10 Hyped Movie Villains Who Turned Out To Be Just Henchmen

5. Loki - The Avengers

Avengers Loki
Marvel Studios

The hype for Marvel's original Avengers movie was absolutely infectious; it was set to be a cinematic crossover event unlike any we'd seen before.

And while everyone was pumped to see Captain America, Iron Man, Hulk, Black Widow, Thor and Hawkeye team up for the first time on the big screen, the return of fan-favourite Loki - played with genuine glee by Tom Hiddleston - was high up on the long, long list of things to be excited for.

Naturally, the whole project was shrouded in secrecy, and since the marketing wisely focused on the dynamics between the heroes, nobody really knew what to expect from the film's villain - other than that the mysterious blue Tesseract would be a key factor.

Because of this, Loki's Earth-domineering scheme to harness the power of the blue cube was enjoyable and surprising, but there was an even bigger surprise lying in wait: the identity of the person who was really responsible for all this.

Just like Ronan The Accuser, Loki had actually been hired by Thanos to retrieve an Infinity Stone (the Space Stone), and in return, the Mad Titan gave Loki access to his army of Chitauri cannon fodder. Ahem, Chitauri soldiers.

The movie's Loki-versus-Avengers battle would never have happened without Thanos pulling the strings and providing Loki with a way to annihilate the Earth, and this effectively turned the conflicted Asgardian into a disposable pawn in Thanos' larger game.

Contributor
Contributor

Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!