The best villains are the ones that you empathize with.
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Some of the most notable villains have actually been former heroes, and whether the breaking point is personal or otherwordly, seeing your favorite heroes fall and turn on their friends and the citizens they’ve so loyally protected all these years tends to resonate with fans.
The best turns are ones that you don’t expect or see coming, and we’ve listed some of our favorite Marvel heel turns in the company’s history.
Daredevil
Villainous turns often start with good intentions, and that was at the heart of Matt Murdock’s decision to use the warriors of The Hand for good in the Shadowland story arc.
Daredevil thought he could control, but in the end, it was he who was being controlled.
Daredevil’s metamorphosis into a true heel was rather gradual, but once he fully gave in, he was far from Hell’s Kitchen’s protector, and in fact battled against close friends like Luke Cage, Iron Fist, Spider-Man, and Ghost Rider.
The true turning point was when after all the history between them, Murdock finally had enough and killed his long-time nemesis Bullseye in cold blood.
Of course, there was an evil spirit at play, but Matt is the one that opened the door for it to happen in the first place.
Captain America
This is a bit more recent, but the nevertheless, no one saw it coming.
There are few heroes more revered than Captain America, so when he uttered those two now famous words at the end of Steve Rogers: Captain America #1, Hail Hydra”, he threw marvel fans into a tizzy.
Some turn heel by putting people’s heads through glass, or hitting their friends in the back with a chair, but Rogers one-upped all of them when he tossed Jack Flag out of a plane above the city. If that wasn’t enough, he’s been building up quite a body count since he pledged allegiance to Hydra, even taking an arm and a leg from Red Ghost and brutally massacring his primate children.
It’s a side of Captain America that few have ever seen, and even fewer will want to see again.
Scarlet Witch
One of the biggest surprise heel turns of all time came courtesy of the Scarlet Witch, and she left the mighty Avengers in complete shambles as a result.
The Scarlet Witch to this day still doesn’t know the true extent of her powers, and when you put that sort of power in the hands of someone who at times isn’t all there, well, you get Avengers Disassembled. The Brian Michael Bendis penned event revealed that Scarlet, real name Wanda Maximoff, had succumbed to a mental breakdown due to an overwhelming surge of power, which can be credited to Doctor Doom.
This instability resulted in her wreaking havoc amongst the Avengers, which included bringing back Jack of Hearts from the dead, running a quinjet into the Avengers Mansion, creating a Kree invasion that would take the life of longtime Avenger Hawkeye, and hitting the team with a swarm of Ultron’s.
It was one of the darkest days in Avengers history, and it came from one of their own.
The Hulk
If someone put you on a ship against your will and sent you off into exile, you’d be pretty upset, but the Illuminati didn’t just send The Hulk to Nevada or Kansas City, they sent him to another planet entirely.
That would make anyone mad, and Bruce Banner certainly was. The thing is, that isn’t what set off his vengeful wrath. Banner had managed to carve a life for himself on Sakaar, and even had a devoted group of allies around him named the Warbound. He had also married the warrior Caiera, and they were about to have a baby. This is when things derail, as the ship the Illuminati sent him away in exploded, and took the lives of Caiera and her child.
Hulk lost it, and it’s hard to necessarily blame him. He took his followers and set out for earth to take on the heroes that took his family from him.
In addition to leaving a trail of destruction in the wake of his ultimate goal, Hulk mercilessly beat down his former friends and caged them in a prison with power negating collars. If that wasn’t enough, he then built a gladiatorial arena for them to compete in, so that the world could see their heroes brought to their knees. It was the heroic efforts of The Sentry and Rick Jones that would ultimately bring him down, but he certainly left a long lasting impression.
Jean Grey / The Phoeinx
There are few names that inspire more simultaneous feelings of hope and dread than the Phoenix, a powerful entity that is capable of rebirth and devastation.
The entity is also responsible for one of the biggest heel turns of all time, as the X-Men’s relative telepath Jean Grey was granted the power of the Phoenix, only to have it overwhelm her thanks to the meddling of The Hellfire Club.
She then embraced the massive influence of power, and afterward went by the title of Dark Phoenix. Jean had lost all control and threatened not only the X-Men (which she took down with ease numerous times) but also the entire universe. When your plan to stop her involves possibly “blowing up the entire solar system”, you’ve achieved full heel status.
Ultimately it was Jean who sacrificed herself to stop the Phoenix force, but the lives of her fellow X-Men were forever changed.
