MCU fans hyped over Thanos' unexpected return

Thanos has made his grand return to the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Yes, The Mad Titan is back albeit with a brand new look, surfacing in the latest season of anthology series What if…? which has drawn the curtain on its final run of episodes.

If you ask me, Thanos is a huge part of why The Infinity Saga was so successful and I don’t just mean simply because he’s a compelling villain.

Thanos’ appearances in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame were earned across the best part of a decade.

As viewers, we had to make do with small post-credits teases of this character, building up a huge sense of anticipation.

Kang, on the other hand, the original big bad of The Multiverse Saga, showed too much too soon.

We may not have met the most powerful Kang variant, but having seen two on-screen variants dispatched of rather easily in Loki and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the villain was stripped of any sense of power or intrigue.

He simply didn’t compare to Thanos but worry not, my friends.

The MCU may be a tad villain-less as we await the arrival of Doctor Doom, but Thanos has swooped in to tide us over with a brief appearance in the aforementioned What If…?.

Take a look at the trailer for the third and final season of What If…? below.

Before we proceed, I need to make it clear that I will be addressing spoilers for the season three finale of What If…? from here on out.

If you haven’t watched the episode yet, you best click away but if you’re still here, great. Let’s dive into this new Thanos variant.

The show’s final episode did something very interesting.

It showed us a montage of character variants yet to be explored which is odd because, as I mentioned, this is What If..?’s final season, so it’s not clear when or if we’ll actually ever see these variants outside of this sequence.

In the case of the Moon Knight/Blade combination, that’s a mash-up that’s due to surface in the upcoming Marvel Zombies series, but as for samurai Ghost Rider or The Punisher Ironheart, they may just have been brief glimpses at what could’ve been had the show continued.

The same goes for a Wolverine-inspired take on Thanos … Wolvernos … Thanoserine … I’m not sure either of those work.

The Mad Titan could briefly be seen donning Wolverine’s adamantium claws, with his armour also resembling that of the famed mutant.

It may only have been a small glimpse of the variant but it was enough to get fans hyped.

“Now this looks pretty badass, I ain’t gonna lie,” Twitter user ShotGun_Prodigy wrote.

“We should have gotten an episode about Thanos becoming the Wolverine instead [of] Howard The Duck getting married,” added Vtuber94ø77.

I can’t quite help but feel that What If…? perished before it should have.