Who Is Thanos? 5 Fast Facts About The ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Villain

“Avengers: Infinity War” brings the biggest bad of them all: Thanos. The purple alien has been seen in a few short sequences in “Guardians of the Galaxy” and “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” but this is the first time audiences will really get to know the villain who has been after the Infinity Stones for the last decade. Still, you should know the basics about him before heading to the movie theater.

[Warning: There are no “Avengers: Infinity War” spoilers below, but there are spoilers for the comics that inspired the movie.]

The Infinity Stones — Thanos (Josh Brolin) and the Avengers cross paths because the villain is after the Infinity Stones. The gems will give him the power to destroy the universe, but Thanos isn’t just out to wreak havoc. He wants to bring order to the universe. “You think of overpopulation and killing half the universe in order to save the other half and all this kind of stuff,” Brolin told Entertainment Weekly last month. “You have this struggle watching him. It’s this love-hate thing, you know?”

Family Man — He has a family, but he isn’t exactly a good father. After kidnapping them, he raised Nebula (Karen Gillan) and Gamora (Zoe Saldana). Their feud stems from him pitting them against each other as children. Every time they fought and Gamora won, Nebula got another body part replaced with something high-tech. His daughters appeared to build some bridges in “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2,” and they both seem prepared to take down their old man.

His Team — You don’t take on the Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, Spider-Man and Doctor Strange alone. Thanos will have the Black Order on his side. He has collected four generals from across the universe: Corvus Glaive (Michael James Shaw), Proxima Midnight (Carrie Coon), Ebony Maw (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) and Cull Obsidian (Terry Notary). They’re each strong, smart and could easily be powerful villains on their own.

Loki (Tom Hiddleston) is not a member of the Black Order, but he is an ally to Thanos, who is also known as the Mad Titan. He is the one who sent Loki after the Tesseract and caused the Battle of New York in “The Avengers.”

He’s A Killer — Obviously, he wants to kill half the universe, but more specifically, Thanos has killed the Avengers before in the comics. The source material has shown him individually killing Captain America, War Machine and more without much effort.

Powers — It isn’t clear if “Avenger: Infinity War” will explain much of Thanos’ origins, but in the Marvel comics, he is part of the Titanian Eternals. He has superhuman strength. He also is “nearly invulnerable, particularly against heat, cold, electricity, radiation, toxins, aging, and disease, and he can survive indefinitely without food or water,” according to Marvel. He can also project blasts of energy and is immune to most psychic attacks. The character Death eventually makes him immortal in the comics.

So how will the superheroes take out such a powerful villain? Fans will have to watch “Avengers: Infinity War” when it hits theaters Friday to find out.