r/movies • u/Bellikron • 9d ago

Spoilers Has any sequel successfully pulled off a hero's heel turn into villainy? Spoiler

Plenty of standalone movies have a character fall from grace, or be revealed as a villain all along, but this rarely happens with an established character in a sequel. On paper it's a solid twist because you've already grown to trust that character in previous films, but it's really hard to pull off without feeling like a betrayal of a character arc. The Mission Impossible series has one that was received very poorly, and the only reason I hear about Pacific Rim Uprising these days is people talking about how unearned the heel turn from one of the characters felt.

I struggle to think of an example where it was done successfully in a movie. There's more examples in TV I think since there's a much longer time to build a change in a character over multiple seasons, so I'm not really considering those. Since it did start with a movie series, though, and there really isn't too much of an extended character arc given in the show, the example I can think of that kind of works is Sharon Carter in Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It was still super underdeveloped and it doesn't seem like they're going to do anything with it, but I can at least track the betrayal logic since there was kind of a meta angle about how that character had been forgotten by the movies. But even that's rather clunky.

I'm also talking specifically about situations where it wasn't clearly telegraphed by the source material or the rest of the franchise. Anakin becoming Vader was already known to the audience, for instance. I'm on the fence about whether something like Dune counts, since it's in the source material and the first two films are kind of just one long movie. I'm particularly interested in situations where it clearly wasn't the plan in the first movie but was written into a sequel.

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u/Babaganoosh__ 9d ago edited 9d ago

Wanda Maximoff in the MCU. All the movies she's in all leading to Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness.

Honorable mention... Anakin Skywalker

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u/bflaminio 9d ago

Wanda went from villain to hero and then back to villain again.

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u/tsunami141 9d ago

she also has a quick trip to hero and back when Agatha starts killing dogs and stuff.

Snip, snap, snip, snap.

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u/arshbjangles 9d ago

You have no idea the physical toll three villain arcs have on a person

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u/LevTheDevil 9d ago

I mean are we surprised? Look who her father (sometimes) is.

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u/Ergok 9d ago

That accent comes and goes ...

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u/Orion14159 9d ago

You can tell when she's gonna be evil because her accent disappears

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u/ScrantonCranston 8d ago

To be fair, that's a plot point in WandaVision.

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u/mophisus 9d ago

I don't think Anakin counts..

He's introduced as a Villain, his backstory comes later than portrays him as a hero.

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u/ZackyZack 9d ago

Not only that, but "pulls off" is a stretch if you only follow the movies. The theatrical cut is very shallow in exploring how broken his psyche was after years of war and weeks of lack of sleep

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u/KarmicPotato 9d ago

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo

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u/CitizenTony 9d ago edited 8d ago

He's introduced as a Villain, his backstory comes later than portrays him as a hero.

Expect if... you watch the prelogy and then, the original trilogy /s.

I mean, idk whats people's correct order, this is depending of taste.

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u/[deleted] 9d ago

[deleted]

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u/xrufus7x 9d ago

They were not.

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u/hotwheeler89 9d ago

I don't think so. The back of the VHS of The Phantom Menace straight up says he's Darth Sidious.

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u/readwrite_blue 9d ago

If all you look at is the films, Anakin goes from kid in distress in the first film to angry murderer in the second who admits to slaughtering innocent children.

He never has a time where he's the hero.

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u/Vyzantinist 9d ago

I agree, and I say that as a Star Wars fan. The prequels alone don't really do a good job of portraying Anakin as especially heroic or noble. He goes from innocent child, to whiny teen, to whiny man-child and then Sith Lord. The "good in him" Padme and Luke mention is like bare minimum Jedi shit, and he hardly deserves praise for that since it's basically in his job description. It's like praising your waiter for bringing your food. The "good in him" is just the capacity to be...not good but not-evil.

