Top 10 MCU Heroes That Have Also Been Villains
#10: Hawkeye
Top 10 Things to Remember Before Seeing Hawkeye
Before you judge Hawkeye, you should know how he became a renegade. He grew up as an orphan raised by sketchy circus criminals with medieval weapons. Hawkeye also allied with the Black Widow back when she was a villain and bad influence. By some miracle, he didn’t stay on the wrong side of the law for life. Since his remarkable ability to shoot a bow and arrow really well didn’t exactly make him a prime candidate for business school, he decided to fight crime. Hawkeye fortunately decided to change his ways when the Avengers were kind of going through a phase of recruiting former criminals. It didn’t take long before the archer had fully turned into a hero.
#9: Quicksilver
The Flash VS. Quicksilver
Today, this speedy hero is best known for doing super slow-mo sight gags set to classic rock hits. But Quicksilver was originally introduced as both a member of his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants and Magneto’s son. It didn't help matters that he and his sister spent a part of their young lives getting chased by angry townfolk like they were a pair of Frankenstein’s monsters. So, before he was an arrogant superhero, Pietro Maximoff was… well, an equally arrogant X-Men villain. The arrogance part didn’t really change. Fortunately, Iron Man and the rest of the Avengers didn’t mind Quicksilver’s personality or backstory. The speedster and his sister got a second chance to be good when they were asked to join the heroic team.
#8: Vision
While circus criminals and evil mutants are definitely bad guardians, they pale in comparison to bloodthirsty robots. As seen in “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, the comic book Vision was created by the wicked android Ultron to destroy the Avengers. Vision was also brainwashed to fight the heroes without question. But during an intense battle, he came to his senses and decided he wanted to take down Ultron. Since the Avengers were still in their “picking up stray former villains” phase, they let him into the team just one issue later. They honestly seemed a little quick to trust a robot designed to take them out. Fortunately, it worked out and he’s been a staple of the Avengers ever since.
#7: Black Widow
Top 10 Black Widow Victories
We don’t know how to tell you this, but it turns out the expert spy Black Widow… originally met the Avengers while she was a double agent. Okay, maybe that’s not so shocking after watching her MCU journey. But Natasha Romanov’s journey to becoming a heroine originally took longer than it did in the movies. While she was recruited by Hakweye in the MCU after completing one dark mission, her comic counterpart clashed with the Avengers several times. Black Widow finally turned a corner when she used her sinister skills to defeat a supervillain named Ixar. After this huge victory, it still took a while for her to shake her red room training and be accepted as an Avenger. But we’re glad she became one.
#6: The Winter Soldier
Top 10 Movie Villains Who Killed The Heroes' Parents
Bucky Barnes was Captain America’s sidekick in World War 2 until he ended up frozen in ice just like Cap. Unfortunately, instead of SHIELD or the Avengers digging him out of the ice, Soviet scientists found him. They immediately began executing a plan to turn Bucky into their personal Winter Soldier. He served them loyally right up until he ran into Captain America and had his memories restored and was freed from his mental conditioning. Since then, the Winter Soldier has been a bit of a sketchy antihero in the Marvel Universe. He uses a few more guns and tends to employ darker methods than your average superhero. But at least he’s using his deadly skills to take out bad guys now.
#5: Iron Man
Top 10 Iron Man Villains
Everyone’s favourite billionaire playboy philanthropist has shown more than a few warning signs that he could be evil. He’s narcissistic, runs a weapons company and built a global network of privately owned drones that could become assassins at any moment. But Stark was mostly a good guy until his evil qualities surfaced at once due to a powerful spell. During his biggest scheme, he built an app that cured ailments and made people look like supermodels for free. But the app got expensive quickly. And if holding people’s health for ransom wasn’t cruel enough, he gave Daredevil sight again...before taking his vision away. Tony really got inventive in the worst ways when he turned to the dark side.
#4: Hulk
Top 10 She-Hulk Trailer Questions And Answers
Hulk has been everything from a smart and gentle giant to his allies to an unstoppable rage-filled berserker. While he’s usually more misunderstood than anything, there are exceptions where he was blatantly bad. The Hulk once had an identity as a rough enforcer known as Joe Fixit. There was also a storyline where he was forcefully shipped off Earth and came back so mad that he nearly wrecked the earth. But if those incidents don’t sound evil enough, there’s a terrifying future version of the Hulk. This giant grew a beard, got smart, became the sole ruler of Earth and started calling himself Maestro. If you think you wouldn’t like Hulk when he’s angry, wait until you see him when he’s smart and evil.
#3: Captain America
Top 10 Greatest Captain America MCU Moments
Everyone was shook when Cap first said (insert broll for Hail hydra here). But how did the relatively clean cut hero possibly become a member of Hydra? Well, it wasn’t an easy process. The Red Skull had to use a cosmic cube to rewrite Cap’s entire history. In this new backstory, Rogers had been a secret Hydra sleeper agent since before he even got his powers. Captain Hydra worked behind the scenes to undermine the Avengers and take over the country. He was eventually stopped by… Captain America. The Cosmic Cube that turned the hero evil brought the original Cap back to duke it out with Captain Hydra in an ultimate fight between freedom and tyranny. When the dust settled, the good Cap emerged victorious.
#2: Spider-Man
Top 10 Best Spider-Man Anti-Heroes
In this interesting case, Spider-Man wasn’t really the villain. It’s more accurate to say that a villain was Spider-Man. Sound confusing? Well, it gets weirder. When Doctor Octopus discovered he was dying, he built a device that let him secretly switch minds with Spider-Man. After taking over Spidey’s body and life, the villain planned to use his powers for evil. But Doc changed because he got Peter’s memories and a drive to do the right thing. The villain vowed to honour Peter’s memory by being an even better Spider-Man than he was. He had... mixed success. Sure, he invented some cool gadgets and caught some crooks. But he was a huge jerk the entire time.
#1: Scarlet Witch
Top 10 Notes: The Scarlet Letter
If you were going to guess which of the Maximoff twins would go bad again after joining the Avengers, you’d probably pick the rebellious Quicksilver instead of his more upstanding sister. But it turns out Wanda had an insanely dark side. After Wanda loses control of her powers during a battle, several Avengers like Ant-Man and Vision lose their lives. She tries to fix things by altering reality so that the majority of the world consists of mutants. When the plan fell apart, depowered most of the world’s mutants in one go. This horrifying display of power had huge fallout and cost many people to lose their lives. No one looked at the Scarlet Witch the same way after she showed her full villainous potential.
