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Summary: How do you write a character (in this case a villain) that’s earth-shakingly powerful enough to be on the “Don’t anger” lists of those who know of them while a) the readers don’t consider this character shilling, b) the readers don’t consider the character to be OP and poorly-written, and c) get the readers to also agree that “This guy is terrifying”.

In my story the main villain is around 4000 years old and still in shape physically and mentally- thus, he’s been able to profit off the long years of survival by growing in skill and magical/physical power. He wants to corrupt the protagonist instead of outright killing him, so he’s going to act as if he’s the henchman for someone else and that any opposition is just business. He even maintains the disguise amongst his evil comrades, with perhaps only a few of his closest allies knowing that he’s calling all the shots- everyone else things of him as that magical weirdo with armor and a cape. Part of the reveal that he’s the Real Villain would be a show of force that would leave everyone shaken. The problem with this, is how do I get the audience to buy that he’s legitimately powerful instead of saying that I’m just favoring him?

Visually, this would be easy to demosntrate: consider Thanos’ 10-second fight with the Hulk in Infinity War, or how General Grievous almost annihilates five Jedi in the 2003 Star Wars Clone Wars series. However, I’m sure I’m also missing another part of that- I’m also wondering how to translate it to writing. Any thoughts?