There has been a running joke online about how difficult it must be to live in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Having superheroes around sounds pretty great on paper, but it also means the world is constantly in danger. The latest MCU movie, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, saw a portion of New York’s population mind controlled by Jean Grey and that was just another in a long line of harrowing situations the city has faced. It goes beyond New York City, as the entire world has been threatened over and over throughout the history of the franchise. There have been over a dozen events in the MCU that could’ve caused the end of the world in some shape or form. Some of the threats came from the people living on Earth, some came from other planets, and some involved beings from different dimensions, yet all were thwarted by the world’s superheroes.
The majority of Captain America: The First Avenger takes place in the 1940s, meaning the film involves one of the earliest threats on Earth in the franchise. Red Skull, also known as Johann Schmidt has a master plan where he harnesses the power of the Tesseract and uses it to take over the world. The Tesseract is used to create weapons of mass destruction, and they are put on stealth bombers to reduce some of the biggest cities on the planet to ash.
Of course, this is a plan that was stopped by the titular Captain America. After the Tesseract gets freed from its container and it sucks Red Skull into a portal, Cap crashes the plane into the Arctic to prevent the weapons from detonating anywhere. It was a huge sacrifice that further proved who Steve Rogers was as a person, which made him the ideal eventual leader for the Avengers.
Although it wasn’t released until 2019, Captain Marvel takes place much earlier in the MCU’s timeline, as it sees Carol Danvers come to Earth during the 1990s. Long before Ronan the Accuser was the main antagonist in Guardians of the Galaxy, he was part of the war between the Skrulls and the Kree. He worked with Yon-Rogg and the Starforce to try to wipe out Skrull refugees everywhere, which included the ones who remained on Earth.
Ronan and the Accusers had a plan to drop warheads all around Earth to execute those remaining Skrull refugees. However, Captain Marvel unlocked the full power of her abilities at this time and managed to stop them pretty handily. Ronan backed away to fight another day, while Carol returned to Earth with Nick Fury for a time. This was a case where the people on Earth never realized they were in danger, yet were still saved by a future Avenger.
For the most part, MCU fans don’t have the fondest memories of Thor: The Dark World. It is widely considered one of the franchise’s low points, and its main villain, Malekith, was pretty generic overall. That said, Malekith did have a plan that would have marked the end of the world for the people living on Earth. Similar to Red Skull, Malekith had a plan revolving around one of the Infinity Stones (Reality), though it was known to the audience as the Aether at this point.
The Dark Elf Malekith’s idea was to use the Aether to plunge the entire planet into endless darkness. He attempted this at the center of the Convergence in Greenwich, but was stopped Thor, Jane, and her scientific know-how. Malekith got transported to his homeworld of Svartalfheim and was crushed by his own ship. Malekith might’ve been a dull villain, but his plan still would’ve destroyed Earth.
By the time Steve Rogers was living in the modern day, Hydra was gone and the world faced other problems. At least that’s what he thought, because the film includes a shocking twist when Steve and Natasha visit an old S.H.I.E.L.D. bunker and discover that former Hydra scientist Arnim Zola’s consciousness was preserved on a supercomputer. He revealed that Hydra was still very much alive and active, having infiltrated various important ranks around the world.
Hydra managed to convince the world to trade their freedom in exchange for security, using algorithms to find current and potential future threats. They were then going to use guns directed by satellites to eliminate these threats, even if they had yet to do anything criminal. Captain America worked with Falcon, Black Widow, Nick Fury, and others to put a stop to this, though it ended up being one of the events the Avengers were blamed for ahead of the Sokovia Accords.
The creation of Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron made for one of the franchise’s most unique characters. There was a bit of Tony Stark, Bruce Banner, and J.A.R.V.I.S. in him, yet he was more vicious than them combined. Upon becoming sentient, Ultron scoured the internet to learn about the human race and immediately decided they were the biggest problem on the planet and needed to be wiped out. Ultron believed that the only way to achieve peace on Earth was to wipe out all humans.
Unlike some other villains in the MCU, Ultron came pretty close to achieving his goal. It took the full power of the Avengers, along with the newly created Vision and the Maximoff twins turning on him, to stop him. Ultron still caused all sorts of damage to Sokovia and went on to prove how powerful he could be in What If?, showing that the outcome in Avengers: Age of Ultron was probably the best the heroes could’ve hoped for.
Some superhero movies get criticized for the final act just becoming a fight scene between a hero and a big CGI monster. That seemed to be the route Doctor Strange would go when we learned that Dormammu, a giant entity from the Dark Dimension, was the main antagonist. However, the film found a creative way around it as Doctor Strange used the Time Stone to trap Dormammu in a time loop until he gave up on his plan.
That plan was to expand the Dark Dimension across the multiverse and consume everything in its path. The time loop that Strange trapped Dormammu in involved Strange dying over and over, yet he outlasted Dormammu and used his wits and courage to save everyone. If it wasn’t for the Time Stone, Dormammu would’ve taken over everything and there wouldn’t have been much even a full team of Avengers could do about it.