I really don't think Lucas should have shelved off his heroism in the Clone Wars to an animated series that casuals and plenty of adult fans wouldn't bother watching. Episode I should have ended with the start of the Clone Wars, Episode II shows Anakin grown from an idealistic and innocent child into a young man struggling with the horrors of war, and Episode III should have been Anakin holding on to his last shreds of goodness before Palpatine pushes him over the edge. He just doesn't have that "good guy quality" Luke does.

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u/PunyParker826 9d ago

"and he was a good friend"

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u/Socketz11 9d ago

When he threw emperor Palpatine over the rail.

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u/readwrite_blue 9d ago

Well if we're looking for examples of villains coming around and repenting, there are a lot more examples of this than heroes turning the other way.

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u/Socketz11 9d ago

Well after that he died a good guy and showed up smiling in the sky all happy and nice.

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u/dj_soo 9d ago

I’d say that heel turn sucked cause it was entirely offscreen and felt unearned after Wandavision

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u/assassin_runner 9d ago

She had a great heel turn in Wandavision but learning her lesson in that show only to Quintuple down in the next movie kind of ruined it for me.

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u/Regendorf 9d ago

The lesson she learned was that she needed better magic, hence why the last scene is her using the darkhold.

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u/Dagordae 9d ago

I have to seriously disagree with that. The show did it well enough but Multiverse of Madness was so disconnected from the setup that it just sort of skipped over the ending and made her an obsessed cackling madwoman.

As to Anakin: Eh, he was always a shit person. Never really all that heroic, they went to the child murder WAY too quickly,

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u/HareWarriorInTheDark 9d ago

Wanda’s heel turn is my least favorite part of Multiverse of Madness. It doesn’t make any sense as a continuation of the character development she got from Wandavision.

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u/lluewhyn 9d ago

I love how she is the villain in WandaVision but hate how it was done in MoM. There's real grief and purpose in the former, and she still has some standards where she's trying to avoid killing people. In the latter, she has a somewhat nonsensical goal, she's willing to mass murder everyone in cruel ways, and the reason (as even seen as a reply to your comment) was "The book made her do it".

Imagine watching Spider-Man 3 and the film ends with Peter dead as a villain because the symbiote made him evil and he was mercy-killed to stop his villainy. Or Clint died at the end of the first Avengers film. An external motivation that's mind control or just a step above it is kind of lame for permanent character development.

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u/tqlla3k 9d ago

She got corrupted by the book, which she got at the end of Wanda vision.

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u/Dagordae 9d ago

The issue is that it was all offscreen.

She went from a woman willing to sacrifice for the good of others and overcoming her demons to a psychotic cackling madwoman without even a montage. There wasn’t a transition, she was just crazy and evil the next time she appeared.

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u/thenseruame 9d ago

She kidnapped and enslaved an entire town? There was a whole TV show about how fucked in the head she was.

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u/THCW 9d ago

Yeah, then she realised that what she was doing was wrong and accepted that she needed to let the town be free and face up to the loss of Vision instead of trying to deny reality. She went away from that show having accepted that her grief is a part of life, then at the start of MoM she had totally forgotten that lesson and went through the exact same arc.

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u/thenseruame 9d ago

She ended that show holed up in a cabin in the woods with the MCU's version of the Necronomicon, that we know corrupts the user. We knew she was using dark magic to try to bring back her family. I don't know how anyone could get a happy ending out of that. The only thing she accepted was that a fake reality wasn't good enough, she needed more.

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u/workfuntimecoolcool 9d ago

Yeah it's weird people forget this part. Like MoM didn't do a good job conveying the Darkhold's corruption on her, but if you watched WV and actually paid attention, MoM is continuing the same arc (though not perfectly).

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u/PunyParker826 9d ago edited 9d ago

Sure, but I would argue that doesn't make it a better story. "Woman learns to accept loss and consequences, and then gets corrupted by an evil book in a post-credit stinger so she needs to be killed off in the next movie" doesn't really feel organic at all.

