The king of a people who were here before light was, trying to put the universe back the way it started.
Malekith is the king of the Dark Elves. Ages before the films, he faced Odin’s father Bor and lost, and was exiled into an alternate reality. He wakes when the Aether is released, merges with it, and plans to use the Convergence to put Earth back under darkness. His own ship crushes him on Svartalfheim.
He is usually the answer people give when asked which Marvel villain they remember least, and it is worth being honest about why: Christopher Eccleston spends the film under prosthetics, speaking a constructed language, playing a character the script never lets be a person.
Show detailsThe Aether, later
The substance Malekith merges with is the Reality Stone. Thor: The Dark World does not use that name, and the film that does, Guardians of the Galaxy, came out the following year. This is the only place in the Infinity Saga where a Stone is the centre of a film before anyone has said what a Stone is.