For over a decade, Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) was the moral compass of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a man out of time who nonetheless understood, better than anyone around him, what it meant to stand for something. Introduced in Captain America: The First Avenger in 2011 as a ninety-pound kid from Brooklyn who refused to stay down, Rogers grew across the Infinity Saga into the Avengers’ conscience until he became the soldier who held Thanos’ (Josh Brolin) gauntlet-closed fist through sheer force of will. When he retired at the end of Avengers: Endgame, choosing a quiet life with Peggy Carter (Hayley Atwell) in the past, the MCU felt the vacancy immediately. Sam Wilson (Anthony Mackie) eventually accepted the shield, carrying the mantle forward at the end of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+ before making his theatrical debut as Captain America in Captain America: Brave New World in 2025.
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Now, for the first time since 2019, the MCU will have two Captain Americas operating at the same time. Avengers: Doomsday, arriving December 18, 2026, has confirmed Steve Rogers’ return from retirement, as Evans’s supersoldier is rumored to be personally targeted by Robert Downey Jr.’s Doctor Doom. With Wilson leading the current generation of Avengers to face whatever Doctor Doom has set in motion, the two Captain Americas will have to join forces against this multiversal threat. Fortunately, they both have plenty of experience taking down powerful foes.
15) Batroc
Georges Batroc (Georges St-Pierre) is nothing more than a contractor in the MCU. He has no ideology, no larger agenda, and no interest in anything beyond the completion of his current job. The Leaper first appears in Captain America: The Winter Soldier as the Algerian mercenary hired to hijack the SHIELD vessel Lemurian Star, and Rogers doesn’t even need his shield to take Batroc down.
The Leaper returned years later in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, operating in Madripoor under Sharon Carter’s (Emily VanCamp) Power Broker organization, where he crosses paths with Sam Wilson before Sharon shoots him dead. The fact that Batroc went multiple rounds with Captain America on two separate occasions is a credential not many humans can claim, but a mercenary who’s nothing more than a skilled fighter doesn’t have much power in the MCU.
14) Sidewinder and the Serpent Society
While Batroc operated largely as a lone wolf, Seth Voelker (Giancarlo Esposito) and his Serpent Society operate as a ruthless mercenary network. Even if still a gun-for-hire for their theatrical debut in Captain America: Brave New World, Sidewinder is backed by a specialized strike force equipped with advanced tech and military-grade weaponry, functioning as a well-oiled machine under Voelker’s brilliant tactical mind.
Despite their impressive coordination and lethal reputation, they are ultimately still mortal combatants relying on gear that gets easily brought down by Sam in the movie’s opening. Sidewinder himself returns for a rematch, cornering Sam when he’s not wearing his Captain America suit. Yet, the MCU’s version of the Serpent Society lacks everything that made them powerful in comics, including the superpowers.
13) Crossbones
Brock Rumlow (Frank Grillo) started as one of SHIELD’s elite STRIKE team commanders before being outed as a HYDRA sleeper agent in Captain America: The Winter Soldier. While he managed to survive the collapse of the Triskelion after going toe-to-toe with Sam Wilson, he didn’t reach true supervillain status until his return in Captain America: Civil War.
Adopting the moniker Crossbones, a heavily scarred and vengeful Rumlow upgraded himself with a mechanized armored rig and hydraulic gauntlets that allowed him to actually stagger Steve Rogers during their Lagos showdown. Crossbones’ gear upgrade and his lethal HYDRA training were impressive, but Rumlow was still just a regular human under the armor and was relatively quickly bested by Cap in close quarters. His biggest impact came from his fanatical willingness to die, detonating a suicide vest in a final spiteful bid that ultimately ignited the Sokovia Accords.
12) Alexander Pierce
Alexander Pierce (Robert Redford) didn’t fight Captain America directly, but he still used his institutional power to hunt down Steve Rogers, becoming a villain that had to be taken down. While the decades-long infiltration of SHIELD was actually initiated by Arnim Zola (Toby Jones), Pierce was a true believer converted to the HYDRA cause who orchestrated their ultimate power play in Captain America: The Winter Soldier.
