The Marvel Cinematic Universe has had a rough time in the ’20s, but things have started to look up. Marvel is about to have a banner year in 2025, introducing new characters like the Fantastic Four, Red Hulk, and the Sentry. The MCU is getting a power upgrade, and its embrace of the multiverse concept has opened things up for even more powerful Marvel heroes to show up.
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The Marvel Universe is full of powerful heroes, many of whom have never appeared in the MCU. The next few years would be the perfect time to up the power quotient of the MCU by looking to the comics. The below powerful Marvel heroes would make a huge splash in the MCU, opening new stories and blockbuster action scenes.
Hyperion
DC Studios is hogging a lot of the media attention when it comes to superhero cinema, with the studio building towards eventually doing the Justice League. Marvel can beat them to the punch, since they actually have their own version of the Justice League, introduced in the late ’60s and led by Superman analog Hyperion. Hyperion is the perfect hero to join the MCU, especially with the multiverse playing a huge role in Marvel stories. The Squadron Supreme were from another Earth, eventually becoming allies of the Avengers.
Many different versions of Hyperion have appeared in Marvel, but one thing stays the same — he’s superlatively powerful. Adding Hyperion to the MCU not only gives them a powerful new multiversal hero — the version introduced in 2013’s Avengers (Vol. 5) by writer Jonathan Hickman would be perfect for the MCU and he just so happens to be an Eternal — but also a powerful villain. The series Exiles introduced the world-killing King Hyperion, an insane version of the hero who killed every hero on his Earth. Hyperion is extremely versatile, making him a perfect and powerful addition to the MCU.
Gladiator
Deadpool & Wolverine have brought the X-Men to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, dazzling fans with possibilities. The X-Men open up a whole can of worms to adapt for the MCU, even taking into account X-Men ’97. That animated series has already introduced many powerful heroes and villains, but Marvel has made sure to differentiate it from the MCU by saying that it’s part of its own universe, which means one of the most powerful Marvel heroes of all time is fair game for this list — Gladiator, the leader of the Shi’Ar Imperial Guard. Fans will recognize him from X-Men ’97’s first season, but getting to see the mohawked alien in all of his glory in live-action would be a special treat.
Gladiator has the standard Superman suite of powers — super strength, invulnerability, flight, super senses, super speed, and eye lasers — but he also had an extra power that makes him even more formidable, which can also lead him to his doom. Gladiator’s powers are based on self-esteem. Basically, if he doesn’t think he can be beaten, then he can’t be beaten. Conversely, if he loses faith in himself, Gladiator can be defeated.
This is an interesting little wrinkle to the character. It has allowed him to triumph over many of the universe’s most powerful forces, yet it also means that he can be defeated if he doubts himself for even a second. This opens up a lot of possibilities for the character, setting him apart from other hyper-powerful superheroes.
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Blue Marvel
Blue Marvel was introduced in 2008, but much like the soon-to-debut-in-the-MCU Sentry before him, he was given a history that stretched back into the past of the Marvel Universe. Adam Brashear was a Korean War veteran, where he met his best friend and future arch-nemesis Connor Sims, and became a scientist who joined Project: Perseus with Sims. Their goal was simple: build an antimatter reactor that would harness the energy of the Negative Zone. However, an accident caused Brashear to become a living antimatter reactor, giving him powers the likes of which few humans had ever experienced. Sims was transformed as well, and would become the evil Anti-Man. Brashear decided to use his powers for good and became the hero known as the Blue Marvel.
Seeing as how he was Black and it was a pre-Civil Rights Amendment world, Brashear wore a mask and kept the truth of his identity from the public. However, the helmet was damaged, revealing his identity to the world in 1962. President Kennedy asked Brashear to retire and Blue Marvel conceded, but went on one final mission, saving the world from alien invasion while in the Blue Area of the Moon, where he met the Watcher. The government faked his death and assigned a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to watch him. The two fell in love, started a family, and Brashear became a professor of physics at the University of Maryland.
Over the ensuing years, Brashear returned to the hero game several times, joining the 1970s version of the Mighty Avengers, saving the world from the return of the Infinaut, fighting against fellow list member King Hyperion, and battling the Anti-Man. Blue Marvel returned to superheroing full-time and would join a new incarnation of the Mighty Avengers and later the Ultimates. Blue Marvel has it all — inexhaustible power and amazing intellect — and taps into a story hinted at in Falcon and the Winter Soldier with Isaiah Bradley, another Black hero used and discarded by the United States. He’s tailor-made for cosmic adventures or being a team’s powerhouse, plus there’s more than enough story to the character to give him his own series of solo movies set in the MCU’s past.
