The MCU Just Revealed The 10th Villain Iron Man Accidentally Created

Published Aug 1, 2026, 12:20 PM EDT Zoë Miskelly is an editor and second in command for Screen Rant's Movies team, having covered the entertainment industry for almost 10 years now. Zoë's love of superheroes and all things Marvel & DC started out in childhood, and has blossomed into a career getting to talk about some of the biggest and best movies and shows of all time, having previously focused on comics while working at WhatCulture. Sign in to your ScreenRant account Warning: This article contains spoilers for Spider-Man: Brand New Day.The MCU has just revealed the tenth villain that Iron Man accidentally helped create in the franchise, adding further to his legacy in a somewhat complex way. The fact that Tony Stark has accidentally created a range of notable villains in the MCU timeline has been something the franchise itself has underscored repeatedly, especially within Iron Man's own MCU trilogy. Even outside of this, though, there were still plenty of figures that Tony Stark had some hand in the villain origin stories of, with Vulture being armed via Iron Man's work with the Department of Damage Control, and Ultron notoriously being part of Iron Man's efforts to try and protect the world from danger - ironically creating the exact kind of threat he was trying to defend Earth against. Though most of the villains Iron Man played a role in establishing were of course created before the MCU hero died in the final scenes of Avengers: Endgame, there have been a number of Marvel antagonists that Iron Man played a hand in setting up who have been revealed after the character's passing - as is most recently the case with Spider-Man: Brand New Day's true villain, and how they amassed the power they misuse in the film. Spider-Man: Brand New Day's Real Villain Is The 10th MCU Antagonist Iron Man Accidentally Created Credit: Sony Pictures Releasing Spider-Man: Brand New Day spends most of its runtime with Jean Grey as its central antagonist, but it's revealed towards the ending of the movie that the real villain of the story is Department of Damage Control head Bill Metzger. Bill has been trying to use the DODC to find a way to give others psychic powers, killing Jean's sister Sarah in these experiments, and provoking Jean into a ruthless hunt for her sister, unaware she's already passed. Though Spider-Man: Brand New Day avoids referencing Tony Stark almost entirely, this does mean Iron Man has once again set up an MCU villain that Peter Parker ends up having to deal with. This is because Iron Man played a role in setting the Department of Damage Control up to focus on metahumans, being involved in its "reformation" as referenced in Spider-Man: Homecoming. The Department of Damage Control already served as an opposing force for Spider-Man in Spider-Man: No Way Home - where they attempted to bring him in believing he had killed Mysterio after the ending of Spider-Man: Far From Home - but Brand New Day provides a more specific villain through Bill, by showing how he has used his position to torture those with mindcontrol powers in order to try and extract the ability from them. Iron Man Having Accidentally Created So Many MCU Villains Shows How Important He Still Is To The Franchise Iron Man's legacy still involving being part of the backstory behind how several new MCU villains got their start is a perhaps unfortunate part of the character's later impact on the franchise, but is also an effective way to show just how much he defined the MCU in-universe and in the real world given his actions within it, which set up the villain stories of Iron Monger, Whiplash, Vulture, Justin Hammer, Aldrich Killian, Ultron, Helmut Zero, Ezekiel Stane, Mysterio, and now Bill Metzger. Iron Man's heroic intentions accidentally creating future MCU villains like Bill Metzger and Iron Monger's son Ezekiel Stane underscores a common theme of the franchise and Marvel's comic world, too, wherein good intentions often have unexpected and negative side effects. This is something we see in Spider-Man: Brand New Day in more than one way, since the hero's own intentions to control his mutation via creating an inhibitor chip that circumvents his altering DNA is used to take away Jean's powers and leave her defenseless against the DODC when they detain and experiment on her. All in all, current MCU villains still having ties to Iron Man is a decidedly exciting way to tie the early era of the franchise to the universe's newer releases, and keep a sense of consistency in the MCU that makes it feel as though all the characters' actions matter, and could come to define major future events for the franchise years down the line.