The Leader - having been teased in 2008's The Incredible Hulk - would be an excellent replacement for Hydra as the MCU moves into Phase 4. This forgotten villain, also known as Samuel Sterns, was a supporting character in the Edward Norton film, characterized as a fellow scientist trying to assist Bruce Banner to understand and control the condition that transformed him into the Hulk. Injured in the film's climax, Sterns is exposed to the Hulk's irradiated blood, and begins to mutate, just as the scene changes to the fight between the Hulk and the newly-formed Abomination. Notably, Sterns does not reappear for the rest of the film, leaving the audience to speculate as to his eventual fate.
In the comics, Sterns was transformed into the Leader in an accident, and became immensely intelligent although physically frail. Seeking power and control he formed a vast criminal enterprise, fuelled in part by his own super-technology, which allows him to be a worthy foe for the Hulk by proxy, behaving far more ruthlessly than the secretly peaceful Hulk. Like the senior members of Hydra in the MCU, the Leader rarely enters direct physical confrontation with Marvel heroes, but acts through proxies, constructs, and intricate plots. Notably, the Leader has used his gamma-powers to return from apparent death repeatedly, giving him a threatening immortality lacking in many other Marvel villains that have been portrayed in the MCU.
With many villains indirectly created by their heroes returning for Phase 4, the Leader would be a perfect Hydra replacement to pull the strings, and to take advantage of the chaos in order to gain power and authority. As a puppeteer, the Leader could provide a ready supply of human or enhanced-human level minions, a useful gauge against which to measure new heroes. Although gone for some time, the Leader's absence could easily be explained by the need to acquire resources and build the connections that make him a force to be reckoned with. With the original Avengers forming mini-teams, this kind of head start may be necessary to keep the threat level up for the heroes.
The narrative advantage that Hydra offered in Phase 2 was to wrong-foot the heroes, and to make them less able to trust the connections that they had made. With the great gathering of heroes at the end of Avengers: Endgame, a villain that offers a similar narrative role is just what the story needs. By creating connections between other villains, providing powerful weapons, and subverting the resources that the Avengers could call upon by way of cunning and infiltration, the Leader offers a challenge beyond the purely martial. He could seek to understand the science of the multiverse, steal technology from heroes and villains alike, and offer a threat that is simultaneously insidious and a deescalation from the galaxy-threatening Thanos. An irradiated genius would also find the Hulk's transformation to smart-Hulk fascinating, enough to draw the Leader forth to face him.
Tony Stark's attempt to exercise control in Avengers: Age of Ultron led to devastation because heroism and perfect control proved incompatible. With the death of Tony Stark, it would be an interesting parallel to use the Leader as a Hydra-esque stand-in, attempting a similar control but without the altruistic intent. Bringing back a teased villain from The Incredible Hulk would offer closure to a dangling story thread, and provide a villain that could live up to the massed heroes he would face.
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