The Major MCU Villain Gamblers Are Betting Will Be Played By Giancarlo Esposito

It's a good time to be Giancarlo Esposito. Thanks to his chameleon-like ability to play roles that range from the rabble-rousing Buggin' Out in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing to the cool FBI agent Jack Baer in The Usual Suspects, the seasoned actor has spent decades as a respected performer. His delightfully villainous turn as Gus Fring from Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul showed us what the seasoned actor can do with a juicy bad guy role as well as a crime-fighting saint. While a lesser actor might be happy with such an iconic villain, Esposito promptly followed Gus with two more — the calculating Vought CEO Stan Edgar on Amazon Prime Video's The Boys, and the ominous Moff Gideon on the Disney+ Star Wars show The Mandalorian. Oh, and there's also his upcoming role of Anton Castillo, the central antagonist of the video game Far Cry 6.   

With such an array of nuanced villains in his résumé, it's no surprise that people are eager for even more bad guy antics from Esposito. In fact, smart money thinks that he might be about to give us a baddie role of a lifetime — in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, no less. Here's the major MCU villain gamblers are betting will be played by Giancarlo Esposito.

Ever since Marvel Studios announced that the Fantastic Four will join the MCU with a movie of their own, fans have been clamoring for the inevitable arrival of one of the biggest Marvel comic book villains yet to make an appearance in the MCU movies: Doctor Doom. As an ultra-smart, driven, and vicious villain who's essentially a combination of Iron Man and Doctor Strange — and much, much more — Victor Von Doom has the potential to be an all-time great in the pantheon of MCU bad guys. The stakes are doubly high because the character's already featured in 2005's critically panned Fantastic Four and 2015's even less loved Fant4stic.

A role as tremendous as Doom requires an actor with gravitas to spare, and according to the odds posted by betting site Bovada (via Odds Shark), Giancarlo Esposito is a favorite for the role. The actor's odds to don the iconic steel mask are +350. The nearest runners-up are Peaky Blinders' and the Dark Knight trilogy's Cillian Murphy (+500), The X-Men franchise's very own Michael Fassbender (+500), and Viggo Mortensen of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Green Book fame (+500). The rest of the list is rounded out by perennial favorites like Oscar Isaac, Christoph Waltz, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (who plays Jaime Lannister on Game of Thrones), and Yellowstone's Wes Bentley. 

Earning the best odds out of this collection of sheer talent is yet another example of Esposito's ability to craft compelling villains — and, to be honest, it's hard to avoid getting a little bit excited over the prospect of him actually playing Doctor Doom one day.