10 Things The MCU Should Steal From X-Men: The Animated Series
5. Keep Villains Alive And Lurking Behind The Scenes
The MCU has a slight villain problem.
No matter how significant the character or actor playing them, so many of the MCU's villains were only given a single film entry before being defeated. Loki was effectively an anti-hero after The Avengers, leaving Red Skull as one of the only super villains to return after their demise.
Hopefully, they don't make the one-and-done mistake that the MCU (and most other super hero films) often make.
In X-Men: TAS characters like Apocalypse, Mr. Sinister, Sabretooth, and other villains could pop up out of nowhere… even if we'd seen them defeated in the previous episodes. This created an unpredictability that made each episode exciting. They also used these villains in moderation, making their infrequent arrivals all the more fun.
Instead of one-and-done villains like Bolivar Trask, Sebastian Shaw, and Apocalypse, the new X-Men movies should allow villains to get away or face incarceration… only to return further down the line.