Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has the MCU’s best villain so far

polygon.com:

“What makes a good villain?” will always be a subjective question, but allow me to lay out a few bad-guy qualities that matter to me personally. I want to find them scary. I want to enjoy their villainy, for it to be creatively, salaciously, deliciously cruel. I want them to be a good foil for the hero: equal or even greater in stature, charismatic and powerful, a dark reflection of them in some way. And here’s an important, if counterintuitive one: I only care about their motivation up to a point.

Sure, it’s important for any well-constructed story to make it clear why the antagonist is doing what they’re doing — to give them both a clear goal and an emotional driver for it. But too detailed a backstory, too rich a deconstruction of their psyche, can be as much of a hindrance as a help in setting up a good villain. They are often scarier and more entertaining if they’re unknowable to some extent, with a hint of humanity, but not too much.

Here are four super-famous examples that meet these criteria, off the top of my head: Heath Ledger’s Joker in The Dark Knight, Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy, Alan Rickman’s Hans Gruber in Die Hard, and Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.

Here are the villains from the Marvel Cinematic Universe — the most successful movie franchise of all time — that meet these criteria: none of them. Until Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.

[Ed. note: Significant spoilers for Multiverse of Madness ahead.]

The MCU’s villain problem is well documented. It was particularly endemic in the series’ early phases, when screen legends like Jeff Bridges or Hugo Weaving would queue up to play forgettable, one-shot antagonists in heroes’ origin stories. Part of