In that movie, he commanded the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan) and nearly succeeded in using Project Insight’s Helicarriers to instantly assassinate millions of potential threats worldwide, and he did that from the comfort of his Treskelion office. However, when stripped of his vast resources, strike teams, and political cover, Pierce was just an aging man in a suit. He never even had a physical showdown, ultimately getting outsmarted by Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johansson) and gunned down by Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson).
11) Red Skull
If the MCU had taken a comic-accurate approach to Johann Schmidt (Hugo Weaving), the Red Skull should have been Steve Rogers’ longest-running nemesis. Having taken an imperfect version of Abraham Erskine’s (Stanley Tucci) super-soldier serum, the Red Skull was Steve’s physical equal, boasting enhanced strength, durability, and stamina in Captain America: The First Avenger. That means in addition to commanding an army of HYDRA zealots carrying devastating weapons powered by the Tesseract, Schmidt could go blow-for-blow with Cap himself.
Unfortunately, the MCU completely sidelined the Red Skull. Rather than surviving to plague Captain America in the modern era like his comic book counterpart, Schmidt was unceremoniously banished to Vormir to act as a spectral tollbooth attendant for the Soul Stone in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. It’s a massive waste of Cap’s most iconic arch-enemy, freezing his power at a 1940s level rather than letting him evolve into the world-class mastermind he deserved to be.
10) Baron Zemo
Helmut Zemo (Daniel Brühl) is living proof that you don’t need a super-soldier serum, a mechanical suit, or a cosmic artifact to bring Earth’s mightiest heroes to their knees. A former Sokovian intelligence officer whose family was killed during the climax of Avengers: Age of Ultron, Zemo relies entirely on patience and focus in Captain America: Civil War. With those two skills, he successfully framed Bucky Barnes for the death of King T’Chaka (John Kani), manipulated international governments to push for the Sokovia Accords, and ultimately used a decades-old security tape of Bucky murdering Howard (John Slattery) and Maria Stark (Hope Davis) to turn Tony Stark (Downey Jr.) against Steve Rogers.
Zemo accomplished what Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Ultron (James Spader) couldn’t, breaking down the Avengers from the inside to get his revenge. He also proved he is highly lethal with firearms in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, while also using Sam and Bucky to carry on his anti-super-soldier agenda. However, in the end, Zemo’s true power lies in his devastatingly brilliant mind.
9) The Leader
After a staggering 17-year absence from the MCU, Samuel Sterns (Tim Blake Nelson) finally stepped out of the shadows as the overarching mastermind of Captain America: Brave New World. Originally introduced as a brilliant cellular biologist attempting to cure Bruce Banner (Edward Norton/Mark Ruffalo) in The Incredible Hulk, Sterns’ gamma-induced transformation gave him hyper-intelligence.
Using his powers, the Leader developed technology capable of mind-controlling targets — most notably forcing Isaiah Bradley (Carl Lumbly) into a shocking assassination attempt on President Thaddeus Ross (Harrison Ford). His most devastating tactical move, however, was secretly lacing the life-saving medication he developed for Ross with gamma radiation, directly triggering the President’s monstrous transformation into the Red Hulk. Even when Cap finally apprehended him, Sterns’ willing surrender felt like just another calculated move from a man bidding his time and waiting for the right opportunity to rise. A mastermind capable of pulling strings on a worldwide scale without ever throwing a punch is a monumental challenge for Captain America.
8) Arnim Zola
While Alexander Pierce was the modern face of HYDRA’s infiltration, Arnim Zola (Toby Jones) was its architect. Introduced in Captain America: The First Avenger as the sycophantic but brilliant biochemist working for the Red Skull, Zola was captured by the SSR and eventually recruited into SHIELD. From there, he weaponized his intellect to quietly rebuild HYDRA like a parasite inside the world’s premier intelligence agency. When his physical body succumbed to a terminal diagnosis in the 1970s, Zola achieved a horrifying kind of immortality by uploading his consciousness into a massive supercomputer bank hidden beneath Camp Lehigh.
