Downer Ending / Marvel Universe

Note: This is a Spoilered Rotten trope, so every example listed below is a spoiler by default - and spoilers are unmarked.

Downer Endings within the shared Marvel Universe setting:

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Comic Books

Comic Books

• Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. (1968) ends with Nick out on a date and unexpectedly shot dead by costumed sniper Bulls-Eye, who's then killed by Dum Dum Dugan. Dugan's last line is that he'll try to pick up the pieces of S.H.I.E.L.D. - if there's anything left. Three more issues were published before the series was cancelled, but only contained reprints of old stories. A Fully Absorbed Finale in The Avengers swiftly provided a happier ending - but there's nothing at the end of Fury's own series to tell readers that they should look at that title for answers.
• The Punisher MAX arc The Slavers. All Frank's really achieved is a few more corpses and a little more of his own humanity chipped away. The horror still continues, no one is redeemed. And the worst part? It's based on real-world crimes.
  • However he managed to rescue some of those enslaved, and they go on to live relatively normal, if psychologically debilitated, lives. By the standards of Punisher MAX, altogether this is a happy ending.
• The stories in What If? usually end badly, or at least bittersweet, the Alternate Timeline created showing that, as much as it a Marvel hero's life can downright suck sometimes, it could have been much worse. This is especially common in the 1989 series after the switch to a Darker and Edgier style.
  • "The Man, The Monster" (vol.2 #91) has Colonel Bruce Banner successfully get away with starting a war for his own means and abusing his wife Betty by blackmailing the one man who could help her into not speaking up for her.
  • "What if the X-Men Condemned Gambit to death?" (vol.2 #106) has Gambit be forced to duel Archangel over his role in the Morlock Massacre. Whilst Archangel spares his life, he decrees that Gambit is to be forever exiled from the X-men. Then Marrow steps in and kills Gambit anyway.
  • "Tragedy in a Tiny Town" (vol 2. #109) has Reed, Sue and Johnny die in a failed attempt to escape from Liddleville without Ben, and the story ends with Ben and his family trapped in a microsized version of Doom's castle — only now Ben is in a synthi-clone of his monstrous Thing body, Alicia hates him for lying to her and putting his own happiness and insecurity over the lives of their family, and they don't even have the facade of Liddleville to comfort them in their imprisonment.
  • In "What If: All of the Fantastic Four had the same powers?" (v2 #11), the universe where all four of them turn into deformed brutes like Ben Grimm has the most outright depressing ending of the four universes examined in that issue: Reed begins to devolve into savagery, Susan loses her mind and becomes an instinct-driven beast like the Man-Thing she resembles, and the quartet exile themselves to Monster Island in shame. Compare this to the Bittersweet Ending of the "all Human Torches" and "all Mr. Fantastic" universes, and especially the happy ending of the "all Invisible Woman" universe.
  • "What If the Hulk Evolved into the Maestro" (vol 2 #80) sees an attempt to cure Bruce Banner instead result in the creation of an intelligent, cunning, and utterly ruthless Hulk. When Mr. Fantastic and The Thing try to stop him, he kills Reed and exposes Ben to a heavy dose of radiation that makes him mutate even further. Bruce's final act is to commit Suicide by Cop in order to prevent this evil Hulk from doing any further damage.
  • "What If...Norman Osborn won the Siege of Asgard?" has the Sentry present to lay waste to the Avengers and the other heroes, only for him to learn that Osborn had ordered the death of his wife, leading him to embrace the Void as an Omnicidal Maniac, destroying Earth before, as that world's Watcher notes, moving on to the rest of the universe.
• Ultimate Spider-Man ends with Peter Parker dying after taking a bullet for Captain America and then attempting to take on all of the Sinister Six at once before seeking out medical attention. The only bright spot is that Spider-Man stops the Six, but it's not clear how long they'll stay down.
• Avengers: The Children's Crusade ends with the Young Avengers breaking up. Stature and Vision are dead, Iron Lad is well on his way to becoming Kang the Conqueror, the surviving kids are consumed with guilt, and Scott Lang comes back to life just in time to see his daughter die.
