10 Most Sympathetic Villains Of The MCU

Across over twenty films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, each film has introduced at least one villain. In some, there have been entire groups of villains introduced for Marvel superheroes to battle. As a result, it can lead to villains of different stories as well as qualities. There are plenty of irredeemable and truly evil villains meant only for the audiences to root against.

Meanwhile, some of the best villains that the MCU has introduced are the ones with understandable motives. They may be going about things in the worst of ways, but their reasonings are somewhat justifiable or their backstories are heartbreaking, making the audience feel sympathy for them.

10 Kaecilius

Kaecilius (played masterfully by Mads Mikkelsen) was a gifted sorcerer much like Doctor Strange. However, as with many baddies, a tragic past led to power corrupting Kaecilius thus transforming him into a villain. Kaecilius seeks to merge the realm of Earth with the Dark Dimension where there is no time thus there is no death.

After losing his family, it isn’t hard to see why such a promise from the evil Dormammu swayed him. Death and time can scare people, and he believes that nobody should suffer the losses he did. Sadly, he pursued that using dark magic to kill and destroy thanks to an empty promise by an evil entity.

9 Taskmaster

Despite the somewhat controversial changes made to Taskmaster, what happened to Antonia Dreykov was horrific. She was a little girl when Natasha Romanoff triggered the explosion that was supposed to kill her and her father, but both survived, and Antonia was heavily scarred by the incident.

Rather than be a good father and help her heal, Dreykov simply saw her as a tool. So instead, she was brainwashed to become the ultimate assassin for the Red Room. No emotion, no control, and no love from her own father makes her story one of the darkest and most twisted thus far.

8 Whiplash

In many ways, Whiplash AKA Ivan Vanko was a victim of his father as well. While his father Anton was taken off the Arc Reactor project for good reasons, it led to him instilling the hatred for the Stark family into his own son. When Anton died in poverty while Stark was a celebrity superhero, it’s difficult to blame him for wanting payback.

Ivan Vanko does show a bit of heart though, as he also happens to be a lover of birds and treats them with much care and respect. That said, what Whiplash is willing to do to get his revenge is monstrous.

7 Thanos

Unlike his comic book counterpart, Thanos believes he is helping the universe with his hunt for Infinity Stones. After his race went extinct and his homeworld became a desolate wasteland, he had an epiphany that the universe was over-populated with too few resources.

Thanos does have a reason to worry, as resource exhaustion is a very real threat. However, rather than try to come up with the solution to more resources, he defaults to genocide and wipes out half the population of the universe. The loss of his people truly turned him into a monster, especially his younger self as shown in Avengers: Endgame where he enjoyed the idea of murdering the Avengers.

6 Baron Zemo

Helmut Zemo showcases the aftermath of the superhero battles that audiences cheer over. All that destruction has consequences and collateral damage: Zemo’s family being one of them. The battle against Ultron in Sokovia led to Zemo losing his entire family in the rubble.

As a result, Baron Zemo now has a hatred for superheroes, particularly those with powers, and it’s hard to blame him for that. So he tried to destroy the Avengers from the inside out, making them kill each other in Captain America: Civil War. Fans agreed that he went out of line but he had a point, hence why he returned as one of the MCU’s best anti-heroes in The Falcon And The Winter Soldier.

5 Loki

Loki is the God Of Mischief but he is often misunderstood: his villainy came as a result of his neglectful father Odin. Odin not only treated Thor better their entire lives, but he also lied to Loki since the day he came to Asgard. Loki was an adopted Frost Giant raised to be Asgardian, intended to at least partially be a bargaining chip with them.

This, combined with always living behind the once-cocky and arrogant Thor’s shadow for centuries, turned him bitter. Fans sympathized with Loki, which led to a long character arc of him regaining his love for his adoptive family, transforming into a reluctant hero. The character even warranted a Disney+ spin-off series of his own.

4 The Winter Soldier

Currently, Bucky Barnes is known as a beloved hero as well as an Avenger. However, Bucky spent decades as the mysterious assassin known simply as the Winter Soldier, an agent of HYDRA. Tortured and experimented on, Bucky was stripped of his former life and memory to become a super-soldier.

Of course, this is tragic from multiple angles as he was Captain America’s best friend turned into a HYDRA agent and forced to fight him. Also, when Bucky regained his memory, he also retained everything he did as the Winter Soldier, forcing him to remember the innocent lives he took for HYDRA.

3 Killmonger

Wakanda seemed like the perfect place, but it was run by imperfect people, such as King T’Chaka who murdered his own brother to protect his kingdom. However, he left his own nephew Erik alone, which sent the boy on a long journey to get revenge, kill his own family in Wakanda, and usurp the throne from T’Challa.

He wanted to make Wakanda the conquerors of Earth. Sadly, this made Erik into the similar monster he claimed to be fighting against. His hatred had turned him into a murderer known as Killmonger, who just wanted to punish the world because it took everything from him.

2 Vulture

Similar to Zemo, Adrian Toomes was the victim of the heroes: he ran the cleanup crew trying to scrub the mess that the Avengers made during the Battle Of New York. Unfortunately, he and his entire crew were disbanded by Tony Stark’s Department Of Damage Control, leading to him being out of a job without a single cent of compensation.

All Toomes wants to do is keep his family happy, so out of anger, he decides to don a mask and become the Vulture, who takes any technology from the aftermath of superhero battles to create weapons to sell. Like all villains, he used his gifts the wrong way, but he shows more humanity, even keeping Spider-Man’s identity a secret as payment for saving his life. This is one of many reasons why Vulture is considered Spider-Man’s best MCU villain.

1 Xu Wenwu

Spoiler warning for Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings.

In Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings, Marvel fans were introduced to the real Mandarin, an immortal warrior named Xu Wenwu. At first, he appears to be a heartless warlord leading the Ten Rings army in conquering the world with the help of ten mystical rings on his arms. Throughout Shang-Chi, it’s revealed that he reformed as a family man, becoming a good father and husband.

That is until his past caught up with him, which turned him back into the leader of the Ten Rings. However, he is not the terrorist he used to be but instead just wants to reunite him and his children with his wife again, even if that means killing the innocent. However, in the end, his love for his family came through for the better, allowing him to sacrifice himself to save Shang-Chi.

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