Who Dies in X-Men: Apocalypse?

SPOILERS for X-Men: Apocalypse ahead… obviously.

You can’t have an Apocalypse without a death or two. X-Men: Apocalypse might not destroy the entire world, but there is definitely some life ending throughout.

Now, we’re not going to focus on all the side characters – the police who come to try to take Magneto away, the workers who turned Magneto in, the random people who were killed by Magneto’s whole “messing with Earth’s magnetic field” thing – man, Magneto causes a lot of death, doesn’t he?

The first major deaths in the film are… um… Magneto’s family. Dammit, Erik! After he’s outed by saving a coworker’s life, police come to him armed only with wooden weapons so he ostensibly can’t kill them. An arrow is loosed on accident, and manages, in one shot, to kill both his daughter and wife. Oops.

Of the X-Men, they only have one major casualty, Havok. Alex Summers, in the comics Scott’s younger brother but in the movie universe his older one, gets his best movie moment and worst movie moment in this film. He unleashes his full power, emitting energy from both hands and his chest all at once when they need to destroy Cerebro, as it’s threatening Charles’s life and you know, all of mankind. It’s an amazing moment, when he causes havoc (get it?) and shows just how powerful he is. Of course, he still had something left, too, when Apocalypse and his Horsemen showed up to take Charles away. Havok unleashes one more mighty blast, attempting to stop them – and they teleport away at that exact instant. His blast hits an experimental engine, causing an explosion that cascades through the entire mansion, but only killing one person, the one closest to the blast, Alex “Havok” Summers.

Archangel may have died, as well, crushed in battle, but it’s a little easier to write that one off and let him survive. After a couple of pretty great fight scenes, he was crushed, but that was post-Apocalypse’s manipulation and upgrading of him. With Apocalypse’s armored upgrades, and Angel’s healing factor in the comics, there’s a good chance he made it out of that seemingly devastating situation.

Finally, there’s Apocalypse himself. As Jean Grey released her full potential, we saw the Phoenix firebird burning bright, and she basically wiped Apocalypse from existence, vaporizing him. Apocalypse, interestingly, seemed happy about it. Of course, we know he’s absorbed the power of at least one mutant with the ability to heal, he can transfer his consciousness and powers into other mutants, and this is a comicbook movie. There’s every possibility Apocalypse could find a way to come back if they really want to use him again in a future film.

Any way you slice it, that’s a decent body count compared to, say, Civil War where somehow in all that carnage the only significant death was T’Chaka, king of Wakanda, but it’s also definitely lower than Deadpool, where he murders a lot of people (but not a ton of significant ones).