22% Of Marvel Fans Most Want To See This Villain In The MCU

(Welcome to Survey Says, a feature where we conduct a movie-related survey for a random group of people and explain why they're completely right, completely wrong, or somewhere in-between.)

With an impressive 25 movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as of this writing, there have been dozens of opportunities for the studio to introduce famous (and some not-so-famous) villains from the pages of Marvel Comics into the realm of live-action. But as the MCU ramps up even more, there are still plenty of baddies fans want to see make the jump from the page to the screen.

We used SurveyMonkey to conduct a poll of random people in the United States asking which Marvel villain they wanted to see the most in the MCU, and 628 people answered the call. Is their collective answer fully representative of American moviegoers' interests? Definitely not! But it's always fun to analyze data, so let's dive in and break these numbers down. Here's another look at that bar graph data, this time in ascending order:

Thunderbolts 12.10%

M.O.D.O.K. 12.42%

Mephisto 16.56%

Kraven the Hunter 17.36%

Mister Sinister 18.95%

Galactus 22.61%

One of the most interesting things about this data is that the folks who responded to this poll are not particularly excited about seeing the Thunderbolts in the MCU, despite the fact that of all the choices here, the Thunderbolts actually seems to be the most likely group to actually make it to the screen first. "The Falcon and the Winter Soldier" introduced audiences to Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a potentially nefarious presence who appears to be recruiting characters from the MCU to form a new iteration of the Thunderbolts, including U.S. Agent (Wyatt Russell) and Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh). 

Did the poll responders not know who the Thunderbolts were? I would not expect a random selection of people to know anything about that group, which has not been teased by name in the MCU so far. On the other hand, did they read between the lines and keep the Thunderbolts the lowest on this list precisely because it seemed so likely to already be in the works, therefore allowing them to cast their vote toward a choice which might theoretically "matter" more?

Meanwhile, M.O.D.O.K. already has a show on Hulu (although it isn't technically in the MCU), Kraven the Hunter is already getting his own movie (although it probably won't be in the MCU either), and people who followed "WandaVision" discourse are probably burned out on all of the Mephisto theories that were flying around the time of that show. Mister Sinister (pictured at the very top of this article) is a fascinating villain who was hinted at in the "X-Men" movies overseen by 20th Century Fox – the plan was for him to show up in that "Gambit" movie starring Channing Tatum, although that film was ultimately never made.

But the winner of the poll is Galactus, a cosmic being who eats planets for sustenance. It's no surprise that audiences want to see Galactus done right in the MCU, given that the character is one of the biggest villains in Marvel Comics history and that he was done so, so incredibly dirty by appearing as what amounted to a sentient cloud in 2007's "Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer." With "Eternals" on the way, the MCU is certainly paving the way for a giant, cosmic, world-devouring consciousness like this to be slightly more palatable to the average moviegoer. And we know a new "Fantastic Four" movie is already in the works, so it's not far-fetched to think another version of Galactus could make it to screens in the next few years. 

But Galactus shares some similarities with Thanos, and I have to wonder if Kevin Feige and his fellow Marvel executives would want to draw those comparisons since Thanos was so well-received by audiences during the Infinity Saga. Who could play a proper Galactus, and how could the character be distinct enough to avoid direct comparisons to one of Marvel Studios' greatest cinematic villains? Those are some of the questions Feige and his team are probably pondering, and we're eager to learn the answers to those questions – hopefully sooner rather than later.