Marvel's Thanos and DC's Darkseid are widely regarded as the ultimate antagonists of Marvel and DC, but one is notably more powerful than the other. Both villains have repeatedly escalated into existential threats capable of erasing civilizations and bending entire universes to their philosophies. Also, Thanos was directly inspired by Darkseid, yet he evolved into a distinct figure in the Marvel Universe.

Across decades of storytelling, Thanos and Darkseid have cemented themselves as the definitive threats in multiple universes, including the MCU and the DCEU, animation, comics, and What If...? stories and Elseworlds timelines. Whenever a universe seeks to culminate its mythology with a final, cosmic-scale confrontation, one of these two names inevitably rises to the top.

Thanos

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