In a sense, Thanos has accomplished more good deeds—helping heroes overcome their differences and learning to work together as a team—than bad ones. His master plan better explain why he wanted to create all these groups to stand against him, otherwise he’s officially a dope. At this point, a better comparison for Thanos than Emperor Palpatine is Dr. Claw, the shadowy puppet master from the Inspector Gadget cartoon, who spent the entire series ordering people around while he sat in a chair, and was repeatedly outsmarted by a little girl and her dog. Thanos even kind of sounds like Dr. Claw.

Thanos’ incompetence wouldn’t be so problematic if every Marvel villain besides Loki wasn’t a complete and total dud. From Iron Monger to Abomination to Whiplash to Ronan The Accuser to the guy from Thor: The Dark World whose name I couldn’t even remember until I looked it up on Wikipedia just now (it’s Malekith), they’re all interchangeably generic evildoers with interchangeably generic evil plans. The glimpses of Thanos are used to paper over their blandness with the promise of excitement down the road. These bad guys might be bad, they insist, but just hang in there; this purple guy will be really nasty.