With the studio’s rewatch podcast marching everyone back through the saga and Avengers: Doomsday now less than four months out, there has never been a better time to settle the oldest bar argument in the fandom. So here it is, every Avengers movie ranked, from the one we love least to the one that still wrecks us on a rewatch.
To be clear, “worst” is relative here. Even the bottom of this list is a billion-dollar spectacle. But when you line the four team-ups up side by side, a clear pecking order appears, and it tells you exactly what Doomsday needs to beat.
4. Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
Somebody has to sit at the bottom of an Avengers movies ranked list, and Age of Ultron draws the short straw. It is stuffed to bursting: a killer robot, the birth of Vision, the Maximoff twins, a farmhouse detour, and about three sequels’ worth of setup all crammed into one film that visibly strains under the weight.
And yet it is quietly one of the most important entries for what comes next. Vision, Wanda, and the fault lines that split the team wide open all start here, which is exactly why Disney leaving it off its official Doomsday watchlist was such a curious call. James Spader’s Ultron is a genuinely great villain trapped in a movie doing too much at once.
3. The Avengers (2012)
The one that proved the whole experiment could work. Getting Iron Man, Cap, Thor, Hulk, Widow, and Hawkeye into one frame without the thing collapsing was a genuine miracle in 2012, and the Battle of New York still slaps. Loki has never been more fun as a pure villain, and “puny god” remains an all-timer.
It ranks third only because the two that followed raised the ceiling so dramatically. As a standalone, it is a near-perfect popcorn movie. As a chapter, it is the foundation everything else, including Doomsday, is built on top of.
2. Avengers: Infinity War (2018)
The villain’s movie. Thanos remains the gold standard the MCU has been chasing ever since, a bad guy with a plan, a heart, and the horrifying conviction that he is the hero. Infinity War does the impossible by juggling a dozen heroes across three storylines and never losing the thread, then ends on the single most gut-punching cliffhanger in blockbuster history.
The snap is why it sits this high. No comic-book movie had ever asked audiences to sit with a loss like that, and it set the emotional bar Doomsday’s Doctor Doom will have to clear. If RDJ’s Doom wants to be mentioned in the same breath as Thanos, this is the movie he has to top.
1. Avengers: Endgame (2019)
Was there ever any doubt? Endgame is the payoff eleven years and 22 films were quietly building toward, and it lands nearly every swing. The time heist, “Avengers assemble,” Cap wielding Mjolnir, that final portal shot, Tony’s snap, the goodbye at the lake. It is fan service done with actual weight, because the movie earns every single beat.
It is not flawless, the time-travel logic wobbles if you poke it, but no MCU film has matched its scale or its emotional closure since. It is the mountain Doomsday and Secret Wars are trying to climb, and the reason expectations for the next two Avengers films are impossibly high.
Where will Avengers: Doomsday land on this list?
That is the billion-dollar question. Doomsday has advantages none of these four had: a villain in Doctor Doom played by the actor who defined the franchise, the full X-Men finally in play, and Fantastic Four fresh off their MCU debut. It also carries a burden none of them did, following the most beloved finale in the genre.
If it nails the Doom of it all and sticks the multiverse landing, it has a real shot at the top two. If it buckles under its own cast size the way Age of Ultron did, it slides. For everything we know so far, keep our complete Avengers: Doomsday guide handy, dig into the latest plot leaks, and check where it fits on the MCU release calendar.
What happens next
We will be updating this Avengers movies ranked list the moment Doomsday hits theatres on December 18, and again after Secret Wars in 2027. Two more team-ups are coming, and both are gunning for that number one spot.
Now the fun part: do you agree with our order, or is putting Infinity War above the original Avengers a crime against the fandom? Drop your own ranking and tell us where you think Doomsday lands.
Sources: Variety, Marvel.com. Image: Wikimedia Commons.
