Any ranking of MCU movie villains will reveal a laundry list of cruel baddies, but when you look closer, they all have clear motivations and reasons for their evil deeds. Thanos (Josh Brolin) may wipe half the universe out of existence, but he genuinely believes he’s doing good in the grand scheme of things. The Kang variant in “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is in the villain business for control, Adrian Toomes (Michael Keaton) for money, and the High Evolutionary (Chukwudi Iwuji) for science. Erik Killmonger (Michael B. Jordan) has a complex and tragic backstory that has shaped him into a dangerous, vengeance-seeking mercenary, and even the chaotic Green Goblin (Willem Dafoe) is ultimately just a split personality of the far more reasonable Norman Osborn.
Despite the considerable cruelty they all display, none of them — or any other MCU villain, for that matter — has shown the kind of joyful, utterly needless sadism Miss Minutes does in “Loki” Season 2, Episode 4. Yes, she has a motive for her villainy — she’s in love with her creator, He Who Remains, and wants to reinstate a version of him as the head of the TVA. However, nothing in that mission requires her to draw pleasure from seeing the people she’s worked with for a long time die in a horrific way. The AI cartoon clock has always had a hint of malevolence to her — but this short scene in “Loki” Season 2, Episode 4 shows just how irredeemably evil she truly is.
