Superhero movies crowded 2018's film release schedule, not to mention the growing number
of superhero television shows, and of course the comics upon which everything else has
been based.
And with more superhero media comes a higher superhero body count.
In the season 3 finale of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, the time-hopping team lost the guy
who brought them all together: the former Time Master Rip Hunter, played by Arthur Darvill.
“The name’s Rip Hunter.
I’m from East London.
Oh, and THE FUTURE!”
Hunter had spent the entire third season obsessed with the demon Mallus, to the point where
he was even discharged from his job as a Time Master.
It makes sense, then, that he met his fate battling against that same demon, detonating
a Time Core in order to save his friends, and sacrificing his life in the process.
Unfortunately, that explosion only wounded Mallus, but the Legends were eventually able
to defeat the demon thanks to a 12-foot teddy bear.
No, really.
"I luh-luh-love you."
Considering that the entire show is built around time travel and the occasional alternate
reality, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to see Darvil back in action in a future season.
In the meantime, though, the Legends will have to fend for themselves.
R.I.P., Rip.
Avengers: Infinity War brought a lot of death to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, claiming
a higher superhero body count than any other MCU film to date.
He certainly wouldn’t be the last, but the major character with the dubious honor of
dying first was Heimdall, as played by Idris Elba.
Having helped shepherd the surviving Asgardians to safety at the end of Thor: Ragnarok, Heimdall
was on board the refugee ship when Thanos and his Black Order attacked.
At the start of the film, he’s already seriously injured, and in no position to help Thor,
Loki, and the Hulk in their initial skirmish with Thanos.
At least, not at first.
Presumably hoping that Bruce Banner would warn the heroes of Earth that Thanos was on
his way, Heimdall used the last of his strength to activate the Bifrost and send the Hulk
back to Earth… right before Thanos impaled him.
By the time Avengers: Infinity War rolled around, Loki had already “died” twice,
only to prove that he was a little more resilient than the rest of the Asgardians assumed.
This time, though, it’s tough to imagine him pulling off that same trick again.
After handing over the Tesseract — which turned out to be an Infinity Stone — it
seemed like Loki might go back to his old tricks and ally himself with Thanos, just
like he had back in the first Avengers film.
The act tricked everyone, including Thor, but it wasn’t enough to stop Thanos.
In the end, the Mad Titan easily choked the life out of the God of Mischief.
Considering all the innocents who died at Loki’s hands during the Battle of Manhattan,
not to mention the murder of his biological father, attempted genocide of the Frost Giants,
and various other crimes...
“He transformed himself into a snake and he knows that I love snakes so I went to pick
up the snake to admire it and he transformed back into himself and went BAH it’s me!
and then he stabbed me.”
….it’s pretty easy to argue that Loki doesn’t belong on any list of fallen heroes.
That said, his actions at the end of Ragnarok and a noble sacrifice in Infinity War show
that he’s more than just another supervillain.
Of all the deaths doled out by Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War, the only one that he showed
any regret for was the murder of his adopted daughter Gamora.
After she revealed the location of the Soul Stone to stop Thanos from torturing Nebula,
Gamora led Thanos to the planet Vormir.
On that desolate world, a ghostly apparition of the Red Skull appeared to them, and explained
that in order to gain the Soul Stone, Thanos had to sacrifice the thing he loved most.
“You failed… do you want to know why?
Because you love nothing.”
Much to her own surprise, it turned out that the only thing Thanos loved was Gamora herself,
and while she tried to kill herself before Thanos could, he threw her from a cliff to
claim his prize.
As someone who has an Infinity Stone embedded in his head that’s keeping him alive, the
Vision was on the chopping block from the start of Infinity War.
Admittedly, every single being in the universe was in danger in that movie, but for Vision,
the threat was pretty direct, and involved everyone else doing their best to protect
him including Captain America.
