Who can beat the MCU's Spider-Man? Villains ranked

Spider-Man is one of the sneakiest powerhouses in the whole MCU. He's fast enough to dodge bullets, tough enough to take punches from the Hulk and strong enough to hold up thousands of tons. So I put that power to the test, sending the MCU's Spider-Man through a gauntlet of eight villains to see who has what it takes to take him down. Most of them lose. Three of them don't.

Before the matchups, it's worth laying out what Peter Parker brings to a fight, because I think he's one of the most undersold heroes in the franchise.

Spider-Man's strength puts him above the average MCU super soldier

Peter Parker was a regular kid from Queens until a spider bite turned everything around. He'd been doing the neighborhood Spider-Man thing on his own for a while when Iron Man showed up at his apartment and recruited him to fight alongside the Avengers. From there everything changed, but he stayed grounded in one rule: with great power comes great responsibility.

Spider-Man is secretly one of the most physically powerful heroes in the MCU, especially when he goes all out, and he outclasses your average super soldier. He handled Cull Obsidian, one of Thanos' Black Order, who thought he could take on the Hulk. He tripped Giant Man during the airport fight and managed to slow down Thanos himself on Titan. When he lets loose, like the beatdown he puts on the Green Goblin in No Way Home, it's clear he's operating way above what most people expect from the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man.

The feats back that up. He stopped a 3,000 pound car moving at 40 mph with ease. He lifted thousands of pounds of building rubble off himself after being buried under it. He held a tower section of over 1,000 tons in Far From Home. Then there's the ferry. When the Staten Island ferry split completely in half, Peter held both halves together with his webs and pure brute strength. The ferry weighs over 3,000 tons, and he held it until Iron Man came in to save the day.

Spider-Man's durability, speed and spider sense make him nearly impossible to tag

Durability-wise, it's the same story. Spider-Man is surprisingly tough, as in taking grenades to the face tough, grenades that normally vaporize the average person completely. He took a beating from all five members of the Sinister Five and got run over by a train in Far From Home. He's been shot with missiles and blasted backwards, Giant Man punched him, and Thanos grabbed him and threw him around. He gets back up every time.

Where Spider-Man shines, though, is speed and agility. He's easily the best acrobat in the MCU, dipping and dodging through running fights like it's nothing. He reacts to bullets, missiles and lightning like they're giving him all the time in the world. His spider sense makes all of that even more extreme. By Far From Home, he can fight blindfolded, and he destroyed Mysterio's entire drone army with no vision, using pure spider sense to take out every single one. In No Way Home, it's so finely tuned that he can pick up on the Green Goblin's personality shifts in real time.

Web shooters, the Iron Spider armor and Peter's intelligence round out his arsenal

His web shooters give him a big arsenal with multiple specialized web types, including taser webs, web grenades and ricochet webs. He can instantly web people up, swing across the city, create barriers and set traps. He also has access to the Iron Spider armor Tony Stark created, built from nanites that can assemble and disassemble at will. It's completely bulletproof and gives Pete four extra mechanical arms out of his back. "He's literally a spider man."

This Spider-Man is also one of the smartest ones out there. He built his own suit as a teenager and made his own web fluid. He figured out how to beat Mysterio and helped develop the cure strategy for all five villains. Put all of that together and you have one of the most undersold powerhouses in the MCU.

Deathstroke loses because his tactics fail against the spider sense

Slade Wilson is legitimately terrifying. In the Arrowverse, the Mirakuru serum gave him muscle density like concrete, a healing factor that could regenerate from many different injuries, and speed fast enough that the average person can't see him move. He walked into the Arrow cave and simultaneously beat Oliver, Diggle and Sara Lance, catching Sara midair with one hand, throwing her across the room and knocking Oliver out. He killed four of Talia al Ghul's trained guards in two seconds. This isn't a guy who goes down easy.

Here's the thing, though. Green Arrow fights Slade to a standstill, while Spider-Man is able to fight Thanos and the Hulk. The speed gap between a Mirakuru soldier and someone effortlessly dodging automatic gunfire and lightning is huge. Deathstroke relies on skill, tactics and being smarter than his opponent, and all of that goes out the window when your opponent knows what you're going to do before you do it. Peter webs him up, and it's over. Deathstroke is one of the most dangerous people in the Arrowverse, but he's still only human.

Bane isn't in the same ballpark as Spider-Man physically

Bane did what almost no one else has managed: he beat the Batman and broke his back. He studied Batman for years, identified his exact physical and psychological limits, and executed the plan at the perfect moment. He's also Venom enhanced. His breathing apparatus is connected directly to the drug, keeping his pain in check and amplifying his physical strength beyond peak human. He smashed a stone pillar with his bare hands.

However, he's not even comparable to Spider-Man. The two of them aren't in the same ballpark in any physical area. Spider-Man could quite literally one shot him with one punch, or one web strike to those Venom tubes, while effortlessly dodging every punch Bane throws and roasting him the whole time. This one wouldn't be pretty.

