The Biggest Weakness Of Every Avengers Member Explained

No one is invincible. Even a man of steel like Superman is vulnerable to things like Kryptonite, magic, or your occasional big, spiky dude. A lot of other superheroes suffer similar vulnerabilities. Green Lantern's powers were once useless against the color yellow. Martian Manhunter has more super powers than most of the rest of the Justice League combined, but if you get him too close to a campfire, he'll freak. 

But a hero's weakness isn't always physical. With a few notable exceptions, most members of the MCU's Avengers don't command the same kind of godlike powers as the Justice League's recruits, and their vulnerabilities tend to go deeper than skin. They're overconfident, they're weighed down by feelings of inadequacy, or in some cases, you just don't know whose side they're going to be on from one minute to the next. As much as the team can sometimes work as a well-oiled machine, a villain with the cunning of Loki or Ultron — who knows and can exploit those weaknesses — can break the team down. 

Don't believe us? Well, consider the following as we look at the biggest weaknesses of every member of the Avengers. 

In U2's "The Fly," Bono sings, "It's no secret that a liar won't believe anyone else." That's because we tend to expect from the world what we expect from ourselves. If you lie all the time, then you probably assume everybody lies all the time, and so you trust no one. It works the other way, too. If you're a selfless and courageous patriot who always demands the best from yourself, then you're probably going to expect the best from everyone around you. And if you're Steve Rogers, you'll be disappointed. A lot. 

It's this aspect of Steve that helps start so much trouble in Captain America: Civil War. Of course he doesn't see a need for the Sokovia Accords — he expects the best from everyone around him. He fights so hard, risks so much, and loses so much to protect his old friend Bucky because, in spite of what he knows Bucky has done, he still expects the best from him. It's why the deceptions he endures from Black Widow and Nick Fury, who he knows are spies, somehow come as a surprise to him, and it's why he's able to join S.H.I.E.L.D. without noticing the growing threat of Hydra until Fury is dying on his living room floor. 

One thing that's always been clear about the Hulk in the films and the comics is that his biggest weakness — at least in terms of working with a team — is that you're never really sure exactly which Hulk you're going to be dealing with, and if you get the wrong one, then he's just as likely to smash his teammates as he is to smash the real enemy. 

While Loki is doubtlessly using his power and that of the Mind Stone to influence the Hulk when he goes wild on the Helicarrier in The Avengers, the Hulk isn't someone you have to work that hard to manipulate. While the moment is arguably one of the most hilarious of the film, the Hulk shows his willingness to lash out at allies when he sucker punches Thor in Grand Central Station. He's one of four Avengers who are assaulted in a single scene by Scarlet Witch's mental powers in Avengers: Age of Ultron, yet he's the only one who not only attacks one of his teammates because of it but goes on a rampage through Johannesburg. And in Thor: Ragnarok, there are no witches or warlocks playing with his mind when he chooses to attack Thor in Sakaar's arena. Basically, "the other guy" is unpredictable. 

Hawkeye is one of the few Avengers whose greatest weakness is more on the physical side of things, as he's limited by his ammo. 

Without his arrows, Clint is far from helpless. In most of his appearances, we've seen him the equal of many of his fellow Avengers when it comes to hand-to-hand combat. In Captain America: Civil War, we saw him hold his own against both Black Widow and Black Panther with a minimum of trick arrows. But when it comes to the threats that live in world of the super? He needs those weapons, and when he runs out (as we see in The Avengers), he's in a lot of trouble. In Civil War, he would've been absolutely useless against heroes like Iron Man, War Machine, and Spider-Man without his arrows. He was absolutely useless against Vision even with them. 

And that's probably why in Avengers: Age of Ultron, we learn he's come up with some creative means to extend his ammo replenishment. When he briefly hides in a building with the shaken Scarlet Witch, we see he's figured out new ways of storing ammo when he detaches something from his boot that produces a score of arrows, all ready for him. 

Unfortunately, Quicksilver didn't live long enough to get an extended look at what he would've been like as an Avenger, but during his time in Age of Ultron, it's clear the speedster was usually governed by one thing: his rage. 

It's Pietro's anger at Tony Stark that pits him against the Avengers, and it's eventually what puts him in Ultron's camp. We see that fury start to boil up a couple of times in the fight in the belly of Ulysses Klaue's Churchill — first against Captain America after Cap tells him to "stay down," and then against Hawkeye when the archer incapacitates Wanda. 

In the comics, Quicksilver's anger leads him to actually betray the Avengers a number of times. We'll never know if the same would've been true in the films. By the time he's switched sides, he's seemed to mellowed at least a little, considering not only his sacrifice to save Hawkeye and a young Sokovian boy, but that earlier in the fight, he's willing to take a little friendly fire in the arm from a Sokovian cop without punching him in the throat for it.

While James Rhodes' years in the War Machine suit have made him an accomplished Avenger, there's at least one way in which he'll never be Iron Man's equal. He may have a similar suit, but he doesn't have the mind that created them. 