As revealed in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Zola’s digital brain developed Project Insight’s targeting algorithm, a piece of code capable of mathematically predicting and eliminating millions of future threats to HYDRA based on their digital footprint. He had no physical body left to fight Cap in the literal sense, but Zola was still shaping global history from a basement with his intelligence alone, which gives him an impressive reach.
7) Karli Morgenthau and the Flag Smashers
Driven by a profound sense of displacement and a desire to return the world to its borderless, post-Blip state, Karli Morgenthau (Erin Kellyman) and the Flag Smashers presented a unique challenge in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Karli and her core followers stole and ingested a highly refined version of the super-soldier serum developed by Dr. Wilfred Nagel (Olli Haaskivi). Unlike Steve Rogers’ serum, this variant granted them immense superhuman strength, speed, and durability without altering their physical appearance. This allowed a seemingly ordinary teenager to effortlessly kick a newly minted Captain America, John Walker (Wyatt Russell), across a room, accidentally kill his partner Lemar Hoskins (Clé Bennett) with a single strike, and hold her own against Sam Wilson and Bucky Barnes.
Even though the Flagsmashers lacked the formal military training or tactical discipline of Cap’s usual adversaries, a highly motivated cell of super-soldiers backed by a global network of civilian sympathizers made Karli an incredibly dangerous threat. In addition, the Flagsmashers began their fight because they wanted the world to be a better place for everyone, an ideal shared by Captain America.
6) The Winter Soldier
While Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan) eventually broke his conditioning and reclaimed his identity, he spent decades as the most terrifying weapon in HYDRA’s arsenal. Specifically, in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the brainwashed assassin was presented as Steve Rogers’ dark mirror. Having survived his fall from the train in World War II due to early experiments by Arnim Zola, Bucky was further enhanced, heavily brainwashed, and equipped with a cybernetic titanium arm that could effortlessly catch Cap’s vibranium shield in mid-air.
Bucky was the only fighter who could truly match Steve’s speed, strength, and tactical combat skills blow-for-blow, which helps explain why Winter Soldier remains a fan-favorite chapter of the MCU. Furthermore, their knife-wielding street fight remains one of the greatest hand-to-hand combat sequences in the MCU, proving that Bucky was Steve’s absolute physical equal. The Winter Soldier’s lack of hesitation and decades of assassination experience made him a devastating force who very nearly beat Steve to death on the crumbling Project Insight Helicarrier.
5) Loki
Long before his redemption arc and ascension as a multiversal guardian, Loki (Tom Hiddleston) was the first truly otherworldly threat Captain America ever faced. When Steve Rogers confronted the God of Mischief in Stuttgart during the events of The Avengers, the power gap was brutally apparent. Even armed with his super-soldier serum, decades of combat instincts, and his vibranium shield, Cap was thoroughly outmatched by Loki’s innate Asgardian strength and the Mind Stone-powered Scepter. Steve managed to land a few solid blows and stubbornly held his ground, but it took the timely arrival of Iron Man to force Loki’s surrender — and even that was part of the God of Mischief’s plans.
Beyond raw physical prowess, Loki’s mastery of illusions and magical abilities put him on a power tier far above any enhanced human. Furthermore, his psychological warfare and his commanding of the Chitauri army during the Battle of New York forced Cap to evolve from a lone soldier into the tactical field commander of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes.
4) Corvus Glaive and the Black Order
After years of buildup, Thanos finally came to collect Earth’s Infinity Stones in Avengers: Infinity War. To complete the task, he sent his Black Order, alien zealots who willingly followed Thanos in the Mad Titan’s world-conquering endeavours. The MCU version of the Black Order had four members, and three of them crossed paths with Captain America: Corvus Glaive (Michael James Shaw), Proxima Midnight (Carrie Coon), and Cull Obsidian (Terry Notary).