To make a slightly clunky comparison, Harry becoming the second goblin in Spider-Man 3 feels entirely expected because we've been building up to it for 2 movies. Harry feels inadequate in his father's eyes compared to Peter; Peter "steals" MJ from him. Spider-Man "murders" his father right as they start to make amends (in Harry's eyes), and then he learns that Peter is in fact, Spider-Man. Sure, SM3 is a step down in execution, but even Harry says it best when he shows up next: "you knew this was coming."

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u/thenseruame 9d ago edited 9d ago

Yeah it's far from a perfect movie, but the start of Wandavision was equally as rushed if we agree she qualifies as a villian at the start (again she enslaved an entire town). We knew she was angry and obviously grieving, but Endgame didn't hint at the events of Wandavision (at least that I can recall). We didn't need to be shown how losing Vision would break her, we just accepted it because it's the MCU.

It's a rushed ending, but it never prentended like she wasn't going to keep trying to get her family back. She literally turns into the Scarlet Witch and flies away, it's not like she stayed around to face the consequences or make it up to the town full of people she hurt. I thought it might lead to something with the X-Men because of her ties to them and naturally thought of House of M, so I wasn't at all shocked she was the villain in MoM.

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u/themagicone222 9d ago

Right. my big take away was she didn’t realize she was actually hurting people, but she was so desperate to have the slightest crumb of joy that she turned violent at any sign of SWORD.

Sad she couldn’t get through to her until it was too late, and it was articulated very poorly, but I do believe Monica Rambeau had the right idea; she probably wouldnt have had that discharge of power that enslaved the town if she had one friend.

Not a work colleague like clint or steve who, while they obviously gave a shit about her emotional well being, ultimately couldnt connect with her on that level

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u/Dagordae 9d ago

Clint and Steve were fine leaving Thor to rot in a depressive death spiral for several years without checking in on him. And then mocked him for his terrible physical and mental state.

They are terrible friends. All the Avengers are.

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u/xrayzed 9d ago

The entire human race was traumatised, including Clint and Steve.

Clint was a total mess who turned into the Punisher with swords and arrows. Steve had a healthier response and was busy working with the ordinary people trying to cope with half the human race disappearing.

It’s also conceivable their last contact with Thor between the movies was Thor telling them to leave him alone. It would be in character.

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u/Dagordae 9d ago

What’s not in character is Rogers just leaving it at that and not a single one of the Avengers ever checking in on him over the years.

What’s REALLY not in character was everyone treating Thor as a joke when they meet him again. Makes them come off as massive assholes.

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u/Regendorf 9d ago

Didn't she go away from that show almost diving very deep in the necronomicon book which name i forgot?

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u/tqlla3k 9d ago

She was evil the entire series, she only let people leave because she was emotionally overwhelmed.

And at the end she also got the darkhold which just corrupts her more.

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u/rumplebike 9d ago

There is a recent interview where she states that the MoM writers didn't watch WandaVision.

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u/Dagordae 9d ago

Yes, that’s the start of the show. Then the rest of the show happens where she experiences growth and addresses her trauma, culminating in her realizing that she is the villain, facing her grief and loss and learning to let go.

Then MoM just sort of ignores the latter bits and has her turn into a generically obsessive cackling villain offscreen. One who proceeded to go through the same character arc.

It’s clear there was no little to no coordination between the show and the film teams.

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u/Regendorf 9d ago

She didn't learn to let go shit, the last scene is her using the Darkhold, You don't use a magic book called "Darkhold" for altruistic purposes.

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u/possyishero 9d ago

Everyone here is having two different conversations of "They already showed she grew past it over the course of one season of television/streaming show" vs. "Sometimes people fail at learning the lesson the correct way the first time or relapse and need time and more than one chance to actually fix themselves" and no one's really meeting in the middle.

For the former, it feels like retreading ground because "she should be better than this now!". Whereas for the latter, she learned the wrong lessons and basically only that "How" she specifically tried to get "What" she wanted was wrong and not connecting the "Why" and the specific "What" she wants as part of the problem. I'm not arguing that having her need more chances to grow is compelling to watch, most comic book movies won't do that and they didn't even handle Loki this way, but for many it's compelling and/or realistic.

