It is now well established that Marvel Studios, or the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), is the biggest film brand in India. Over the last six months, MCU films Spider-Man: No Way Home and Doctor Strange: In The Multiverse Of Madness have registered box office numbers that most big Hindi films have struggled to match. MCU series, such as Loki, Hawkeye and Moon Knight, have clocked viewership numbers higher than many Indian web-series headlined by famous stars.

As we prepare for another big MCU film (Thor: Love And Thunder) to hit the theatres this July, we conducted a research among 1,200+ MCU audience in urban India (15+ yrs.) and asked them who their favorite MCU character was. Six characters, seen in the graphic below, dominated the list, with a cumulative share of 95% between them.

While the popularity is largely consistent by gender and market, clear age differences emerge.

Thor, Doctor Strange and (to a lesser extent) Iron Man are more youth-skewed, while Spider-Man, Captain America and Hulk are characterized by an older age skew.

While Marvel has been focusing on establishing female superhero characters in recent times, female characters currently hold only 2% popularity share in India, led by Scarlet Witch.

Watch this space for an updated round of this research at the end of the year.