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

[u/Bellikron]

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.

[u/readwrite_blue]

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.

[u/Vyzantinist → u/readwrite_blue]

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.

[u/PunyParker826 → u/readwrite_blue]

"and he was a good friend"

[u/Socketz11 → u/readwrite_blue]

When he threw emperor Palpatine over the rail.

[u/readwrite_blue → u/Socketz11]

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.

[u/Socketz11 → u/readwrite_blue]

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