• Avengers: The Initiative: For Crusader. After coming to Earth as a spy, he grows to enjoy Earth and human culture and signs up to become a registered superhero. He spends the whole story trying to hide his Skrull form, fights alongside Earth's heroes, kills many Skrull invaders including his Skrull best friend from his early training days, and ends up unceremoniously shot through the head after being uncovered as a Skrull by the 3-D Man right in the middle of being congratulated for his service to Earth by fellow heroes. Despite everything he's tried to do for Earth, his death is written off as just being another Skrull and his last moments are spent wishing things could have turned out differently.
• Journey into Mystery (Gillen) probably takes the cake when it comes to downer endings. Not only is young Loki more or less forced to commit suicide by erasing himself from existence, but his body is taken over by his mentally disturbed, evil older self. This is particularly devastating as no one else even knows it even happened, therefore everyone who trusts and cares about him has suddenly been put at risk. Additionally the last few panels of a 13 year old boy ritualistically eating a live magpie are pretty horrifying.
• The short-lived Muties series had several, but the last issue takes the cake. Liam turns on the terrorists who forced him into their service, but he's captured by The Government, which decides that he's too dangerous to let live and thus quietly executes him and publically blames his death on terrorism.
• The end of one of Ed Brubaker's Daredevil arcs has DD's wife being committed to a mental hospital, Mr. Fear in control of Ryker's (with nobody knowing) and the Hood having both his organisation and Mr. Fear's to use to control Hell's Kitchen.
• Ultimatum ends with Dr. Strange Jr., Franklin Storm, the Wasp, Yellowjacket, Thor (until New Ultimates), and much of the X-Men dead; Quicksilver revealed to have faked his "death" in The Ultimates 3 and orchestrated the deaths of Magneto and Cyclops; the Fantastic Four and surviving X-Men disbanding (and unknown to the former at the time, Reed's about to undergo a Face–Heel Turn and the latter learning that mutants are really a side effect of a Super-Soldier project, not a product of natural evolution); Spider-Man missing and, though not really at the time, presumed dead; and mutants themselves being outlawed.
• Christopher Cantwell's Doctor Doom series spent a lot of time asking the question of whether Victor von Doom could be a good person as he fought for his life as he was chased for crimes he didn't commit. The series also had him tormented with visions of a life where he is Happily Married, has children, is unscarred and has turned the universe into a utopia. He even meets his alternate universe wife and learns that her father is his prisoner due to being an outspoken critic of his reign. In the last issue, Doom finally travels to this alternate universe where his life apparently turned out perfect and meets his alternate self, asking what he did to achieve this, humbling himself before another being for the first time in... forever (this man has talked down to gods before). It turns out that this life for him is only, and will only ever be possible when he and Reed Richards work together. The idea enrages Doom so much that he uses the Ultimate Nullifier to destroy the entire universe. Keep in mind, the Nullifier will destroy the user unless their thoughts are unclouded and their mind fully focused and intent on what they set to use it for, and Doom survives this. The utopic universe is reduced to nothing, Doom discards any friends he made along the way and even has his alternate universe father-in-law executed. It's safe to say the "redeemed Doom" saga closed out on a bit of a Downer Ending.
• Secret Invasion (2008) ends with Wasp dying horribly and ignobly, Tony Stark, and by extension all of SHIELD, publically humiliated for failing to stop the invasion before mass casualties, Norman Osborn being hailed as a hero for landing the killing blow against the Skrull Queen, causing him to become the new owner of both the Thunderbolts and the Avengers Tower, and Spider Woman's reputation all but destroyed due to the Skrull Queen having impersonated her throughout the event. Pretty much the only positive is that the invasion itself was stopped, and even that's a bit of a downer since, as horrible as it was, it was the Skrulls' last chance for survival after the events of Annihilation.
• In Sub-Mariner: The Depths, Namor kills most of the crews, and Stein kills the rest out of an insane desire to deny the truth. A traumatized and haunted Stein returns to the surface just to continue living his life in denial.