Peter Quill finally met his father in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and he wasn’t who Peter had expected. He reveals himself in human form, but Ego is actually a living planet and a Celestial with god-like powers. Ego had impregnated females across thousands of worlds in an attempt to xenoform them into extensions of himself, but he needed the power of two Celestials to activate it. None of his offspring exhibited Celestial abilities until Peter, but once Peter learned that Ego killed his mom, he turned on his father.
Ego still used Peter to activate the seedlings and start his consumption of other worlds, which the Guardians of the Galaxy had to stop. As they’re fighting, we see how Ego was taking over these worlds, including Earth. It caused a panic and sent people running in terror until Peter defeated his father and saved his home planet, among many others.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings takes an unexpected turn in the third act. After a ton of fun hand-to-hand combat fight scenes, things turn mythical for the final few sequences. Shang-Chi’s father and the leader of the Ten Rings, the villainous Xu Wenwu, believes that he hears his deceased love calling for help and that she was trapped at her old home of Ta Lo. His plan is to open a sealed gate to let her out, though behind that gate is actually the Dweller-in-Darkness.
The Dweller-in-Darkness is a soul-consuming demon and Wenwu succeeded in freeing him. Wenwu was immediately killed by the demon, and it took Shang-Chi, with the help of a Chinese dragon known as the Great Protector, to stop it. Had the Dweller-in-Darkness managed to get past Shang-Chi and Ta Lo, it would’ve been able to consume souls across the entire planet and beyond.
The entire premise of Eternals is a lot to take in. Learning that nearly a dozen powerful characters had been on the planet for thousands of years, mostly acting in the shadows and not involving themselves in the threats the world faced, is pretty wild. However, the team does eventually come together to stop a threat that would’ve ended everything on Earth. They were placed on the planet to help ensure that it grew intelligent enough to fuel the birth of another Celestial, Tiamut.
The Eternals learned that Tiamut’s birth (which Arishem the Judge planted the seed for millions of years ago), would cause the destruction of Earth. They came together to stop it and managed to turn the rising Tiamat to stone where he has remained. However, the Celestials weren’t happy with this and it seemed like repercussions were coming for the Eternals and Earth, yet nothing has come of it.
The Secret Invasion comic book series is one of the most famous in history, where the shapeshifting Skrull race revealed their long-term takeover of Earth by replacing superheroes and people in power for years. The television adaptation didn’t work quite as well, going down for many as the MCU’s worst project. The Skrulls were a threat, though, as they lost faith in Nick Fury’s ability to find them a permanent home and instead took over high-ranking positions among humans.
The Skrulls also staged various terrorist attacks across the globe, framing superpowers and opposing nations. The idea was to trick the President of the United States into launching a nuclear strike against one of them, starting a war across the world. Though the President gives the order for a strike, he ultimately calls it off. However, he does issue a new bill declaring all off-world species as hostile and announces a plan to hunt down the remaining Skrulls.
On the surface, Thunderbolts* feels pretty small in scale compared to most of the movies with world-ending events going on. The introduction of Bob changed that, though, as the character is extremely powerful and unstable. After a kill switch is used to incapacitate Bob, his destructive alter ego known as the Void takes over. The Void engulfs New York in a supernatural darkness that seems to be killing the people it takes over, including Yelena and the rest of the team.
It turns out that the Void is actually something that traps people in their darkest and most traumatic memories. It’s not the kind of threat to the world that would see the destruction of Earth, yet having people trapped in an eternal darkness like that is just as harrowing. The Void could’ve spread beyond New York had it not been for Yelena, Bucky, and the rest of the future New Avengers stepping in to be there for Bob and help him regain control.
While there have been plenty of threats to the world in the MCU, Thanos remains the only one to date to actually succeed in his plan. In Avengers: Infinity War, we watch as more heroes than ever come together to try and stop him from attaining all of the Infinity Stones and snapping his fingers. With that snap, he’d wipe out half of all living creatures in the universe, which he believed would result in a happier world because there would no longer be a fight for limited resources.
He could’ve used the stones to double resources or something like that, but he’s the Mad Titan for a reason. Thanos succeeded in his plan, wiping out half of all life and the universe remained that way for five years. During what became known as “the Blip,” those dead people and creatures returned after the Avengers gathered the Infinity Stones themselves, during the time heist.
When Loki brought the Chitauri army to New York in The Avengers, it was the biggest and most harrowing thing to happen in the MCU to that point. Now, it was just the first of several alien invasions over the years. The Avengers came together to stop the Chitauri from destroying the planet and since then, the threats from other worlds have just continued to pop up.
The Skrulls infiltrated some important aspects of Earth in Secret Invasion, the Destroyer came down to the planet in Thor, and Thanos brought the Black Order with him in Avengers: Infinity War, which led to a war on Wakanda. Thanos proceeded to bring even more aliens into the mix during Avengers: Endgame, blending the Dark Order with the Chitauri and more. If you add in the Deviants, whom the Eternals had been fighting for centuries, alien invasions are shockingly common in the MCU’s history.