Jason Voorhees lasts as long as Spider-Man wants, probably about four seconds

Jason Voorhees is terrifying. He has superhuman strength and is pretty much unkillable. He's walked through fire, drowning, gunfire and machetes, and he always gets back up. His presence alone creates so much fear that he's broken people without having to touch them. He's a horror icon and an absolute legend.

He also moves like he's stuck in slow motion, and Spider-Man dodges bullets. "This fight is going to last exactly as long as Spider-Man wants it to last, which is probably going to be about 4 seconds." Peter webs Jason to a wall from 50 feet away and goes home. The interesting question isn't whether Peter wins. It's what he does with someone who won't stay dead permanently. But he wins easily every single time.

Venom makes it competitive, but Brand New Day may have closed the gap

This is where it gets more interesting. Venom has some good advantages over Spider-Man: he's strong enough, fast enough and tough enough to fight Peter, and maybe even hold an edge over him. Of course, all of that was true before Brand New Day came out. Spider-Man has now fundamentally changed, becoming significantly stronger, tougher and faster than he's ever been, enough to go to war with the Hulk. So any physical stats Venom might hold, I don't know if they're there anymore.

Even if they are, it's not like Spider-Man hasn't battled way worse. Peter is also smarter, as he always is. Sound and fire are still Venom's documented weaknesses, and Spider-Man definitely has the brains, the experience and the tech to exploit that. I think Venom makes him work for it, and this is a more competitive fight, but Spider-Man ultimately wins.

Shredder's blades could stress Spider-Man, but his armor has weak spots

Shredder is no joke. He fought all four turtles simultaneously and dominated them, and those are turtles who can throw loaded cargo containers weighing several tons. His robotic samurai armor makes him strong enough to dent metal doors and shatter stone, and he can fire his blades out as projectiles and then magnetically retract them. He's also skilled enough to battle Splinter.

Shredder can be a problem for Spider-Man, especially with those blades coming from multiple angles at once. That would probably stress even Spider-Man with his spider sense, and Shredder is durable enough to take some hits from Peter too. But at the end of the day, even with Shredder's skill, I don't think there's a real argument for Spider-Man losing this fight. He's incredibly strong, fast and tough, and he has experience battling ninjas.

Probably most importantly, Spider-Man is a genius, and he's fighting a man in a mechanical suit. It would be no real problem for him to figure out exactly how the suit works and what its weak spots are, then take it down. Even shooting webbing into all the gaps and joints, I bet that would do the trick. It's a tough fight, but Spider-Man would win.

Malekith should win because the Aether is the Reality Stone

Without the Aether, Malekith is a dark elf who is 5,000 years old, with superhuman strength, regeneration and durability. He managed to hurt Thor and send him flying, and he tanked a direct Mjolnir hit to the face and kept going. Against baseline Malekith, you can argue Spider-Man makes it competitive, since he's held his own against the Hulk.

But Malekith has the Aether, and the Aether is the Reality Stone. With it, he can project energy that threw Thor around like a rag doll, and he attempted to convert all matter in the universe to dark matter using the power of the Convergence. The Aether is explicitly described as a weapon of infinite destruction. Spider-Man has no answer for someone who can reshape what matter fundamentally is. The webs are matter, and Peter is matter. Reality warping bypasses everything, and no amount of speed or intelligence solves an Infinity Stone pointed right at you. Baseline, it can be close, but Malekith should win.

Darth Vader's Force choke is a problem Spider-Man can't solve

Darth Vader is one of the most powerful Force users who ever lived. He has the Force choke from a distance with no physical contact required, a Force push that sends opponents flying with a flick of the wrist, and a lightsaber that cuts through virtually anything. He also has precognitive awareness through the Force that lets him read attacks before they arrive.

That should sound familiar. The spider sense and Force precognition do similar things, with both characters built around reading the fight before it happens. The difference is what each does with that information. Peter uses it to dodge attacks, while Vader uses it to control and kill his enemies.

The Force choke is a specific problem Peter won't be able to solve. The spider sense might warn him about it, but there's nothing Pete can do about a telekinetic grip on his throat from 20 feet away. He can web Vader's hand, and Vader uses the other hand, or simply his mind. The lightsaber cuts through webbing and through the Iron Spider armor. Peter is fast enough to avoid it for a while, but against sustained pressure from someone who can choke him, push him and cut him while reading his movements, Darth Vader should win.

Reverse Flash beats Spider-Man, and it isn't close

The Reverse Flash comes from the 22nd century and managed to tap into the Negative Speed Force, becoming faster than the Flash. He can take out opponents before they even move, vibrate through solid matter, create speed mirages that make him appear in two places at once, and travel at the speed of light.

You can argue Spider-Man has reacted to light speed attacks before, since Peter has dodged Electro's lightning and photon energy in real time. That's essentially the whole argument for Peter, and he's still nowhere near as fast as the Reverse Flash. The Reverse Flash isn't only fast, either. He can vibrate his hand through Peter's chest. He can be behind Peter before the spider sense even fires. He can hit Peter thousands of times before Peter's body finishes processing the first punch, and if things go badly, he can run back in time and try a different approach.

The speed gap between a speedster faster than light and Peter's lightning reactions is the whole fight. "Reverse Flash wins. It isn't even close."