The Smartest Characters In The MCU

Tony Stark is not only a bold CEO and unstoppable billionaire industrialist, but he has one of the greatest minds in the MCU. It's one thing to be in charge of a cutting-edge technology company, but to take the lead on the software and hardware designs is next level.

Stark's most well-known invention is his Iron Man tech, an armored suit with flight and defense capabilities, but his expertise doesn't just end at creating an awesome robot suit. In Avengers: Endgame, he creates a time-space GPS that allows the user to accurately travel through time and space.

Audiences already know Stark is a hero, but the guy literally solved the paradox of time travel. If that doesn't make him a super-brain, then what does?

Bruce Banner, or the Hulk if you prefer, is easily the most qualified character in the MCU. He's an M.D. and a Ph.D., and he's a well-known research scientist who zapped himself with gamma radiation. That last thing may not have been a smart move, but he found a way to make it work.

Throughout the Avengers films and Thor: Ragnarok, Banner has applied his expertise to items both magical and scientific, although he finds more comfort in working in a lab than in another dimensional plane. Still, it's this specific understanding that there's more in the universe than what can be measured in textbooks that makes Banner so intelligent and well-rounded. He's not just a super genius, he has an open mind that allows him to see every side of a problem.

After making a name for himself through the discovery of Pym Particles, Hank Pym went on to work with S.H.I.E.L.D. as the first version of Ant-Man. After his wife was stuck in the Quantum Realm, he gave up the life of a superhero and founded Pym Technologies, where he made billions in the tech world while burying his research into Pym Particles.

Or at least, that's what he said he was doing. In Pym's free time, he continued to research the Quantum Realm, not with a team of scientists, but alone. That kind of solo research is next level, it's beyond IQ. Like Tony Stark, Pym works best when he's able to take a germ of an idea and expand on it until he's explored every permutation and variable.

The thing that's so impressive about Pym isn't that he has an amazing handle on theoretical science, can shrink people, and can enter multiple dimensions, it's that he makes doing it look like a breeze.

Doctor Stephen Strange began his career in heroics as a dashing and brilliant neurosurgeon, albeit a complete jerk of a dashing and brilliant neurosurgeon. After suffering a crippling car accident, he traveled to Kamar-Taj where he trained with the Ancient One to heal his hands.

The Ancient One taught Strange the ways of the mystic arts, allowing him to add to his scientific knowledge with that of the unknown. It's this combination of science and magic that allows Strange to be such a fierce and intelligent hero.

Strange's intelligence is most apparent when he's dueling with other magical beings - especially those who not only have more power than Strange but who are barely even physical beings. While going toe-to-toe with Dormammu (figuratively speaking), Strange uses both magic and logic to outsmart the elder being.

By the time audiences catch up with Shuri in Black Panther, she's spent her entire life embedded within Wakanda's techno-industrial society. Sure, she's a princess, but she's also responsible for developing the futuristic technology used by T'Challa, including the Panther Habit made of woven Vibranium.

Shuri isn't just good at working with the technology of her homeland, she can adapt and work with pieces created by Tony Stark and even Hydra. She's able to safely remove the Mind Stone from Vision's head, and she was able to deprogram Bucky Barnes.

Her in-depth knowledge of all things technological gives her the edge over scientists and researchers across the globe, but it also makes her an indispensable member of the Avengers extended family.

Not just any old humanoid trash panda, Rocket Raccoon was brought to life as audiences know him when he was cybernetically enhanced to have advanced cognitive abilities far beyond those of a normal person. It's already amazing that he's a walking, talking raccoon, but also, he can pilot a ship and take down adversaries with new weapons and a series of complicated maneuvers.

It's one thing that Rocket is a wise-cracking tough guy, but in Guardians of the Galaxy, he explains he was specifically engineered to pilot different types of starships. Left to his own devices, Rocket has continued to learn and grow. It's clear that what began as a genius intellect has grown into something else completely.