The Avengers have faced plenty of destructive villains throughout the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but one foe looms largest with the most kills around the universe. Whether it be an alien, Guardians of the Galaxy 2's living planet, evil mastermind, or politically charged human foe, the MCU has featured a variety of villains that murder thousands, if not millions, in their pursuits of power and dominance. While The Avengers superheroes attempt to avoid killing in their protection of the universe, fatally wounding the main villains and their minions are small collateral in of the thousands of deaths they would be preventing.
Interestingly, the MCU’s villains have very high disparities in kill counts, with some only taking a few hundred lives amidst their terror and others taking trillions. Others technically have high kill counts, but the deaths are either reversed or are perpetrated numerous times on one victim, such as Dormammu killing Doctor Strange over a thousand times in a time loop. Additionally, some villains, like Captain America: Civil War’s Zemo, have a small personal kill count, but their wider influence and goal have caused many more deaths. But, at the end of the day, these hypothetical kill counts pale in comparison to the MCU villain that has definitively killed the most lifeforms in the universe.
Coming to no surprise, the MCU villain who has caused the most deaths is Thanos (Josh Brolin), the purple alien warlord from Titan who caused the genocide of half of all lifeforms. Even before Thanos truly began his Malthusian plan to “stabilize overpopulation” and prevent the universe’s terminal doom, the Mad Titan had taken many victims. Thanos’ Avengers: Infinity War snap took the lives of half of the universe (10,000,000,000,000 lifeforms), meaning his genocide included 5 trillion deaths. This number instantly puts him at the highest kill count for villains in the MCU, considering the villain with the second-highest kill count is Peter Quill’s father Ego (Kurt Russell), who caused millions of deaths with his offspring, their mothers, and their entire planters.
Even when considering the 5 trillion deaths from Thanos’ snap that were reversed, the Mad Titan still holds the highest MCU villain kill count. Before the snap, Thanos had terrorized the universe by traveling around planets and massacring half of their populations, which still adds up to billions of lives taken. Even then, Avengers: Endgame’s final battle saw the deaths of at least thousands, which includes Thanos firing upon his own soldiers. Thanos killed billions of lifeforms before and after the snap that still remain dead, as he had already spent decades beforehand eliminating populations of dozens, if not hundreds, of planets. So far, no MCU villain has come close to Thanos’ kill count, and it’s hard to imagine which antagonist could outdo him.
Thanos is also responsible for the highest amount of MCU Avengers fatalities, having killed (or been responsible for) more character deaths than any other villain. In Infinity War, Thanos was responsible for the deaths of his daughter Gamora, Vision, Loki, Heimdall, indirectly Iron Man, and indirectly Black Widow, all of whom are important characters to the MCU. Even after all of his destruction, many of those who survived the blip decided that Thanos’ idea wasn’t insane, as Hawkeye’s many “Thanos Was Right” brandings can attest to. Thanos’ fatalities and wrath in the Marvel Cinematic Universe will have an eternal legacy because even though 5 trillion of his kills were resurrected, their lives and those of the entire galaxy were changed forever.