Cap made an iconic entrance in Edinburgh by catching Proxima’s spear from the shadows and temporarily fending off Corvus to save a severely wounded Vision (Paul Bettany) alongside Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) and Natasha Romanoff. However, surviving a sudden skirmish is entirely different from winning a war. During the Battle of Wakanda, Corvus and Proxima overwhelmed Earth’s mightiest heroes with their lethal alien weaponry and superhuman agility, while Cull Obsidian brought Hulk-level brute strength to the battlefield. Cap needed every ounce of his strength, skill, and the backing of the Wakandan army just to survive engaging the Black Order and their army, underlining the staggering threat of the Children of Thanos.
3) Ultron
Created from the Mind Stone as a global defense program by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner, Ultron (James Spader) is an artificial intelligence willing to extinguish humanity, the ultimate path for peace in his understanding. The rogue AI makes his devastating debut in Avengers: Age of Ultron, immediately hijacking Stark’s global defense network and uploading his consciousness into an ever-evolving army of robotic sentries.
Ultron’s endgame involved turning a massive chunk of Sokovia into a world-ending meteor, but as he took steps to conclude his plan, he clashed with Steve Rogers in Seoul. During their one-on-one fight aboard a runaway train, Ultron completely dominated Cap, effortlessly absorbing blows and treating the vibranium shield like a minor inconvenience. In the movie’s final battle, and after upgrading himself into a body forged from pure vibranium, Ultron possessed a digital omnipresence that made him nearly impossible to permanently delete. However, for all his technological supremacy, Ultron was ultimately crippled by his inherited god complex and a deeply fragile ego. Once Vision severed his connection to the global internet, he was reduced to a finite collection of metal hulls that the Avengers, Steve included, could systematically tear apart.
2) Red Hulk
Thaddeus “Thunderbolt” Ross became one of the enhanced people he made a career chasing in the final act of Captain America: Brave New World. After ascending to the United States Presidency, Ross’s desperate bid for control left him vulnerable to the Leader’s machinations, resulting in a gamma-fueled transformation into the Red Hulk. This monstrous persona gives Ross raw strength that rivals Bruce Banner, augmented by a unique physiological trait where his entire body generates incinerating heat.
The Red Hulk forced Sam Wilson into his most desperate fight since taking up the mantle of Captain America. During their destructive clash, Red Hulk easily shrugged off bullets and other weapons, tearing through the White House and forcing Sam to rely entirely on his aerial agility and vibranium suit just to avoid being crushed or melted alive. Much like his green counterpart, Ross’s power is tethered to his emotional state, and Sam appealed to the father buried inside the beast, invoking Ross’s memories of his estranged daughter, Betty (Liv Tyler), to make him revert to human form. It was the only victory he could manage, as Sam was absolutely outmatched.
1) Thanos
The Mad Titan, Thanos (Josh Brolin), is the ultimate measuring stick for power in the MCU. In Avengers: Infinity War, Steve Rogers gave everything he had just to briefly hold back Thanos’s gauntlet in Wakanda before being effortlessly swatted away. When they met again in the ruins of the Avengers Compound in Avengers: Endgame, a gauntlet-less Thanos proved his raw strength and centuries of combat supremacy by utterly dismantling Iron Man, Thor (Chris Hemsworth), and Cap in a three-on-one fight. Even when Steve proved worthy of wielding Mjolnir and rained down lightning, he could only stagger the Titan temporarily.
Thanos’s durability allowed him to withstand the onslaught of three mighty Avengers, and his raw power was so immense that he successfully shattered Cap’s supposedly indestructible vibranium shield with his double-edged sword. Cap fought with the heart of a god, but Thanos was an immovable and inevitable cosmic force.
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