to the Fantastic Four, who are the original superhero group that Galactus first debuted as an enemy against.
Galactus spends most of his free time roaming around and eating entire planets. Right off the bat, Galactus, under his own power, is a planet buster. The same damage Thanos needed armies to cause, Galactus can pretty much cause naturally.
If this weren’t enough, Galactus is also the source of the Power Cosmic. The Power Cosmic is cosmic energy so powerful it rivals each of individual Infinity Stones abilities. So the same damage that Thanos need the gauntlet to cause is also something that Galactus can pretty much do on his own, even if it is to a slightly less severe extent.
Iron Man (MCU)
Alright, this one’s cheating a little bit but we have to give credit where credit is due. Iron Man was the one to finally kill Thanos and all of his armies in the MCU after all. So in a way -- yeah, Iron could crush Thanos if the Infinity Gauntlet was in play.
In the MCU, Iron Man and Thanos have always considered the other to be their biggest hurdle. They’re both super intelligent beings and their both very powerful in their own right, but only one of them was capable of creating a means to manipulate time without an Infinity Stone, and only one was capable of building multiple devices that could handle the full power of the Infinity Stones without help.
Thanos had to seek a giant dwarf with access to materials like stars to get his Infinity Gauntlet built. Iron Man did it by doing nothing more than making a few modifications to his suits.
If Iron Man had the same knowledge about the Infinity Stones and Gauntlet that he did in Endgame back in Infinity War, he would have been able to create a suit that would have allowed him to simply snatch the stones away from Thanos while the two were brawling (the exact same thing that happens in Endgame).
You could take this scenario even further if Iron Man still had access to his Iron Legion.
Considering the fact that Iron Man’s suit was also capable of wielding the Infinity Stones along with his artificial gauntlet, there’s no reason why he couldn’t have just made the same modifications to his other suits. This means that he could have multiple remote-controlled suits swarm Thanos and in the ensuing chaos, have one of them steal the stones (again, the exact same scenario that happens in Endgame, but with Avengers instead of suits). Since the suits have no life onboard that the stones can kill with radiation, Friday, the suits’ A.I. could have a field day with the stones. At this point, Iron Man can dispatch Thanos in any way that he wants to without putting his own life at risk.
Sadly, this just wasn’t his fate in the MCU.