Rhodey's skills are nothing to sneeze at, even without the suit. As we see in Iron Man 3, before he's able to retrieve the Iron Patriot armor from President Ellis, Rhodey's cunning, courage, and marksmanship help him survive fights with multiple Extremis-fueled bad guys. The problem is that when Rhodey's in the suit, and the suit fails him, he doesn't have the technical know-how to compensate. 

For example, there's his fall in Civil War. Tony Stark finds himself in a similar situation in Iron Man when his push towards the upper atmosphere freezes his suit and causes it to temporarily lose power. Because Tony is an engineer and he knows what the suit can do, he's able to get the armor working again before he's a skidmark. Rhodey doesn't have the same capacity. When Vision accidentally blasts him in Civil War and he falls, he doesn't have the same engineering genius as Stark, and his fate is sealed. 

In some ways, when Tony Stark barged into Peter Parker's life in Civil War, it was a gift. In other ways, it's been a burden. While Stark helps to enable Peter to become the best hero he can be, he also imposes a large shadow over Spider-Man's life that the younger hero constantly feels pressured to live up to. 

He wants to do nothing but impress Stark in Civil War. Later, in Spider-Man: Homecoming, Peter is desperate to keep Tony's attention so he can prove he's worthy of being an Avenger. In Spider-Man: Far From Home, after Iron Man's death, Peter feels the responsibility to fill the void Tony left behind. 

It's this drive to live up to the legend of Iron Man that leads him to make some questionable decisions. It pushes him to do a lot more than "web 'em up" and keep his distance like Tony tells him in Civil War. It gets him in a number of fights that don't end well in Homecoming, like the ATM robbery that destroys one of his favorite shops in Queens and nearly kills the owner (and his kitty). It drives him to intervene in the arms sale that leads to the Staten Island Ferry being blasted in half. And in Far From Home, his feelings of inadequacy in comparison to Stark make him an easy target for Quentin Beck's manipulations.

Scott Lang has a massive inferiority complex when it comes to other, more experienced superheroes. We see it as early as his first appearance in Ant-Man when he fights Falcon. In Civil War, we don't see much interaction between him and the other heroes before the fight in Leipzig, but what we do see makes it clear that he's utterly starstruck by Captain America. 

We see the feelings of inferiority most clearly in Endgame. So do his teammates, and they enjoy torturing him because of it. Characters like Iron Man, Nebula, War Machine, and Rocket love to pick on him. And even though everyone else seems to be embarrassed to even be in the same room as the diminished "Bro" Thor, when the thunder god talks, Scott grins and nods like a little kid listening to his favorite baseball player tell a story. 

What's so sad about it is how often Scott proves himself equal to his teammates. He kicks Falcon's butt in Ant-Man, does some serious damage in Civil War, and he's one of the most pivotal heroes in Endgame regardless of how the other Avengers talk to him.  He's the one who comes up with the idea of using the Quantum Realm to travel through time, he saves a number of Avengers from drowning when Thanos attacks, and during the final battle, he takes out a Chitauri Leviathan by punching it in the face, and he kills Cull Obsidian by stepping on him. So come on, Avengers, give this guy a break.

Some may argue the point — the sorcerer himself would probably take issue with it — but Stephen Strange's penchant for keeping his own counsel is something that's bound to betray him one of these days. 

Strange makes a lot of pivotal decisions that seem inexplicable to his allies, and more often than not, he does it without bothering to explain himself. In Doctor Strange, Mordo and Wong both think he's abandoned them when he actually has a plan to trick Dormammu. In Infinity War, in spite of warning Tony beforehand that he'd let anyone die before giving up the Time Stone, he surrenders the Eye of Agamotto to Thanos without letting anyone else in on the reason why, simply telling Stark, "It was the only way."

Of course, in those instances, things ultimately worked out ... but not without cost. The Avengers were left dumbfounded for years about his decision on Titan. And things haven't always worked out. For example, when he transports himself, Mordo, Kaecillius, and some evil minions into the Mirror Dimension in Doctor Strange, he makes things worse. He puts himself and Mordo in more danger than before, and while they eventually escape, it ultimately leads to the death of the Ancient One. 

Rocket has some fairly significant character flaws. He's rude, he pushes people away, and he's got an ego the size of Ego's planet. But at the end of the day, Rocket's biggest weakness is simply that he's small.

Rocket can be a terrible opponent. He takes on almost all of Yondu's Ravagers in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 by himself. He's a terror with a gun in his hand, and give him the right tools and materials, he can make you a high-tech super weapon faster than you can say "MacGyver." 

But catch him without a gun, a high-tech gadget, or at the controls of a spaceship? He's helpless. When he attacks Ronan at the end of Guardians of the Galaxy, enraged at Groot's death, the Kree barely has to even move to knock Rocket into next week. He's almost completely useless against Gamora early in the movie when they're fighting over Quill. We wouldn't want to make him mad if there's so much as a butter knife nearby, but Marvel's favorite trash panda is, in the end, the size of a build-a-bear, and it can be huge disadvantage.