While The Avengers have been tearing up the big screen for a few years now, there are still only a relative handful that have made their debut on the big screen, compared to the dozens of heroes who have ed their ranks since Stan Lee assembled them all those years ago in the pages of the comic books.
Some of the team make an impact well above their power level. Squirrel Girl, are just downright weird. (In Squirrel Girl’s defence, despite having a seemingly lame power set, she has beaten Doctor Doom and Thanos, so let’s cut her some slack!)
Whenever you start talking about teams of heroes, the question of who is the most powerful comes up pretty quickly. Here at Screen Rant we attempt to answer that question with our definitive list of The 20 Most Powerful of the Avengers, Ranked.
20. Captain America
Barely squeezing his way into the top twenty, there’s no denying that Steve Rogers, AKA Captain America, is the heart and soul of the Avengers. Despite his lack of destructive power, his ability to get the most out of those under his command means that he adds so much more to a team than mere brawn.
A sickly young man, rejected for military service in World War II due to polio, Steve Roger’s imioned plea was overheard and he was given the chance to volunteer for Operation: Rebirth, where he was transformed into a perfect physical specimen. Used as a symbol to rally the troops on the battlefield, Steve became Captain America and, beside allies such as his sidekick Bucky Barnes, Namor the Sub Mariner, and the original Human Torch, he helped the allies defeat the Axis forces.
Due to an accident near the end of the war, Cap was frozen in the arctic and lost for decades. Found by the newly formed Avengers, he was revived in modern times and not only ed the team, but became their leader.
19. Luke Cage
Born and raised in Harlem, Carl Lucas spent his youth in gangs, committing petty crimes. When he was framed for possession of drugs by a former friend, he was sent to prison, where he fell afoul of a sadistic guard. While in prison he was recruited for an experiment to create super soldiers like Captain America. While preparing for the treatment, the guard altered the settings in an attempt to harm young Lucas. It had the opposite effect and granted him superhuman strength and unbreakable skin.
He escaped prison and sought to use his powers for profit. Despite his own worst intentions, he eventually developed ties with the superhuman community and formed the Heroes for Hire. He eventually legally changed his name to Luke Cage and was exonerated of the crime he was falsely convicted of.
Despite having said many times over the years that he would never The Avengers, he was present at the supervillain prison known as The Raft when there was a mass breakout. He aided in the capture of many of the villains alongside Captain America, among others, and accepted Cap’s offer to form The New Avengers. While initially an outsider, Captain America noted Cage’s natural leadership skills.
After Captain America seemingly died after the events of the Civil War, Luke became the de facto leader of the team and held the New Avengers together despite them having no mansion, money, or mode of transport. His sheer force of will kept the heroes focused even when facing the Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers.
18. Giant Man / Ant Man / Goliath / Yellowjacket
Hank Pym was a biochemist and cyberneticist who developed a revolutionary shrinking technology. Initially unsurehow to capitalise on this development, he saw the potential to use it to transform himself into the hero known as Ant-Man, alongside his socialite girlfriend Jan, who adopted the identity of the Wasp.
One of the founding Avengers, Ant-Man found that being surrounded by such powerful beings as Thor and The Hulk was intimidating. He then altered his formula to make himself grow instead of shrink, taking the identity of Giant Man. In either form, he retained his genius and was a useful member of the team.
Two terrible mistakes would change the perception of him forever. Firstly, his work on artificial intelligence accidentally created Ultron, one of the Avengers' greatest and most enduring foes. Secondly, in a moment of rage, he struck his wife Jan. Both of these actions continue to haunt him.
17. Firestar
Angelica "Angel" Jones is a mutant with the power to generate intense microwave energy which manifests as intense heat and the ability to fly. After taking the name "Firestar", she fell under the telepathic influence of the White Queen, who was a ruthless villain at the time.
After seeing the White Queen for who she was, Firestar returned to living with her father. She ed the team known as The New Warriors, after coercion by Night Thrasher, and fought villains like Terrax and the Juggernaut. She became engaged to teammate Vance Astrovik, known as Justice, and remained with the team for some time.
After a reality-warping incident involving Morgan LeFay, Angelica ed the Avengers and fought against some of their greatest villains, including a horde of Ultron robots.
Firestar generally holds her powers back, but when she has used her powers to their full extent she has had injured Garthan Saal, who had the full power of the entire Nova Corps at the time. She also once powered an interstellar stargate with little effort, implying that she has far more power than she even realises.
16. Hercules
The Greek god Hercules spent much time on Earth in ancient times, but when Zeus commanded the Olympians to withdraw he did so and did not step foot on Earth for over two millennia. When he re-enters human society, it is as a sometimes ally and sometimes rival to the Asgardian God, Thor. The two have a similar level of superhuman strength, but Hercules lacks Thor’s other mystical powers.