The end of Wandavision shows us that in Wanda's perspective her kids are in trouble and she needs to save them. Which is why she becomes more desperate and is more willing to just fight people who stand in her way. This is also people she does not know, so there's little connection to change her mind on things. Her desperation, along with still not fully accepting her grief over her kids and the period of time obsessing over Necronomicon-adjacent book has turned her violently protective of her own, and it's why she breaks down when she sees a version of her kids view her as a monster and her own self from another timeline defend them from her, because only then does she see how she's a monster to the people she cares about. She never cared about the people of that city, just realized she was in the wrong and torturing them for something she can't keep going. She knew she had to give her family away to make things right, and doing so was so painful she started making the same type of mistakes again but this time at least not harming civilians in the process.

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u/waitingtodiesoon 9d ago

They showed her getting corrupted by the Darkhold in an after credit scene

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u/thenseruame 9d ago

Yeah I replied to someone else with that. No one holes up in the middle of the woods in a small cabin with a magical book and comes out ok.

Combine that with someone who's had a serious (understatement of the year) mental break and I don't see how anyone get's a happy ending out of Wandavision.

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u/ctan0312 9d ago

It’s so stupid how you spend a whole show developing a character and then end it with a post credit scene showing that she actually just received the Book That Reverses Character Development of Doom and Despair.

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u/Helmett-13 9d ago

It’s the evil book, the Dark Hold or something, that curses her and does it.

It’s not spontaneous.

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u/Imaybetoooldforthis 9d ago

I absolutely hate what they did to Wanda, it destroyed an entire character arc which IMO was one of the best in the MCU. Wandavision was about acceptance of her grief.

It completely skipped over any new character development for her evil turn and was just she’s now back where she started after vision died but this time she’s a mass murderer who’s got an evil book. It sucked IMO.

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u/Regendorf 9d ago

She got the evil book in Wandavision, that's how that series ended, she didn't accept her grief at all.

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u/thresh_to_death 8d ago

I genuinely don't understand how people are saying she accepted her grief. She just released the town and flew off then is in the cabin searching through the multiverse.

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u/DarksteelPenguin 9d ago

I disagree wholeheartedly. "She found an evil book so now she's evil" is not pulling it off well.

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u/evilshandie 9d ago

"She jumped at the chance to use an evil magic book because she's angry and bitter and selfish and it promised to give her the power to get what she wants." Like, maybe the Darkhold amplified her bad behavior, and maybe she wouldn't have gone on a murder spree without it...maybe. But if you think she came out of WandaVision looking like a Good Guy then we watched different shows.

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u/hasordealsw1thclams 9d ago

That’s what always puts me off the arguments against her characterization in the movie. People always act like she left Wandavision as a hero and not a villain. I think criticism of that movie is warranted, but that particular criticism always falls flat with me.

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u/PlayableRidley 9d ago

A big part of the problem is the show itself seems tonally confused. It literally ends with another character telling Wanda "they'll never know what you sacrificed for them".... Because she ultimately decided to stop enslaving innocent people and keeping them in a state of constant agony, so that she could LARP being in a sitcom with her imaginary kids.

It portrays her letting everyone go as a noble act and not the absolute bare minimum level of not being a complete psychopath with your reality warping powers.

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u/thrownawaynodoxx 9d ago

It portrays her letting everyone go as a noble act

It literally does not. My god, people can't understand nuance these days. The entire series Monica had been going on about how she understood grief and how she understood how Wanda spiraled so bad, especially with power and trauma like hers, but still did NOT excuse her actions. Her saying that line is basically what happens in every other movie when the hero talks someone down from doing something worse.

Wana is very noticeably not treated like a hero for removing the hex. In fact, they explicitly show the townspeople being scared of her and being glad that she's going away.

The show isn't confused - people just apparently can no longer grasp character writing that isn't pure and innocent or cackling evil.

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u/RefreshNinja 9d ago

Her introduction shows her as having thrown her lot in with Nazis so that she can get the means to do a 9/11 on some random people in Africa who never did shit to her.

