When it comes to the most powerful characters in comics, Marvel’s Mad Titan Thanos and DC’s Darkseid are pretty close to the top of the list. After all, there are precious few Marvel characters that can truly give Thanos a run for his money and over on the DC side Darkseid is really only rivalled by the likes of Superman.
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But, with both Thanos and Darkseid being so powerful what would happen if you had the two face off against one another? It’s an interesting question, one that the folks over at Screw Attack on YouTube decided to resolve in their latest Death Battle and while Thanos may have dusted a large swath of the Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, when the dust settled, he was no match for the Lord of Apokolips.
To come to the conclusion that Thanos wouldn’t stand a chance against Darkseid, the video spent quite a bit of time breaking down both characters’ histories and strengths, giving a solid sense of where each character stands. Thanos, for example is incredibly strong (they give the example of him punching a planet so hard it exploded) as well as being largely indestructible as well as having the bonus of the Infinity Gauntlet to help him out. Darkseid on the other hand has his New God physiology and a crazy array of abilities not limited to matter manipulation, size alteration and his impressive Omega Beams. With their abilities outlined, however, it becomes pretty quickly apparent that Thanos doesn’t really have a chance.
The video’s rationale is fairly simple and data-based. While Thanos is no slouch, Darkseid is just that much better. He’s faster (28 octillion times faster to be exact), objectively stronger, and he ultimately has one huge thing in his favor: Thanos needs the Infinity Gauntlet to do his absolute worst and the Gauntlet only works within its own universe. That ultimately means that if Thanos brings the fight to Darkseid in the DC universe, the Gauntlet won’t work but if Darkseid were to head to the Marvel universe the Gauntlet might work, but not on the real Darkseid. The video explains that Darkseid’s true form would remain on the Fourth World outside of the Gauntlet’s universe thus making Darkseid immune to its power.
Or, to put an even finer point on it: “Thanos needed the Gauntlet to become a god. Darkseid already was one.”
And not to kick Thanos while he’s down or anything, but he may not be too much of a match for a hero within the Marvel universe either, at least in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Captain Marvel star Brie Larson was recently asked what she thinks about Thanos considering that the hero is expected to play a significant role in Avengers: Endgame and it turns out, Larson’s not impressed.
“He looks kind of shrimpy to me,” Larson said.
He may well be shrimpy to Captain Marvel. Fans have known for a while that Captain Marvel is set to be an insanely powerful character in the MCU and earlier this year Larson revealed that the character can even move planets with her strength.
“It is but that stuff is my favorite part because that’s where you find the character you know,” Larson said when asked about the difficulty of training at the Crystal + Lucy Awards back in June. “For me, it’s all about how far can I take myself to kind of reprogram my brain and reprogram my body to learn something new about myself, and so this has been an amazing challenge. She’s so, so strong. She can move planets so to me it was like how far can I go with this strength.”
What do you think? Do you agree that Darkseid could take out Thanos? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
As for Thanos, fans will get to see the Mad Titan next in Avengers: Endgame when it opens in theaters on April 26, 2019.
