In the MCU, Thanos might be an evil megalomaniac, but he rarely wants to get his hands dirty. He’d much rather get his pawns to do the grunt work of conquering worlds for him. In the original Avengers, he tried to conquer Earth using Loki and the Chitauri army. Of course, that didn’t go the way he wanted, thanks to Earth’s Mightiest Heroes. So Thanos waited it out, until he decided “fine, I’ll do it myself.”
But what if he had just decided to take on the Avengers himself way back in 2012, during the original film? Well, as this fan edit from YouTube account ActiveSufi points out, it probably would have gone poorly for Iron Man and company. Very poorly. You can watch the full video below:
This fan edit cleverly combines footage from several entries in the Infinity Saga. The main focus is on the original Avengers, and also Infinity War, and the final battle of Avengers: Endgame. There’s some Thor: Ragnarok thrown in for good measure, as well as Avengers: Age of Ultron. In this version of events, the newly formed Avengers don’t stand a chance against the Mad Titan. To put it bluntly, he wipes the floor with them.
The creator of this video pointed one important thing out in the description. Thanos was lucky Wanda Maximoff wasn’t part of the team yet. (And for that matter, Carol Danvers either). That might have changed the odds somewhat. In fact, not too long ago, they made a video showing how the Endgame battle would have gone far differently had a fully Darkhold-powered Scarlet Witch gone up against Thanos. Even before the Darkhold, Wanda almost destroyed him. Imagine if that confrontation had gone down with the Multiverse of Madness incarnation of her. Thanos would have been a purple puddle on the ground.
