In other words, a resurrected Thanos would have to start from scratch, with a much lower power set. That would probably make him a poor antagonist for another Avengers-sized movie. However, MCU boss Kevin Feige doesn’t have to bring back Thanos in the same way. As we already saw in the aforementioned What If…? episode, Thanos can be reimagined as another kind of character (a hero in What If‘s case). Moreover, the Thanos of the comics is a different character, with a slightly different motivation. That Thanos does indeed seek to kill half the universe, but he does so to impress Death, with whom he is hopelessly in unrequited love.

While this endeavor sometimes brings him into conflict with the entire Marvel Universe or at least the Avengers, he most often tangles with Adam Warlock. And by “tangle,” I mean “has long philosophical debates with the superhero.” In comics written and sometimes drawn by Thanos and Warlock creator Jim Starlin, the enemies probe the nature of life and the meaning of existence. Sure, that task seems outside of the ken of the cosmic version of Adam Warlock that Will Poulter played in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, but the MCU Warlock already started to mature by the end of that film.

Big Bad No More

Of course, one can’t help but notice that all this talk about Thanos redux occurs right around the time that Marvel lost his replacement. Jonathan Majors’s off-screen actions have cost him his job in the franchise, leaving his character Kang the Conqueror in limbo.

The MCU positioned Kang as the central villain of the Multiverse Saga, even seeding his Variants He Who Remains and Victor Timely in Loki and pitting him against minor heroes in Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. That movie ended by promising an onslaught of more dangerous Variants, such as Immortus and Rama-Tut, but in the final episode of Loki, the reimagined TVA talks about the Variants with the same disregard as they do the Infinity Stones.

In other words, the MCU currently lacks a central villain to focus its narrative on. Marvel could simply recast Kang, as different looks are already baked into the whole multiverse concept. However, Feige and co. may want to wash out the bad taste left by Majors and Kang by bringing back an old favorite as a bit of a reset before jumping into the next phase of storytelling.

To be sure, there’s a long precedent for stories of Thanos’s return. Nearly every single comic book baddie has died and come back again, Thanos included. And often, their resurrection adds a new wrinkle to the character’s development. For example, when Drax the Destroyer killed Thanos in 2007’s Annihilation #4, he returned with a renewed anger and desperation in 2010’s Thanos Imperative. Ripped away from his beloved Death, Thanos wants vengeance as much as he wants to win Death’s affection again, giving readers an angrier version of the gloating mastermind.

Danofgeek