Films

Films

• Avengers: Infinity War: Thanos brutally murders Vision by ripping the Mind Stone out of his head. He uses it to complete the Infinity Gauntlet, snapping his fingers and engulfing everything in a bright light, then escapes before Thor can kill him. At first, nothing seems to have happened as Cap slowly gets up... But then Bucky crumbles to dust. Then Groot. Then Mantis, Drax, and Quill. And then the realization sets in: Thanos actually won. Scarlet Witch clutches Vision's body as she dies. T'Challa tries to help Okoye to her feet as he fades. Falcon vanishes in the long grass, just out of sight of the other heroes, as War Machine continues to call out for him. Peter Parker goes out terrified and weeping, clutching at Stark as he crumbles. Even Thanos lost almost everything to accomplish his goals and is left satisfied it's over, but also contemplating the cost. In The Stinger, we see the same fate befall Nick Fury, the Big Good of the entire franchise, and his right-hand woman Maria Hill. The only implications that hope isn’t totally lost are Fury's distress call to Captain Marvel and Doctor Strange’s cryptic final words to Stark: “There was no other way.” No Creative Closing Credits, no uplifting ending. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has truly reached its Darkest Hour.
  • The effects of the snap are felt across The 'Verse, and in the mid-credits scene of Ant-Man and the Wasp, it causes a Sudden Downer Ending for our heroes. After spending the entire movie working to reunite, the entire Pym-van Dyne family turns to ash by a threat they had no idea existed. On top of that, Scott Lang is now stranded in the Quantum Realm, having been counting on them to bring him back to his regular size.
    • The final credits seem like a glimmer of hope, "Ant-Man and The Wasp will return", except a "?" then appears.
• Logan: Judging by how Logan, Charles, Caliban, and Laura live in a Crapsack World, the whole film is already a downer to begin with, especially with Charles suffering from dementia and constant seizures, creating burst of potentially lethal telepathic energy (one of which was heavily implied to have killed nearly all the X-Men), while Logan deals with post-traumatic-stress-disorder, suicidal thoughts, alcoholism, depression, and fatal Adamantium poisoning. By the end of the film, Logan, Charles, and Caliban are all dead and while it should be noted that Zander Rice, Donald Pierce, X-24, and the Reavers are also dead, that doesn't necessarily mean that Laura and the the other children are completely safe. In fact, the film heavily implies that Eden doesn't even exist in the first place, and that the children could easily be pursued by other forces in Canada. What's more is that, with Logan and Elizabeth dead, Laura has now lost the closest thing she had to a family and her and the other children are now completely on their own.
• Spider-Man: Spider-Verse
  • Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse: If you haven't seen the part where it was planned to be a two-part film, then it's inevitable that it has this. Many characters end up with their own personal bad endings.
    • Miles is trapped in an alternate Crapsack World, glitching out and possibly about to be disembowled by an alternate Prowler version of himself, Miguel O'Hara and his Spider-Society are still on the hunt, Miles has lost all his trust for Gwen, Peter B, and presumably Peni for betraying him, and the Spot is about to unleash the apocalypse on Miles' world. About the only upside is that Gwen has assembled a team to rescue him, while Miles himself ends the movie charging a Venom Strike, ready to fight back.
    • Miguel has to exile Gwen, which clearly bothers him, lost many members of his Squad after they defect, others are now questioning his actions, and he is left wondering Was It Really Worth It?
    • Peter B. has a daughter and a wife, but his inaction and unwittingly leading Miguel to Miles has shattered their relationship completely. His only saving grace is Gwen creating the new Spider Group to try and find Miles.
    • Gwen learns that canon events CAN be averted, but not before losing her only real friend in Miles. And now said friend is lost and his world threatened because she refused to act.
• X-Men: First Class in so many ways. Charles is crippled and weary, loses his love interest because he erases her memory in order to protect her (which also ruins her career at the CIA), and also loses his friend, Erik, as he becomes Magneto. And his adoptive sister has run off with Magneto to become a supervillain. Hank is left mutated from his failed serum and has lost Mystique as well after he rejected her true mutant form. Also, despite all their heroic efforts, the government is now hunting all mutants.

Live-Action TV

Live-Action TV

• Loki (2021): The Bad Guy Wins at the end of the first season. Sylvie, desperate for revenge, kills He Who Remains despite his warnings that other, more malevolent Variants of himself will emerge from alternate timelines and cause another Multiversal War. Loki finds himself in a version of the TVA where nobody remembers him and the final shot of the season is Loki staring in horror at a statue of Kang the Conqueror. Roll credits.

