Captain Marvel Is NOT the MCU’s Strongest Avenger, But She’s Close!

One of the MCU characters who has always been quite strong is Captain Marvel, whose powers were granted to her by an Infinity Stone. She is often regarded as one of the truly strong characters in the MCU, as she can possibly take on Thanos on her own and defeat an entire army without trouble. But while Captain Marvel is strong, there’s good reason to believe she isn’t the strongest. So, why isn’t Captain Marvel the strongest Avenger?

Captain Marvel is at least at Thor’s level

We know that the original members of the MCU’s version of the Avengers have powerhouses in the form of the Hulk and Thor, who are both seemingly rivals for the title of the strongest Avenger. This was always the case for many years as either Hulk or Thor played the role of the Avengers’ big gun whenever an opponent was too strong for all of the other Avengers to defeat.

But Thor became arguably stronger than Hulk when he obtained Stormbreaker and became fit again after the events of ‘Avengers: Endgame.’ Meanwhile, the Hulk lost some of his raw strength when Bruce Banner found a way to combine Hulk’s strength with his mind and personality. Nevertheless, one other Avenger proved to be a powerhouse in her own right as well.

Introduced in her standalone movie, Captain Marvel was the first superhero Nick Fury worked with during the 90s as he was instrumental in her origin story. Carol Danvers obtained her powers when she got exposed to the energy coming from the Tesseract, which houses the Space Stone. In that regard, she obtained incredibly potent powers, as her abilities come from an Infinity Stone.

Captain Marvel went on to prove her might after she could finally remove the limitations that Yon-Rogg placed on her. Danvers made quick work of the Kree fleet that was about to attack Earth and made sure that not even Ronan the Accuser was ever going to try to attack Earth. Take note that Ronan was strong enough to take on all of the original members of the Guardians of the Galaxy but was too afraid to challenge Captain Marvel.

Danvers appeared in ‘Avengers: Endgame’ and was able to destroy Thanos’ ship all on her own. She also aided the other Avengers on the battlefield and went on to take on Thanos by herself. In her Binary Mode, she could overwhelm Thanos, who couldn’t move Danvers an inch. It was only after he used an Infinity Stone that she was able to best Captain Marvel.

In that regard, there is no doubt that Captain Marvel is one of the strongest Avengers and is on par with some of the strongest heroes we’ve seen in the MCU. Joe Russo, who worked on ‘Endgame’ as one of the directors, even said that Danvers is right around Thor’s level.

“She is as powerful, if not more powerful than Thor, and you suddenly have hope again. Because they all know what happened at the end of the last movie, he walked through them like they were paper.”

What that means is that Captain Marvel is at least at the level of Thor, especially whenever she is in her Binary Mode. Whenever she activates this mode, she is arguably stronger than Thor because she is able to overpower Thanos. And while Thor, at his best, was able to defeat Thanos as well, he couldn’t overpower the Mad Titan.

There’s one more Avenger more powerful than Danvers

Of course, we know that Captain Marvel was strong enough to overpower Thanos in her Binary Mode, which allows her body to absorb cosmic energy and make it exponentially stronger. In this mode, she was far stronger than Thanos and was arguably the strongest out of all of the Avengers in pure raw power.

While that may be true, there is also another Avenger who was able to overpower Thanos differently. We are talking about Wanda Maximoff, whose powers also come from an Infinity Stone. Wanda’s Hex and telekinetic powers allow her to create energy constructs and even telekinetically throw people around like rag dolls.

Wanda was at her angriest during the Battle of Earth in ‘Endgame’ as she had just lost Vision. She was quick to confront Thanos and started to rip him apart using her telekinetic powers. Thanos was wearing his armor, which was durable enough to take hits from Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America. But Wanda tore his armor apart before attempting to tear him limb from limb as Thanos was visibly in pain and couldn’t do anything about what Wanda was doing to him.

It was only when Thanos ordered his ship to bombard the battlefield that he was spared from Wanda’s wrath. However, it was clear that she was strong enough to take on the Mad Titan alone. This wasn’t even Wanda at her strongest because she was yet to awaken as the prophesized Scarlet Witch.

After awakening her powers as the Scarlet Witch, Wanda became powerful enough to alter reality as well and even affect the multiverse with her powers. And after inhabiting the body of Wanda Maximoff from Earth-838, Scarlet Witch made quick work of the Illuminati, which had powerful leaders in the likes of Professor X, Captain Britain, Black Bolt, Miser Fantastic, and the Maria Rambeau version of Captain Marvel.

Scarlet Witch defeated all of them, including Maria Rambeau, whose powers were just the same as those of Carol Danvers in Earth-616. She absorbed all of Maria’s cosmic powers and made her vulnerable to most attacks. This allowed Wanda to kill Maria by crushing her with a massive statue. Since Maria didn’t have cosmic energy to strengthen her body at that time, the large statue was able to kill her.

The fact that Scarlet Witch killed the Captain Marvel of Earth-838 proves she is stronger than the Captain Marvel of Earth-616. As such, Captain Marvel was never the strongest Avenger because Wanda was more powerful than her, as proven by the events that transpired in ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.’

But it is important to take note that Wanda, upon turning into the Scarlet Witch, had become so obsessed with her goal that she was no longer an Avenger in terms of her deed. She had become an evil murderer. So, in a sense, after Wanda’s fall to villainy, Carol Danvers might have retaken her place as the strongest Avenger.

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