How will Marvel make up for the loss of Jonathan Majors’ Kang in Avengers 5? It’s the potential $3 billion question. The loss of the criminally convicted actor means the long-awaited follow-up to Endgame may have to start from scratch on the villain front. A major setback, for sure, but at least the Marvel multiverse isn’t short of an iconic enemy or two.
Fan-favorite felons who’ve been floated around before now including Doctor Doom, Galactus, the Beyonder… The list goes on. Perhaps what Marvel really needs to do, though, is go for someone totally out of left field. A villain the fandom wouldn’t have expected to take center stage in an Avengers movie in a million years. Someone like *checks notes* the franchise’s resident wellness guru, Emil Blonsky?
Wait, really?
Avengers 5 rumored to feature the Masters of Evil, but the lineup is more like the Masters of Mild Naughtiness
Yes, another day, another Avengers 5 rumor, but this one’s even stranger than most. Our discussion of this in no way means you should take it as fact, but now that it’s out there it bears attention simply because of how oddball it is. This rumor claims that the next outing for Earth’s Mightiest Heroes will see them battle the Masters of Evil, a supervillain team typically led by Baron Zemo.
Sure enough, the rumored roster indeed includes Daniel Bruhl’s Sokovian supervillain. The rest of the lineup, however, is a decidedly mixed bag. Specifically, most of them are hardly what you’d call evil. Sylvie? Agatha? They belong in the Masters of Anti-Heroes, surely. Mordo? Justin Hammer? Yon-Rogg? They’d be better fits for the Masters of Villains We Totally Forgot Existed.
Oh, and then Doctor Doom is just randomly stuck down there at the bottom. I guess he’s not quite up to the level of Jude Law’s Space Misogynist in the evil stakes. Maybe Victor’s just the team intern who they send out for coffee while they’re in world conquest budget meetings.
And, I’m sorry, but we need to talk about Abomination. As a reminder, Emil Blonsky was last seen in She-Hulk, which confirmed that he had been fully redeemed and now runs his own meditation retreat. Why would he ever a) want to join the Masters of Evil and b) be invited to join them in the first place? Unless the Masters of Evil is actually the name of some kind of wellness center. Are they the Masters of Evil because they have mastered their evil impulses and realigned their chakras?
Again, this is just a big, fat rumor, but if Kevin Feige actually is contemplating making the yoga instructor formally known as Abomination the new Thanos then he officially needs a lie-down. Before he makes Madisynn the new Captain America or something. Actually that I would like to see.