The Avengers are Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, and they take that title very seriously. They regularly battle against the strongest villains that the universe has ever seen, from the Mad Titan Thanos to the incalculably cunning Loki. The Avengers have battled everyone from D-tier villains who couldn’t pull off a bank robbery to the crazed architects of the multiverse. Everyone that the Avengers fight has proven themselves to be a serious threat. In recent years, the Avengers themselves have solidified as a team manned by the world’s strongest heroes, and their villains definitely reflect that.
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The Avengers have faced the most powerful beings in the entire universe more times than I can count, but even that’s not always enough for the villains. In fact, most comic book villains will try to gain a massive power boost at some point, and the Avengers’ villains are no exception. Today, we’re looking at seven of their most powerful villains’ most powerful forms and ranking them by the sheer destructive power they possess. All of these villains are downright mighty, so the margins can get very tight, but we’re gonna rank them the best we can. With all that said, let’s jump right into it.
7) Merged Sentry
The Sentry is one of the strongest Avengers around, but his equally powerful evil half, the Void, is one of their most dangerous villains. In fact, the Void is so unstoppable that Bob even wiped the knowledge of his existence from everyone’s minds, including his own, to keep the Void from rising again. Ultimately, that was for naught, as the Void can and will always return, spurred on by infinite rage and an insatiable desire to end everything that Bob cares about.
The Void and Sentry are massively powerful individually. Each can manipulate matter down to a molecular level, letting them effectively rewrite reality on a whim. They can even bring the dead back to life, themselves included, willing themselves back from the realm beyond. In their merged form, they truly had nothing holding them back, letting their awesome power be on full display. At their peak, the Merged Sentry could shake the entire Cancerverse to its core and was even stated to stalemate Galactus. The problem is that Sentry and Void’s power levels are wildly inconsistent, often fluctuating with their moods. The Merged Sentry has an incredibly high ceiling, but that’s more theoretical than shown, usually.
6) Korvac
Korvac was a man from the future obsessed with attaining the power necessary to fix his reality, and he finally received that when he drained the Power Cosmic from Galactus’s Worldship, the Taa II. This granted him all of the ambient energy that the Planet Eater had absorbed and stored from millions of worlds. He evolved into a truly godlike being, transforming into a state of nearly pure energy. His level of Power Cosmic was far greater than even the Silver Surfer’s, as he was able to melt the Surfer’s coating with a flick of his wrist.
Korvac’s power is virtually limitless, with the insane ability to manipulate everything from matter to energy and even travel through time at will. His mind expanded along with his abilities, letting him perceive practically the entirety of the past, present, and future at once. His strength was so immense that not even the universe’s greatest heroes could defeat him, and they had only ever stopped him by convincing him to give up the fight. Korvac could wipe out the universe with his powers, and he’s still not anywhere near their toughest foe.
5) Ultron-Galactus
Ultron has always been one of the Avengers’ strongest foes. When he was first introduced, his near-indestructible robot was able to fight the entire team at once. He’s achieved plenty of upgrades over the years, including merging with Adam Warlock and assimilating the entire human race. However, no version of Ant-Man’s greatest mistake is anywhere near as powerful as Ultron-Galactus. This amalgamation of Marvel’s number one artificial monster and the World-Eater only appeared in a single issue. In fact, it was only as a snapshot of a potential future in Marvel Universe 2001 Millennial Visions #1.
After Galactus was killed by unknown means, an even more powerful threat known only as the Unnamable rose to consume planets in his absence. The Silver Surfer needed help to defeat the monster and resurrected Galactus by combining him with Ultron’s technology. While it’s unknown exactly how strong this combination is, Ultron wielding the Power Cosmic in any capacity is a serious threat. Galactus is a universal threat, able to fight off even the multiversal architects like the Celestials. Any of that power being added to Ultron’s already-powerful body is a recipe for disaster.
4) Time-Eater Kang
Kang the Conquerer is dead set on ruling all of reality by any means necessary, and that means acquiring the power to bend it to his will. This variant of the conqueror achieved all the power he could ever ask for when he killed and absorbed the strength of his universe’s Galactus. However, his hunger was far from satiated, and he chose to break into other dimensions to consume their own Galactuses. Galacti? Regardless, Kang kept consuming more and more variants of Galactus, adding their incalcuable strength and hunger to his own.
This Kang earned the title of Time-Eater because his strength and gluttony grew so great that he didn’t just consume planets, anymore. He consumed entire universes, entire timeline themselves. A single Galactus already has the power to shake the Marvel Universe to its roots, but Kang the Time-Eater absorbed the strength of countless variants of Galactus from across the multiverse. Consuming single planets granted Galactus the energy to fuel his Power Cosmic, so imagine all of that incredible power amplified by a million fold, and you might just have Time-Eater Kang’s level of strength.
3) Pre-Retcon Beyonder
The Beyonder, to this day, is one of Marvel’s most dangerous beings. The Beyonder race live outside the Multiverse as beings of unimaginable power. They created the Multiverse and oversaw it, including previous incarnations of it, from the Third Cosmos on. They can alter reality on a whim and are nigh untouchable. Three Beyonders working together even killed the Living Tribunal, which was once thought impossible. The Beyonder is the best-known of this race, but while he commands all this power and can wipe away reality with a thought, he was originally much, much stronger.
During his introduction in Secret Wars (1984), the Beyonder was a being of unparalleled might. He existed a million times above the multiverse, comparing all of Marvel to a single drop of water. He was truly omnipotent and unstoppable. While the current incarnation is strong, the original had even fewer limitations. Nowadays, Beyonders can be slain by powerful enough attacks, like a Starbrand self-destructing, but the original was so mighty that only his own powers could harm him.
2) Beyonder-Empowered Doom
Speaking of Pre-Retcon Beyonder’s might, that power once flowed through Doctor Doom’s veins. While most think of the strongest version of Doctor Doom as God Emperor Doom, given he absorbed the strength of countless Beyonders and held the shattered remnants of the multiverse together, I argue that Doom’s strongest form was from the original Secret Wars. He stole the Beyonder’s immeasurable power and literally wiped the heroes from existence with a single thought, leaving none that could challenge him, as even Cosmic Entities feared him.
This Doom was so mighty that he altered reality without even intending to. His eventual defeat came not at the hands of someone overpowering him, but his own subconscious fears of being defeated. His fears of the heroes returning actually restored them to life, and Doom’s terror eventually led to the Beyodner reclaiming his awesome power. Honestly, Doom and Beyonder were on equal footing in terms of strength, but Doom’s intellect definitely made him a far more dangerous, deadly opponent than the childish, petulant Beyonder.
1) Astral Regulator Thanos
Without a doubt, the strongest being in Marvel is the One Above All. He’s Marvel’s own version of God, representing the almighty power of the author. He cannot be fought or overpowered in any capacity, and is the genesis point for everything that goes on in Marvel. There is one being, however, who once surpassed the One Above All, and that was the Mad Titan himself. Thaons has always been one of the strongest villains in Marvel, and he’s always been obsessed with attaining divinity, but that all came to a climactic head when he merged with the Astral Regulator.
The Astral Regulator kept every universe in the multiverse separate, and when Thanos absorbed its power, he was connected to every reality at once and commanded their might. He even absorbed the power of Cosmic Entities like the Living Tribunal and the One Above All himself, adding their infinite power to his own. This version of Thanos was so impossibly, stupidly overpowered that this story was immediately retconned out of continuity for the sake of sanity. Still, for a brief moment, Thanos was the pinnacle of power, and that earns him this number one spot.
Which overpowered Avengers villain is your favorite? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!
