Marvel has done something pretty amazing with the superhero movie format.
They've managed to make audiences really care about the deaths of their favorite characters,
even when they don't stay dead for too long in superhero stories.
Here are the saddest Marvel movie deaths.
Prior to Infinity War, Marvel didn't exactly do a whole lot to get people invested in the
relationship between Vision and Scarlet Witch.
Maybe that's because if they had, the tragedy would've been just too much to handle.
But the fact that she did love him is what makes those final, awful moments of their
battle with Thanos so utterly devastating.
As she wrestles with the knowledge that she's going to have to destroy the Mind Stone, he
reassures her about what she has to do.
"It's not fair.
It shouldn't be you, but it is.
It's all right.
You could never hurt me."
And with that, Scarlet Witch fires up her destructive powers and uses them to shatter
the Mind Stone.
This kills Vision partly because of science-based reasons explained in the movie but mainly
because the Mind Stone is embedded in his forehead.
And then, just as viewers are reeling from the awfulness of what Scarlet Witch has had
to do, Thanos brings Vision back to life just long enough to pluck the Mind Stone out of
his head, thus mercilessly killing him a second time while Scarlet Witch looks on.
Gamora is so many different kinds of cool, and not just because she's two very bright
complementary colors.
She's smart, she's badass, and she loves dorky Peter Quill.
No one wanted to see her die, not even the guy who killed her.
What makes her demise so hard to watch is the fact that she doesn't see it coming.
She believes Thanos was incapable of feeling love and that he would never be able to obtain
the Soul Stone because he had no one to sacrifice for it.
So poor Gamora first realizes that her father truly loves her at the same time as she realizes
what that means: that he's going to kill her and as a result gain the power to wipe out
half the universe.
She desperately tries to take her own life, but Thanos is way too clever to let that happen,
and the knife she tries to stab herself with becomes completely useless as it turns into
a bunch of bubbles.
And then Thanos declares, in a voice that sounds genuinely distressed:
"I'm sorry, little one."
And then he unceremoniously throws her off a cliff while tears stream down his face.
In Avengers: Endgame, we lose Black Widow in pretty much exactly the same way as we
lose Gamora in Infinity War, only this time the sacrificer is not so eager to do the deed.
Black Widow dies after a struggle with Hawkeye because she's decided that as a father and
husband, his life is more important than hers, or at least it will be if the Avengers are
successful at bringing everyone back from the dust.
So by now, audiences are used to Red Skull and the whole "soul for a soul" thing he likes
to go on about.
But in Infinity War, what he said first was:
"In order to take the stone, you must lose that which you love."
With that in mind, it's too bad one of Hawkeye's powers doesn't involve his bow having a personality
and a soul because he definitely loves that thing.
If you sat through the biggest sacrifice in Endgame without actively preventing yourself
from sobbing audibly and uncontrollably, then you may actually be a life model decoy.
Of all the Marvel movie deaths, none could ever be as devastating as Iron Man's.
He implements the finger-snap of doom so that he can take out Thanos and his time-traveling
army, but he also suffers the horrible, horrible consequences of that action.
Meanwhile, he leaves viewers devastated but also relieved and triumphant as Thanos disintegrates
into a cloud of his own comeuppance.
And somehow, you also kind of feel sorry for Thanos in that moment.
It's worth nothing that superhero stories generally aren't exactly known for the concept
of finality with death, so there are people saying that Iron Man will one day return.
That kind of feels like wishful thinking, though.
In this case at least, Iron Man, or at least the Robert Downey Jr. version of him, should
really stay deceased.
Anything else would be an insult to everything he sacrificed and a cheapening of that unforgettable
moment.
In the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie, Yondu wasn't especially likeable.
He was constantly telling Peter Quill he ought to be grateful for not being eaten by Yondu's
crew back when he was a kid growing up with space pirates.
But even then there were clues about how Yondu really felt.
Peter was like a son to him, even though he had to maintain his pirate persona while also
trying to be a father figure.
Yondu makes up for all his bad behavior at the end of Guardians Volume 2, when he rescues
Peter from the exploding planet that's also Peter's hippie-god-father Ego.
"He may have been your father, boy, but he wasn't your daddy."
So Yondu has to get Peter back to his ship, but alas, there's only one spacesuit between
the two of them.
"I'm sorry I didn't do none of it right.
I'm damned lucky you're my boy."
As the pair leave the atmosphere, Yondu slowly dies in the vacuum of space while Peter screams
and Yondu pats his cheek comfortingly.
It's just like he might've done when Peter was a boy except for the part where he had
to maintain his pirate facade.
Every single one of Infinity War's deaths by finger-snap is devastating.
Some of them are more so than others, so we'll give you a moment to sob uncontrollably as
you remember them all.
