10 Best MCU Villains (Who Aren't In The Movies)
Killing half the universe is all well and good, but Thanos has nothing on these small screen sickos.
It is fair to say that throughout the early days of the MCU, the movies had an issue with villains. The wide-eyed innocent days of the MCU gave us a man with electric whips, burnt face Doctor Who and... bigger, greyer Iron Man. In more recent times, however we have been graced with the likes of Thanos, Loki and Kilmonger, finally allowing a more entertaining look at the villainous side of this universe.
However, even the biggest of bads only has a certain amount of screen time in the movies, only allowing us to see a short section of their lives and provided only the briefest of explanations as to why they have become the sinister psychopaths they are now.
Enter the small screen villains. While not as flashy as some of their big screen colleagues in terms of power, these televised terrors are often given a lot more room in character development and plot to play with, allowing for more interactions with their heroic counterparts, detailed origin stories and a deeper understanding of how they came to be.
This added screen time can work wonders, allowing these villains to match up to, and in some cases, even outdo, the movie monsters and murderers.
10. AIDA (Agents Of SHIELD)
There are a few lessons in life that everyone needs to learn: treat others how you would like to be treated, don't eat yellow snow, and do not, under any circumstances, give an unstable AI access to a book filled with unspeakable forbidden knowledge.
Originally a LMD developed by Agent Fitz and Holden Radcliffe, the Artificial Intelligent Digital Assistant (or AIDA if you don't fancy saying that mouthful all the time) was a very useful asset to the SHIELD team, until she was given the Darkhold (a spell book from Hell) and gained the ability to feel human emotions.
She then promptly tried to kill the entire team with artificial copies of themselves, and, when that failed, she placed them all in an artificial simulation called the Framework, brainwashing Fitz into becoming Leopold, her lover (more on him later) and placing herself as the ruler of a HYDRA controlled USA as Madame Hydra. After the real Fitz rejects her, it takes the combined powers of Coulson and the Ghost Rider to bring her down.
The strength of AIDA lies in her understanding of emotions she's exposed to the Darkhold, allowing her to manipulate and sow seeds of doubt within the tightly knit SHIELD team.