Once he learns of Thanos' plans, Vision insists the only choice was to let Scarlet Witch use
her powers to destroy the Mind Stone, but despite a group of Marvel Universe super-geniuses
working on it, there was no way to get it out safely.
When Thanos arrived in Wakanda with every other Infinity Stone under his command, Scarlet
Witch destroys the Mind Stone, killing Vision in the process… only for Thanos to use the
powers of the Time Stone to put Vision back together -- so that he could take him out
in his own, special, mind-stone-extracting way.
Avengers: Infinity War ended with a cliffhanger so dark, it made Empire Strikes Back say,
"Dude.
Lighten up."
It probably goes without saying, but one of the comics that heavily influenced Infinity
War was Marvel’s 1991 miniseries, Infinity Gauntlet.
In the comic, the story begins when Thanos gathers all six Infinity Stones and, with
a snap of his fingers, kills half the sentient beings in the universe including a whole lot
of superheroes, which kept the cast to a relatively manageable size.
Infinity War saved that moment for the conclusion, and it's devastating, and far more horrific
than the source material.
In the comics, people just blinked out of existence.
In Infinity War, they feel what's coming before it hits, and they're slowly erased, inch by
inch, until there's nothing left.
By the time the credits roll we watch Bucky, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Black Panther, Spider-Man,
Groot, Star-Lord, Drax, Mantis, and Doctor Strange all get erased from the canvas of
reality.
In the film's one and only post-credits scene, we see similar fates befall Maria Hill and
Nick Fury.
Considering that there are already confirmed sequels in the works for Guardians of the
Galaxy, Black Panther, and Spider-Man: Homecoming,
“What the F?”
it's a safe bet that not all of these dusty deaths will stick, but we won’t know for
sure until Avengers 4 finally hits theaters.
If there were an Oscar for misleading trailers, Deadpool 2 would be bringing home at least
one statue.
In spite of being featured in at least one action scene in the ads, Bedlam, an obscure
mutant played in the film by Terry Crews, was the first of Wade Wilson's X-Force to
kick the bucket.
He even did it before he got to throw a single punch.
In order to protect an imprisoned teenage mutant from the vengeful, time-hopping Cable,
Deadpool formed his own X-Force team with designs on an air drop to a prisoner transport
convoy.
Unfortunately for this new crop of heroes, high-speed winds blew the team off course
and save for Deadpool and Domino the whole roster of X-Force ended up being killed.
Bedlam was blown face-first into the windshield of a public bus.
“NO!
Tripping Motherf------- Billies!”
In the darkly hilarious carnage that followed, the most surprising death was Shatterstar.
A long-time X-Force member in the comics, Shatterstar was heavily featured in the trailers,
but sadly wound up on the wrong end of a helicopter and got chopped to pieces.
Moviegoers didn’t even get to see his cool swords!
They have two blades!
Next up on X-Force’s list of untimely deaths was the Vanisher.
He was one of the X-Men’s earliest comic book villains, but when he showed up (or didn’t)
in Deadpool 2, no one was really sure if Telford Porter, the teleporting mutant with what might
be the worst name in comics history, actually existed.
Eventually, though, it turned out that he was a full-fledged member of the team, and
moviegoers got a glimpse at just who was behind his less-than-visible presence..
“Maybe the wind can’t blow what it can’t see.”
“REALLY!?”
In the comics, Zeitgeist is the leader of a reality-show celebrity version of X-Force…
for about five minutes.
He actually dies in the same issue where he makes his first appearance, along with most
of his team, so if nothing else, Deadpool 2 has that bit of true-to-canon accuracy going
for it.
Also accurate: his extremely gross super-power of barfing acid.
The bad news well, worse news is that we only get to see that power when Zeitgeist winds
up in a woodchipper.
The powerless Peter tries to save his new teammate, only to get his arm… um acided?
off by Zeitgeist’s vomit.
And die himself.
That’s gross enough to make you long for helicopter blades or a speeding bus, but at
least Peter was saved by Deadpool’s time-hopping mini-adventure at the end.