Western Animation

Western Animation

• Thanks to it being unexpectedly cancelled, Silver Surfer: The Animated Series ends with the Silver Surfer apparently dead and the universe destroyed.
• Spider-Man: The Animated Series has an episode that shocked us with its combination of Downer Ending and Wham Episode. Mary Jane and Peter had finally gotten married at the beginning of the season, after MJ had been lost down a inter dimensional portal and come back. They are starting their honeymoon when Hydro-Man kidnaps MJ right under Peter's nose. He manages to find her again, only for it to be revealed that both Hydro-Man and MJ are in fact clones, made from a process that hasn't been perfected yet. MJ ends up disintegrating in Peter's arms. Even worse, when you realize that this means the real Mary Jane has been floating in the interdimensional portal all this time. These two episodes left many in a state of shock for hours. The remaining 5 episodes managed to turn it into a Bittersweet Ending as Spider-Man saves reality itself from being destroyed... but Mary Jane is still missing.
  • Well, it was somewhat foreshadowed in that MJ's sudden return was totally out of the blue, she didn't seem traumatized by several months in interdimensional void and therefore something wasn't right. And the end of the series strongly implied that Spider-Man will find her, with Madame Web's help and all. The plan was to shoot five more episodes which would involve him doing just that, but the show was canceled.
• Similarly, Spider-Man Unlimited ends with Spider-Man lost in time, the symbiotes spawned from Venom and Carnage taking over the city, and everyone is apparently powerless to stop them. An ending was scripted to have them overcome the infestation and Spider-Man, Eddie Brock, and Cletus Kasady making their way back to our Earth, but the series was canceled at that point.
• The Spectacular Spider-Man last episode Final Curtain ends with our hero triumphing over evil. All is well, right? Well, Norman Osborn is believed dead by most of the cast and longtime childhood friend-turned-villain Eddie Brock is locked up, most likely in Ravencroft, along with John Jameson. Curt Connors has been blackmailed into leaving ESU by Miles Warren, leaving Warren to help nurture Gwen Stacy and Peter Parker's scientific skills. Mark Allen, the Molten Man, is still not in control of his power-switch, and will likely continue to be blackmailed in to doing other people's bidding. Tombstone is walking free (albeit being monitored now). The Venom symbiote is still loose somewhere in the New York sewer system. Mysterio is still running free after the one sent to prison was revealed to be another 'bot, Chameleon is still out there and Kraven is also still free to continue hunting after Spider-Man. In Peter's personal life, you have a heartbroken Liz Allen, who is too proud to show it as well as her brother, the aforementioned Molten Man, being in prison, which is no doubt affecting Mary Jane too. Possibly the biggest gut-punch though, is Peter and Gwen, who have finally told the other how they feel. It looks like they'll finally get together, until Harry takes after dear ol' dad and manipulates her into staying with him, leaving Pete alone. Damn.
  • Gets even worse when realizing that the show was canceled without even resolving the ending. Double damn. (Notice a recurring trend here?)
  • Harry's dad is dead, he overheard his girlfriend say that she loved his best friend since the 7th grade (implying she never loved Harry) and his best friend said he loved her too (so his best friend stole his girlfriend, which is worse as Harry feels inferior to Peter because of his dad. The only characters who don't have a downer ending are some of the villains, everyone at the Bugle except JJJ, Flash, Robbie and Sally.
• Spider-Man: The New Animated Series: The Gaines Twins tricked Spider-Man into believing his long-time love Mary Jane has been murdered by Kraven the Hunter, sending him on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge, that nearly ends with Spidey murdering Kraven in cold blood. After he figures out their ploy, Spidey goes after them to rescue MJ. In the ensuing battle, the twins pull another Mind Rape on him which leads to him accidentally harming an innocent. Said innocent? Indira "Indy" Daimonji - Peter Parker's intrepid new reporter girlfriend, and one of Spidey's few consistent supporters in the series. Thinking it's Roxanne Gaines, Spidey mistakenly drops her off a roof, which lands her in a (seemingly permanent) coma. Dozens of New Yorkers (including MJ) witness this, making Spidey Public Enemy #1, and giving J. Jonah Jameson all the ammo he needs