When calling the Avengers by its nickname, Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, that comes with a pretty distinct implication: That everyone saving the planet is also from it. It would be easy to assume this even looking at the members of the team. Even though the likes of Steve Rogers as Captain America and the Hulk arrive on the scene with man-made superpowers, they’re still homegrown humans with no intergalactic roots or augmentations to be found. Even as the team expanded with inclusions like Scarlet Witch and Black Panther, their powers were once again either from the Earth or man-made experiments.
That said, not everyone who suits up with the team and wears that “A” on their suit is human at all. Even the very first movie in the series delivered a non-human member of the team, and as the Avengers have expanded over time, the number of characters that have joined their ranks who are decidedly not from Earth has only gone up. As a result, there are now enough non-human Avengers that they can clearly be classified by their power rankings, not only in terms of what they pull off in the Avengers films but before and after.
If you need a new type of weapon to take down an enemy or break open a vault, Rocket is absolutely your guy on the Avengers, but when comparing his abilities to his fellow team members (even in the Guardians of the Galaxy) he clocks in last. That’s not a reflection of his ability as a teammate or even a tactician, which are both on display across the two Avengers movies that he appears in, but rather how he stacks up in a fight itself. Even with his cybernetic augmentations, the biggest things that Rocket brings to each fight are the size of his guns and his ability to shoot them. Though, without a doubt, one of the best characters in the entire MCU, he’s not the strongest by any means.
The next step up from Rocket’s own augmentation is the other most heavily modified member of The Avengers, Nebula. Like Rocket, she’s not entirely organic anymore (starting out as one of the last surviving Luphomoids), with one of her most distinct displays of power in Avengers: Endgame coming during the time heist. Using her robotic arm, Nebula is able to reach through the incineration field, holding the power stone and actually retrieve it. Yes, her arm gets burned down to the circuitry from doing so, but it’s something that none of her fellow Avengers could pull off without extra equipment. Nebula is also a great fighter and a prime strategist for the fight against Thanos, but when compared to the other non-human Avengers, she can’t match them.
Made of Vibranium and with an intellect that is smart enough to help out Tony Stark, Vision arrived on the scene as one of the most powerful Avengers, period, when he made his MCU debut. In his corner are a few major acts of heroism that make it clear what power he has at his core. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, he’s able to destroy that last surviving Ultron singlehandedly (though, admittedly, Ultron is in a weakened state and a poorly built body), but also delivers one of the most jaw-dropping moments in the entire MCU by revealing that he’s worthy of holding Thor’s hammer (a feat he pulls off years before Steve Rogers).
On the flipside, Vision is literally killed by Thanos without even using any of the power stones, ripping the Mind Stone out of his head with his bare hand. Vision is a great Avenger and strong, but his death knocks points off.
There is no disputing that the Asgardian God of Thunder is not only among the most powerful non-humans on the Avengers, but one of the most powerful in the entire MCU. Even just based on his work on the Avengers movies, Thor has extreme durability (seen in the moment when he opens the forge to create Stormbreaker), and immense strength (how he can lay waste to waves of Outriders. Though he loses his first fight with Thanos, he comes back with a vengeance in their second encounter and wins in two blows. No matter if he’s equipped with Mjølnir, Stormbreaker, or just a weapon he finds nearby, Thor is a formidable fighter who can hold his own against major villains across the MCU. There’s one thing
Though technically born and raised on Earth, Carol Danvers finds herself as a Kree-Human Hybrid after her solo movie in the MCU. On the whole, Captain Marvel is so powerful as a single entity that Marvel routinely has to find reasons for her not to be involved in the Avengers problems, since she would seemingly be able to stop them on her own without the team.
Captain Marvel even goes toe-to-toe with Thanos more than once, not only restraining him on her own initially but facing him head-on later in the film and not flinching after some of his devastating blows. The only other character in Avengers: Endgame that remotely puts up the same amount of fight on their own in the battle with Thanos is Scarlet Witch, with the mad titan only defeating her by having a ship in orbit blast her. What gives Carol Danvers the leg up is that she destroys the ship that rocked Scarlet Witch on her own, flying through it and sending it crashing into the Earth. She’s an iconic hero and one whose power levels are almost immeasurable.
