Captain America has faced some truly terrifying villains in the MCU, but surprisingly, Marvel neglected to use six of the officially most powerful villains Captain America has ever faced. While everyone has seen Steve Rogers clash with Thanos on the big screen, there are a few others with the same potential for movie villain status.
1996 Captain America: Legend – written by Mark Gruenwald, with art by Jason Franzone – included a list of “off the charts“powerful villains, those that Steve Rogers considers the most dangerous in the Marvel Universe.
While Thanos, of course, was the MCU’s biggest villain, the only other antagonist on this list to appear on screen so far has been MODOK – leaving the related character MODAM, as well as Dragon Man, Jakar, Terminus, Captain America’s duplicate Ameridroid, and the particularly dangerous Super-Adaptoid waiting in the wings to be used as on-screen enemies.
Six of Captain America’s roster of eight “Thanos-level” villains have yet to make their debut in the Marvel Cinematic Universe
Captain America: Legend – Written by Mark Gruenwald; Art by Jason Franzone, Comicraft and Paul Becton
While fans are excited to see Galactus’ first appearance in the MCU, there’s another giant villain who can cause just as much destruction, and Captain America knows exactly how strong he is. Terminus is one of the toughest enemies Captain America has ever faced and often requires the entire Avengers team to take him down. Terminus is so powerful that even the Justice League fought against him. In Amazing Spider-Man #694, Captain America even realized that the Avengers were no match for Terminus and was forced to retreat and trust the Alpha hero to defeat him.
One of the most dangerous beings in the DC Universe has always been the Amazo Android, capable of replicating any power. Naturally, Marvel has its own version of this character, known as Super-Adaptoid. The Super-Adaptoid is capable of copying up to 8 individual powers and skill sets at the same time; It makes sense that Captain America would see the Super-Adaptoid as powerful, considering he was perfectly capable of combining Thor’s obscene physical strength with the fighting talents of Steve Roger himself. There is no better threat to make an interesting Avengers movie villain.
Ameridroid is an exaggerated and supersized version of Captain America himself
A specific threat for Steve Rogers to deal with
While the Super-Adaptoid is certainly dangerous, it’s not exactly specific to Captain America. So if Marvel Studios wanted a villain more tied to Steve Rogers, there’s no need to look further than Lyle Dekker, aka Ameridroid. Lyle Dekker has an appropriately silly story, as seen in Captain America #218. In this story, Lyle Dekker is tasked with sabotaging a Hollywood film based on the life of Captain America. After harassing the studio and staging several on-set accidents, he is finally discovered by Captain America and his sidekick Bucky, but manages to make a daring escape.
After Lyle’s complete failure, he was brutally tortured by the Red Skull and left for dead. Enraged at being betrayed by the cause he believed in so much, Lyle spent the next few decades building a 12-foot-tall robotic version of Captain America’s body. Once Captain America reappeared after being frozen for decades, Lyle captured him and copied his powers into Ameridroid, with which he merged his own mind. From then on, Lyle continually haunted Captain America as a ridiculous giant robot version of the iconic hero.
Captain America has a lot of unused villains waiting to be revitalized as major on-screen threats
Any of them could be a great MCU antagonist
One of the biggest difficulties with having a shared cinematic universe is the inability to show everyone’s villains to the extent they deserve. When a cinematic universe juggles six to seven main heroes, and each hero comes with eight or nine villains, it makes sense that not all of them are shown. Especially when films end up serving the purpose of promoting the grand plot. Just like how Captain America: Winter Soldier focused on showing the return of Bucky Barnes rather than a true Captain America villain.
The MCU could potentially offer definitive versions of villains like Terminus, or Super-Adaptoid, or even Ameridroid.
The only true Captain America villain to take center stage in the MCU was Red Skull in Captain America: The First Avenger. That’s a shame, because there are actually plenty of powerful Captain America villains that Steve or his successor Sam Wilson have yet to face on the big screen. Although Red Skull is essential to the Captain America myths, he doesn’t even appear on Steve’s list of the eight most dangerous villains. Additionally, the MCU could offer definitive versions of villains like Terminus, or Super-Adaptoid, or even Ameridroid.
These aren’t the only examples of villains that really pushed Captain America to the limit. There are also MODOK and MODAM, the first of which appeared in Ant-Man films. There’s also Jakar and Dragon Man, both of whom Cap calls Thanos-level threats. The toughest villains Captain America has stated facing were also USAgent, Grand Director, and Deathlok. It’s a shame that the only Captain America villain who really took center stage was Red Skull, because there are plenty of other villains who could work in any upcoming film Marvel has planned.
Captain America: Legend is now available from Marvel Comics!