But the death everyone can't get out of their heads is, of course, Spider-Man's.
His final words are undeniably haunting.
"I don't want to go, I don't want to go, Mr. Stark, please!
I'm sorry."
After that awful plea, he basically just disintegrates in Tony Stark's arms, which is even more upsetting.
Peter Parker's passing is one of trillions across the universe.
But it's arguably the most important because in Endgame it's Stark's regret over this loss
that prompts him to leave his comfortable home life and try to undo Thanos' terrible
act.
Here's another one of Marvel's truly amazing accomplishments: creating a beloved character
who can say only three words.
Or five words if you count the line just before his epic death in Guardians of the Galaxy.
The Guardians' ship is plummeting toward certain death when Groot starts to do something magical.
He turns into a huge mass of leafy vines and forms a sphere around all of his friends.
Only Rocket seems to know what this means for him, and he begs Groot not to make the
sacrifice.
When Groot refuses, Rocket asks him why and Groot says,
"We are Groot."
And then the ship crashes and Groot becomes a pile of dry branches, everyone is saved,
and the audience is freshly upset at Marvel for killing one of their favorite characters.
This death would've been even more tragic except for Baby Groot, who contrary to popular
belief is not the reincarnated form of original Groot, but rather his offspring.
That fact was disappointing for a lot of fans, but an adorable miniature version of a beloved
character is enough to help soften the blow at least a little bit.
The Ancient One doesn't exactly go out of her way to be likeable.
That's not her purpose, after all, so why should she bother?
Still, her death is a terrible loss not just for Doctor Strange, who's still trying to
figure out all the things he can do, but for the safety and security of the entire universe.
And it's heartbreaking, too, because she knows exactly when it's going to happen, and how.
As she and Strange are standing together in astral form just outside the hospital room
where her body is dying, she explains her predicament.
She's spent so much time looking at this moment, and yet she still can't get past it.
"Look at me.
Stretching one moment out into a thousand, just so that I can watch the snow."
Even if you aren't the Ancient One's top fan, that's got to get to you, at least a little.
Agent Phil Coulson is so likable because he has the aura of an everyman but the soul of
a badass.
In The Avengers, he threatens Loki with the world's manliest weapon, which is so gigantic
it doesn't look like he should be able to lift it, let alone point it at anyone.
But then Loki suddenly appears behind him and stabs him in the back.
Coulson gets the last word, though, taunting Loki from where he's fallen with the world's
manliest weapon still in his lap.
Loki starts to get mad because that's what villains do when you criticize their character,
and then Coulson fires the world's manliest weapon and Loki goes flying.
"So that's what it does."
But Coulson's still not dead.
He doesn't shuffle off this mortal coil completely until Nick Fury tells him that shuffling off
this mortal coil is not an option.
But then it turns out that he's still not dead because Marvel and Disney literally designed
an entire TV show around the plot twist that technology was able to resurrect him.
However you feel about that little cop-out, though, his death in Avengers remains quite
awful.
Long, long ago, Scarlet Witch had a brother and also a noticeable accent.
First she lost one of them, and then the other.
The first loss was a little more tragic than the second one.
That brother was Quicksilver, who sacrifices himself in Age of Ultron in order to save
Hawkeye and a little boy.
It's a heartbreaking gesture, since Ultron is the movie in which Quicksilver makes both
his debut and his exit.
But as producer Kevin Feige explained to MTV, his death was a necessary plot point, mostly
because it helped Scarlet Witch's character arc.
Also, he got to utter some pretty great last words just before his bullet-riddled body
fell to the ground:
"You didn't see that coming."
What really makes Quicksilver's death hard to take is Scarlet Witch's reaction to it.
As he dies, she senses the loss and falls to her knees, howling with grief, while also
taking out every bad guy in the room without actually trying.
And in that moment, she becomes pretty much everyone's favorite Avenger.
We all know what happens to rich orphans.
They turn into reclusive genius billionaires who get raised by their butlers and become
high-tech superheroes.
In one comic universe, that billionaire superhero has a secret crime-fighting identity but otherwise
spends all his time in a private cave.
In the other, the billionaire superhero has no secret identity at all and is sort of well-adjusted,
at least relatively speaking.
The death of Tony Stark's parents is especially sad because Howard and Maria Stark are so
helpless against their killer, who turns out to be Captain America's brainwashed friend
Bucky Barnes.
Howard even recognizes his killer just before he gets his head bashed in by Bucky's robot
arm.
Bucky drags his lifeless body back to the driver's seat and then quickly dispatches
Maria by choking her to death.
Fans hate this awful scene because it's, well, awful, but also because of what it does to
Stark.
Tony finds out years later that his parents' death wasn't a tragic car accident but a murder,
thus making him kind of hate Cap for keeping it a secret.
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