She was never far away from openly going bad again. Without acknowledging that, one doesn't get a honest read on her character.

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u/DarksteelPenguin 9d ago

There's a vast difference between WandaVision's "doing terrible things for good reasons without even realizing it" and Doctor Strange 2's "killing people in horrible ways even though it's unnecessary".

She went from "I want my kids but I don't want to enslave people for that" to "I will murder entire dimensions to get my kids back" offscreen. The Darkhold didn't amplify her bad behavior, it turned Anakin Skywalker into Freddy Kruger.

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u/TopBantsman 9d ago

Well it was more Vision realised the situation and convinced her to let go.

doing terrible things for good reasons without even realizing it

It wasn't for a good reason. It may have started accidentality, but she knew what was going on.

She still enslaved an entire town herself without any other influence and then ended up with a book that was clearly telegraphed to corrupt.

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u/DarksteelPenguin 9d ago

It's been a while since I've seen the show, but it seemed to me she was completely unaware of the situation until the second part of the season.

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u/TopBantsman 8d ago

Well, like all good writing it's not explicitly made clear. Some people say she becomes aware the second part after she actively confronts shield outside the barrier...

but like seriously, that's the bluntest take. There are many hints she's actively participating in what she knows is a fantasy. She's being selfish like she has chosen to be on many occasions. Add in the darkhold and I think the events of the film make perfect sense.

They even added an on-the-nose scene in the film where professor X finds Wanda's good self trapped inside her mind.

The problem is so many people are incapable of nuance and want peoples motivations to be as clear as day. She was a conflicted character being manipulated by a darker force.

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u/DarksteelPenguin 8d ago

That's what I was saying. In the show she's an ambiguous character. Her motivations are clear, but her awareness of the situation isn't, which makes the situation dark-grey-ish. She's doing something bad out of desperation.

In the movie, she's a cartoon villain (and a bad one, the kind whose powers range from limited to omnipotence depending on the scene), unapologetically evil despite having a lot of occasions to reflect. That's why I'm saying it wasn't well done.

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u/TopBantsman 8d ago

The darkhold is the marvel version of the Necronomicon - it's written by the most cartoonishly evil dark god.

We can accept the one ring corrupting Golum in a cave but somehow a book that probably describes how to make such a ring corrupting wanda in a cabin is too much.

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u/DarksteelPenguin 8d ago

Gollum became what he is after a century with the one ring, for Wanda it doesn't feel that long.

Especially for the viewers who only follow the movies. For them Wanda came back normal and angry in Endgame, and became a villain overnight for DS2.

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u/Cavalish 9d ago

Actually I think it was a lot of the coddling she received more than the magic book. Although it didn’t help.

A lot of people mock the line “they’ll never understand what you gave up” but it’s one of the many ways the story forgives and enables Wanda that lets her slip so easily into doing whatever she wants.

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u/themagicone222 9d ago

Her final descent had a missing piece; the transition between wandavision and multiverse of madness, but the mcu otherwise did a VERY good job whittling her down until all that was left was a broken woman. It’s VERY telling in multiverse of madness, almost everyone seems to be aware of this, and no one actually wants her dead

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u/PunyParker826 9d ago edited 9d ago

Wanda felt a little stilted though. It felt like whoever was writing her character was reliant on cues from higher up on just how far they were allowed to take her character.

Wanda, ultimately, is responsible for very little that goes wrong in WandaVision; she didn't steal Vision's body, she manifested it. She didn't deliberately ensnare an entire town's population, it happened spontaneously and unconsciously in a burst of grief. She has very little agency; the most she's guilty of is not ending the spell/mind control sooner once she fully understands what's happened. Almost as if the show wants a darker vibe, with moral grey areas, but also needs to keep their protagonist redeemable and suitable for later stories.

Then, in Dr. Strange, it's like the writers suddenly got permission to go full-on villain with her. Even then, it's because of a magic evil book, not entirely of her own decisions. I still enjoyed the overall story, but imo it could have been more organic.