Dark MCU Moments That Didn't Come From The Comics

There are plenty of sacrificial moments throughout the MCU. Tony Stark willingly snaps Thanos and his minions away knowing he is going to perish in the act. Natasha Romanoff hurls herself off a cliff so Hawkeye can get his hands on the Soul Stone. Quicksilver throws himself in front of a storm of bullets to save Clint Barton and a young child from their certain demise. But these are all choices our heroes made to sacrifice themselves.

At the end of Infinity War, Wanda was essentially forced to do away with the man she loves to save the universe. She clearly doesn't want to do it as she pleads with Vision. And, after successfully destroying the Stone in her partner's head, Thanos just reverses time and kills him all over again anyway. Because Wanda is clearly not allowed to be happy in the MCU.

The emotional gut-punch at the end of Avengers: Infinity War was unlike anything the Marvel Cinematic Universe had done up to that point. And though pretty much everyone knew the heroes who turned to ash would come back - um, Spider-Man was never going away for good - it still proved to be an incredible way to end a movie. Thanos using the Infinity Gauntlet to snap away half of all life in the universe is ripped straight from the comics, but the nature of said snap is much more harrowing in the movie.

During The Infinity Gauntlet, Thanos clicks his fingers much as he does in Infinity War and half of all life goes away. That's it, though... they just disappear from existence. Their friends don't have to watch them wither away before their eyes. There certainly is nothing as devastating as Peter Parker feeling it coming on, pleading with Tony Stark beforehand. Iron Man literally wipes the ash of Spider-Man's former body from his hands.

The acquisition of the Soul Stone provides the MCU with not one, but two tragic scenes: the unwilling demise of Gamora in Infinity War and the self-sacrifice of Black Widow in Endgame. "A soul for a soul," is what the Red Skull says. Requiring a soul in exchange for the vital stone provides the films with much-needed extra stakes and dramatic tension. But there is no such requirement in the comics.

The Soul Gem (the MCU went with "stones" instead of "gems") is actually the very first Infinity Gem Thanos gets his grubby mitts on in the comic books. He merely rips it from the head of the In-Betweener... and that's it. He doesn't even kill the C-list character! At the end of the day, it's pretty anti-climactic. Requiring a sacrifice makes for a much more interesting story - that's for sure.

As anyone who has played the shockingly fantastic 2021 Guardians of the Galaxy video game knows, Meredith Quill didn't die from cancer in the comic books. It is a wild world we live in where the video games adhere to comic book canon more closely than the massive blockbuster movies do, but here we are. The Meredith Quill of Marvel Comics was slain by two members of the Badoon alien race who were coming to end the Spartax bloodline. In the comics, Quill's dad is J'son, the emperor of Spartax.

When James Gunn brought the Guardians to the big screen, bringing them newfound popularity in the process, he changed up Star-Lord's origin a bit. Instead of Badoon doing away with Meredith, it was actually Ego (Peter's dad in the movies) giving her a brain tumor. That reveal in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 is about as dark as the MCU has gotten thus far. Purposefully giving someone cancer? That is brutal stuff.

Comic book characters die and come back to life all the time. Like, how many times can Jean Grey perish only to be reborn before everyone just doesn't care anymore? And the Asgardians of Marvel Comics kind of have an endless cycle of death and rebirth they'll never break free of. Taking a page from the Norse mythology it's based on, the Thor comics have a little event called Ragnarök that wipes out the gods only to have them be reborn. This being the case, Loki is no stranger to death.

Still, Loki has never really had a demise as brutal as the one he suffered at the hands of Thanos in the opening scene of Infinity War. The Mad Titan literally squeezes the life from the Trickster God as blood seeps from his orifices and his eyes nearly pop out of his head. Perhaps little children shouldn't be watching the MCU? When Loki watches this scene play out in his self-titled Disney+ series, he is horrified by it. Which, yeah... that checks out.

The John Walker of Marvel Comics is similar to his counterpoint in the MCU. He's a more unhinged version of Steve Rogers. It's not as if Steve is an angel, mind you, as he took plenty of lives in WWII and beyond. That being said, John Walker seems to revel in violence in a way that Steve simply does not. Case in point: murdering a guy in front of civilians with Cap's shield. Seeing that iconic vibranium covered in blood just feels wrong.

And though Walker has a similar incident to this in Captain America #338, it doesn't hold a candle to the brutality we see during this episode of Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Walker truly feels demented in this scene, completely beholden to his rage in the moment. It isn't exactly befitting of a man trying to be the next Captain America.