While Thanos first appeared in The Avengers, he didn't get a voice until two years later when Josh Brolin played the iconic villain in Guardians of the Galaxy. The villain later appeared in Avengers: Age of Ultron before taking centre stage in Avengers: Infinity War.
There, we saw the Mad Titan successfully enact his plan to wipe half of all beings in the universe out of existence with a snap of his fingers. Thor beheaded Thanos during Avengers: Endgame's opening sequence but he'd later return as a 2014 Variant who was dusted by Iron Man when the hero made the ultimate sacrifice.
Brolin has since lent his voice to Thanos in What If...?, and the villain has, for some reason, died multiple times in the animated series.
Talking to ComicBook.com about his role as Gurney Halleck in Dune: Part Two, the actor confirmed he's heard talk of an MCU return and seemed to hint it won't just be in animation.
"You know, I hear kind of like through the grapevine, that they're gonna bring him back," Brolin teased. "And there's the What If...? series and that's a different kind of Thanos and all that. But I don't know in the Marvel world whether they're going to bring him back, but I didn't know that he was the most killed-off Marvel villain. You learn something new every day."
We wouldn't put too much stock into these comments just yet as Brolin does appear to backtrack a little during the course of his answer.
Still, the nature of the Multiverse makes it easy for Thanos to return and, given that he's the greatest threat ever faced by Earth's Mightiest Heroes, Kang unleashing the death-obsessed baddie on Earth-616's Avengers in a bid to slow them down could make for fun viewing.
"That was a huge undertaking for me," Brolin previously said of his turn as Thanos. "When you have my kind of gravitas, I understand why they would go, 'That guy could kind of bring some real weight to the purple dude,' but I didn't get it at first. I've always described it as doing blackbox theater in New York in the '70s or something."
Talking in 2022 about a possible return, the actor added, "[Marvel Studios has] their own trajectory that they're worrying about and if they want me to do it, I would do it I'm sure, but I don't know what they're thinking. We've kind of bookended this thing after 10 years. I was so happy and I loved being involved in that so much because that wasn't the intention when I first got involved."
How do you think Thanos could factor into the Multiverse Saga? Let us know your theories down in the comments section.