When Deadpool uses Cable's time machine to undo Vanessa and Peter's deaths in the mid-credits
sequence of Deadpool 2, he also uses it to correct some more notorious mistakes.
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is often considered a low point for Deadpool fans, mostly because
it turned the famously talkative Wade Wilson into into a mouthless, murderous Mortal Kombat
ripoff.
As much as you may hate that movie, Ryan Reynolds has shown us that he probably hates it more,
parodying that movie’s action in Deadpool 2 with some flashy but completely ineffective
sword action.
"Whoo, those bullets are like, super fast."
That still wasn’t enough, though, so once he gets his hands on some time travel, Deadpool’s
first priority is to head back to 2009 to fire bullet after bullet into his previous
incarnation.
While most of Ant-Man and the Wasp takes place before the events of Avengers: Infinity War,
the post-credits scenes caught up to the Avengers' ill-fated battle with Thanos.
In those, we learned that the original Ant-Man and both women who went by the codename Wasp
were victims of Thanos' infamous "snap,” leaving only their dust blowing in the breeze.
Before they set their sights on Shatter, the anti-mutant hate-group called the Purifiers
were bad, but hadn’t gone as far as murder.
Then, in the 19th episode of the series, that line is crossed.
It started when disgraced Sentinel Agent Jace Turner joined the Purifiers.
He seemed intent on changing their method, but after finding the location of the Mutant
Underground’s base, he led an attack with lethal consequences.
Shatter volunteered to distract the Purifiers, and while most of their weapons couldn’t
penetrate his skin, Agent Turner brought heavier ordinance.
Clearly conflicted but ultimately resolved to his course, Turner unloaded a machine gun
at Shatter, killing him.
"Elseworlds" the 2018 crossover that ran through the majority of the CW's Arrowverse series
was highly anticipated for its live-action debut of Ruby Rose as Batwoman, the role reversals
of Barry Allen and Oliver Queen, and Superman's black suit.
"I decide who’s story ends.”
“ … I like you better in blue"
The episodes immediately preceding the crossover
for each respective participating series ended with the same brief scene of destruction:
the lifeless bodies of superheroes scattered around a war-torn landscape.
Most of the corpses' faces were hidden, but judging by the costumes, the dead heroes from
Earth-90 included the Ray, Hawkman, Hawkgirl, Firestorm, Huntress, Captain Cold, and Stargirl.
The only survivor of Earth-90's heroes was the Flash, who flees his world before the
Monitor can destroy it.
We don't know if the older Flash survived the crossover.
After he contacts the heroes of Earth-1, the Earth-90 Flash fights beside them when they
launch a brief and futile attack on the Monitor.
With just a motion of the Monitor's hand, Earth-90 Flash disappears in a cloud of smoke
and never reappears.
Monitor uses similar powers on other heroes without killing them, but since Earth-90 no
longer exists it's unclear where Monitor sent the older Flash.
"Go find someone else to prank, douchebag"
Probably the most blatant way the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse differed
from the comic book event that inspired it is the film doesn't have much of a body count.
Marvel's Spider-Verse crossover didn't just introduce loads of alternate reality versions
of Spider-Man it killed a whole bunch of them, too.
Obviously Into the Spider-Verse wanted a family-friendly appeal that would be spoiled by the brutal
murders of dozens of spider-themed heroes, but there was one victim among its spiders.
Peter Parker is dispatched by the Kingpin early in the film.
Miles Morales and the other Spider heroes rally at the home of Peter's Aunt May, where
we learn the late Parker kept his own "Spider-Cave" below May's backyard shed.
Parker's death partly mirrored the character's fate in the now-defunct Ultimate line of Marvel's
comics.
The Ultimate version of Peter Parker died while fighting the Green Goblin and was replaced
by the new Spider-Man, Miles Morales.
"Thwip and release" "Thwip and release"
"Thwip and release" "You're a natural"
"Thwip and release" “Feel the rhythm?”