Hercules is a frequent member of the Avengers, relishing the excitement of battle and enjoying the company of fellow heroes. His greatest challenge was during the siege of Avengers Mansion by the Masters of Evil. Despite having been drugged, he valiantly fought the entire Wrecking Crew, as well as Mister Hyde and Goliath. His injuries were severe and he fell into a coma for several weeks. Sometime later, he confronted the Wrecking Crew again and regained his confidence when he defeated them singlehandedly.
At his full power, Hercules is one of the most powerful entities in the Marvel Universe and has extensive combat experience from having waged battles for many centuries.
15. Vision
Built by the robot villain Ultron, The Vision broke free from his master’s control and ed the team he was built to destroy. Despite being an android, his mind was patterned on that of the human Simon Williams, the Avenger known as Wonder Man. His human thought patterns yearned for acceptance and he fell in love with his team mate Wanda Maximoff, the Scarlet Witch.
A mainstay of the team, he faced many challenges, including being effectively lobotomized, being unable to access his emotions, and having his body destroyed several times. His most joyous moments became his most tragic when the two children he believed he had fathered with Wanda were revealed to be stray parts of Mephisto’s soul given form. The twin boys, Thomas and William, were reabsorbed into Mephisto and it was as if they had never existed.
Despite more tragedy than most people experience in a lifetime, The Vision attempts to find his place in the world as both a man and a valued member of the Avengers.
14. Namor
Namor McKenzie rules the undersea kingdom of Atlantis and is a human-Atlantean hybrid. Due to his unique biology, he exceeds the normal limitations of either race and has abilities that have been described as being mutant in origin. It is possible that Namor is one of Earth’s first mutants, possessing the so-called "x-gene" as well as his hybrid genes.
Unlike most Atlanteans, Namor appears to be a normal human, save for small wings on either side of his ankles which, despite their small size, appear to grant him the ability to fly. Like all Atlanteans he can breathe underwater and has great strength in order to survive the crushing pressure of the ocean depths. His strength is far greater than any other Atlantean and he has proven to be able to match the Hulk and Hercules in of raw strength. He also commands the armies of Atlantis and has thousands of soldiers at his command.
13. She-Hulk
Jenifer Walters was an ordinary woman who happened to be the cousin of Bruce Banner, AKA The Incredible Hulk. Injured in an accident, she needed an emergency blood transfusion and Bruce was the only compatible donor on hand. His gamma-irradiated blood mutated her body, but unlike his transformation, she retains her mind and emotional control in her Hulk form. She also gained a more confident outlook on life in her new form and ceased to be the quiet wallflower she had been previously.
While not as strong as the Hulk, she still has a degree of invulnerability and, like him, can leap miles at a time. Spider-Man once punched her and broke his hand, showing that She-Hulk can throw down with the best of them.
She has been an occasional member of the Avengers for years, as well as the Fantastic Four and the Defenders. Her greatest challenge with The Avengers came when Scarlet Witch lost control of her reality warping powers and attacked her friends. She-Hulk was affected by the unstable Hex powers and tore The Vision’s android body apart with her bare hands in a moment of extreme rage.
12. Iron Man
Tony Stark was content to live the life of a genius inventor and head of Stark Industries, building better weapons for the government until he went to a foreign land to inspect a Stark facility. Captured by insurgents, he was forced to build them weapons but, with the help of a fellow captive, he built a crude prototype of the first Iron Man armor and escaped instead.
Discovering that he required the armor to survive his injuries, he began a career as a solo superhero, but was present when the Avengers came together and became a founding member of the team. As the years went by, he housed the team in his New York mansion and, later, his Manhattan skyscraper. He also built the Quinjets they used to go on missions and funded them via the Maria Stark Foundation. Constantly redeg the suit, he has made it more and more powerful over the years and, while the roller skates have been dropped (seriously, it used to have built-in roller skates), the repulsor weapons systems and raw strength have increased exponentially.
It’s not just the suit that gives Tony power. His mind is one of the greatest on Earth, with only Reed Richards, Victor Von Doom, and Bruce Banner as his equals. In many situations that have required brains over brawn, Iron Man has been the most valuable member of the team.
11. Storm
The mutant known as Storm has the power to control the weather. While this may sound like she can merely make it rain, she actually has a connection to some of the most powerful forces of nature, and can hurl lightning as casually as some people make coffee.
In her adolescence, she was worshipped as a goddess for ending droughts in her native Kenya before Charles Xavier recruited her to his second generation of X-Men. Despite being a mainstay of the X-Men for many years, she ed the Avengers at the urging of her husband, T’Challa, the hero known as Black Panther.
Her time with the Avengers was short, yet intense. Thrown into conflict with the second version of the Dark Avengers, she fought alongside the Red Hulk to tear down Norman Osborn’s alliance of A.I.M and Hydra. She then had her loyalties tested as the Avengers went to war with the X-Men over the fate of Hope Summers, the mutant messiah. Standing against her husband cost her marriage and many of her new friends.