to start a grassroots movement to run Spidey out of town. Peter is so wracked with guilt that he agrees. He goes after the Gaines Twins a final time, resulting in their deaths (and nearly his) via explosion. The next day, Mary Jane tries once more to rekindle things with Peter, relating her sympathy over him losing Indy and being let down by Spider-Man. Peter manages to reject her in an even more heartbreaking manner than the first movie, barely being able to look her in the eye. Harry has his hatred of Spider-Man "justified" after seemingly turning a corner when Spidey helped save Sally from Electro. To top it all off, Peter locks the suit in a brick-laden case and tosses it into the river. Given that the series was cancelled after this, it seems that Spider-Man's quest to honor his Uncle Ben has ended in an even worse failure than "The Night Gwen Stacy Died." So, to recap - Spidey "loses" MJ (TWICE!!), nearly MURDERS Kraven, puts his new girlfriend in a coma, has the entire city turn against him, basically kills the Gaines Twins, and is abandoned by the one person that needed him the most - PETER PARKER. This HAS to be the most depressing depiction of Spider-Man ever committed to the screen.
• Wolverine and the X-Men (2009) ends with Jean back, and the Bad Future averted. However, Emma Frost is dead, Squidboy and his mom are implied to be dead, due to a Gory Discretion Shot, a probable thousand or so of mutants have been slaughtered, Angel is still under Sinister's control, and Genosha, the only completely safe haven for mutants, has been leveled. Oh and that whole, Bad Future averted thing I said earlier? Yeah, well there's a new one where Apocalypse is now dictator of the world. But hey, the producers set that up so it could all be resolved for season 2. I mean, there's no way the show will be cancelled on a cliffhanger this enormous.
• In Iron Man: Armored Adventures, a HUGE one comes in "Ghost in the Machine" - Ghost steals the specs to the Iron Man armor AND finds out that Tony is Iron Man. Afterwards, he sells the specs to Stane AND Hammer. To top it all off, Ghost plans on blackmailing Tony when he gains control of the company and Tony can't do anything to Ghost because he made it so if anything happens to him, Tony's identity goes global. Also, Tony didn't patent his armor. Big downers all around.
• X-Men: The Animated Series/X-Men '97
  • Days of Future Past, Part 2: All of Bishop's efforts are for nothing. The future is still a dystopia, and Senator Robert Kelly has been kidnapped by Magneto.
  • Till Death Do Us Part, Part 1: The episode ends on a cliffhanger with Gambit incapacitated, Beast attacked by the Danger Room, Storm injured, and Jubilee in the hands of the FOH.
  • One Man's Worth, Part 1: The episode ends with Bishop, Shard, Logan and Storm failing to save Xavier.
  • Descent: After years of trying, James fails to catch his Evil Former Friend and doubts he ever will.
  • The only positive thing to be said to happen in episode "Remember It" is that the Tri-Sentinel was destroyed before it could kill everyone on Genosha. Apart from that, the island has been devastated, with countless mutants dead including Gambit and possibly Magneto. Both the X-Men and the world at large are left in horror at what's happened, and the episode ends on Rogue weeping as she cradles Gambit's body.
• Episode 4 of What If…? (2021) focuses on an alternate Dr. Strange that lost his girlfriend Christine Palmer instead of the use of his hands. All the same events of Doctor Strange (2016) still happen, but afterwards he starts delving into time travel in the hopes of saving her. But every attempt ends with her dying, as her death is a "fixed point in time" that can not be changed. When told this by The Ancient One, Strange defies her but she uses her own dark magic to split Strange into two timelines. One where he doesn't pursue time travel, and another where he learns about absorbing other beings to gain power. That Strange spends centuries absorbing others and becoming "Strange Supreme". Meanwhile, the other Strange sees that reality is falling apart and is warned by a psychic manifestation of the Ancient One that only he can stop it. However, Strange Supreme ended up too powerful and he absorbs his better half. Using his power to ensure Christine survives, but she is frightened by his appearance and reality falling apart. Strange Supreme realizes what he's done and pleads with Uatu the Watcher to help, but he can not. Reality ends up destroyed and Strange and Christine end up in a pocket universe only for her to fade away. Leaving Stephen Strange all alone for eternity.

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