THEORY: Are The Villains Of The MCU Still Alive?

A while back I started rewatching the MCU films, and I started to notice something; while many of the villains see an untimely demise, presumed dead by the way that the films present it, most villains are undone by an Infinity Stone.

Now of course, many people have cried afoul saying that Marvel Studios is killing off almost all of their villains. What if they aren't?

For those who have read The Infinity Gauntlet which the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War is seemingly going to tap some inspiration from; Thanos is accompanied by many villains including Mephisto and Nebula. The story naturally touted The Infinity Gauntlet as a massive conflict. Which always bothered me as it was basically Thanos taking on every Marvel hero he could. We all think this might be interesting to see, but in truth I don't think so.

Changing up Thanos' roster of sub-villains makes sense. Mephisto was never really a threat, he was more like Igor to Thanos' Frankenstein. What if Thanos was accompanied by multiple villains that we all thought were gone. Red Skull, Ronan, Malekith, Ultron; all joining Thanos and (possibly) Mephisto.

Let's take a look at how each of these villains was taken down. First off with Red Skull. At the end of Captain America: The First Avenger the head of HYDRA and Steve are fighting as the plane flies towards immenent death and destruction. As Steve defeats Red Skull, he's seemingly killed off, but most fans assumed he was absorbed into some other planet or area of space. What if instead, this is actually our first hint of a villain, in this case, Red Skull, being absorbed into the Tesserect. I think that showing space was Marvel's red herring, and that secretly in the Tesserect lies HYDRA's head.

The next up is Malekith. Now at the end of Thor: The Dark World Malekith has bits and pieces  of himself slowly moved to a different timeline. However, looking carefully, it almost looks as if the Aether is slowly starting to rebuild Malekith's lost limbs. It's not impossible that within the Aether Malekith is able to regrow himself, and when the time comes, with the proper knowledge, Malekith could be freed.

Next up is Ronan. Aside from Red Skull, Ronan is probably the one that most likely backs up this theory. While it looked like Ronan perished, it's also very likely that Ronan was absorbed into the Power Stone. Many theories popped up that Ronan survived, and while I don't think he's the only one, he's one of the biggest sources of evidence that the villains survived.

Finally there's Ultron. This one is from my standpoint, the least likely. Bear with me though. In Age of Ultron Vision describes how he doesn't want to destroy Ultron as he's 'unique' but understands the threat that he causes. While it looks like Vision is simply blasting Ultron away, I think that Vision would make the call to preserve but contain Ultron. Absorbing Ultron into the Mind Stone would remove Ultron from the equation while keeping him from utter annihilation (pun intended).

Of course, there's a precedent for all of this. The Soul Gem has been able to contain people in the past, and while that's only one of the stones, stretching this logic across all gems/stones makes sense to motivate Thanos. Not only is Thanos gaining the power of the Stones, but he's also gaining some assistance. This is where I think the word 'War' comes into play with Infinity War. It won't just be Thanos and the heroes fighting; it will be a war with all the previous villains all factoring in to the conflict. Imagine the excitement and cool factor of seeing Thanos, Ultron, Ronan, Malekith, and Red Skull all taking on the Avengers. Now, that would be the definition of 'Epic'.