Marvel Universe
Face–Heel Turn in this franchise. open/close all folders
Comic Books
Comic Books
- The Avengers:
- This trope was the thing that angered many fans about The Crossing: retconning that Iron Man was really a Manchurian Agent for Kang since the Avengers first fought him and that Mantis had decided to join Kang, though the story ended with Tony breaking free of Kang's control and undergoing a Comic Book Death. Avengers Forever would later retcon this was Tony merely being under the mind control of Immortusnote since Operation: Galactic Storm and that the "Mantis" working with Kang was a Space Phantom posing as her.
- Avengers Arena: Apex is the only one of the kidnapped teens who is actually willing to play Arcade's game, killing Juston to steal his Sentinel, seizing control of Deathlocket and the Darkhawk armor with her technopathy to carry out her plans, and using the latter to kill Nico.
- Deadpool: After being ostracized for his mistakes in Secret Empire, and receiving no credit for the things he did to help rectify the situation, Wade decides to finally give up on being a hero, and return to his roots as a mercenary, becoming The Despicable Deadpool.
- The Heroes Reborn version of the Swordsman was revealed to be his Earth's version of Wade in a Fifth Week Event in 2000 — during which, it's shown he's snapped upon learning his reality was literally created by a child (Franklin Richards) and goes on a Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum. He later joined the Evil Deadpool Corps.
- Fantastic Four: Sue Storm, believe it or not. She once went mad and became a villain named Malice, who was hell-bent on killing her former teammates. When she recovered, this was one of the biggest contributions to her changing her name from the Invisible Girl to the more mature Invisible Woman and Taking a Level in Badass.
- Runaways: Chase briefly went over to the dark side, attempting to form a pact with the Gibborim in an effort to resurrect Gert.
- The Sentry: In Dark Reign, the Sentry did this by joining Norman Osborn's Dark Avengers in the hope of getting cured from his Superpowered Evil Side, The Void. In the end Osborn set a scheme in motion that made the Void take over completely.
- Spider-Man:
- Following the Superior Spider Man arc, Peter's former friend Liz Allan has been seen in a new alliance with Norman Osborn as he attempts to establish a new identity and corporation (now that his identity as the Green Goblin is no longer a secret). Whether she is doing this entirely out of free will is unknown, but it's very possible that the biggest reason is to ensure a better future for her son.
- In The Amazing Spider-Man (2014), thanks to the actions of the Superior Spider Man, the Black Cat, once one of Spider-Man's closest allies, has gone from Classy Cat-Burglar to aspiring crime boss. This became controversial among fans and was eventually walked back on by Brian Michel Bendis and Nick Spencer
- Ultimate Marvel:
- The Ultimates:
- Quicksilver started off as a baddie, but joined The Ultimates fairly quickly. This lasted until the death of his sister, the Scarlet Witch, at which point he went back to villainy, ending up a member of the Dark Ultimates.
- Though never particularly heroic or stable, Hulk joined him as a member of the Dark Ultimates as well.
- Reed Richards, first seen in the Ultimate Fantastic Four, became a villain as well after faking his own death. He became one of the Big Bads of the Ultimate Marvel universe, and was intent on forcibly remaking the world into a utopia. He was trasferred to the main Marvel universe during Secret Wars (2015).
- Nerd Hulk was bitten by vampires, and joined them as a result.
- Black Widow turned into The Mole for the Liberators, helping to disrupt the team from the inside. That, if she didn't join the Ultimates with that goal from the start...
- Gregory Stark had a drive to be always better than his little brother Tony. He made more scientific inventions, he has a bigger fortune, everything. Sponsoring his own superhero team, the Ultimate Avengers, was just another step in his never-ending conflict with him. He took it a bit too far when he tried to take down SHIELD and promote superhuman revolutions at third-world countries.
- Pyro has been introduced in Ultimate X-Men with Adaptational Heroism, but he was among the bad guys in The Ultimates 3 — and a case of Adaptational Jerkass, given he wanted to rape Valkyrie, whereas the original Pyro wasn't a rapist.
- Ultimate X Men: After Ultimatum, Jean Grey took many levels in jerkass, going so far as to start a war between the already dwindling mutant race, bombing Utopia, mind-controlling Jimmy into attacking her own country so she would have a legitimate reason to continue the war, ordering assassinations, and trying to kill her own team.
- The Ultimates:
- X-Men:
- Colossus, after his sister, Ilyana, died. It didn't last long.
- The longtime member Bishop - after years of looking for a mysterious traitor who was supposed to kill X-Men, he betrayed them himself, for the same reason he joined them in the first place — to stop a Bad Future from happening.
Films
Films
- The Marvel Cinematic Universe:
- Even though he always had a knack for mischief, Loki Used to Be a Sweet Kid, and it is implied that for centuries before the events of Thor he was The Lancer who fought alongside his brother. It is his act of letting Jötunns into Asgard on Thor's coronation day that started him Slowly Slipping Into Evil, and the following Reveal of his troubled ancestry exacerbated the matter. Loki spends his next several appearances on the Heel–Face Revolving Door before finally pulling a Heel–Face Turn right before being killed by Thanos. His Alternate Self from the 2012 timeline opened in Avengers: Endgame is still alive, but didn’t perform his Heel–Face Turn until his self-titled series.
- Sharon Carter, a.k.a. the Power Broker, in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. After spending two movies in the solidly "good" column and then disappearing without a trace, Sharon reappears in The Falcon and the Winter Soldier but has taken a level in jerkass and has become rude, abrasive and downright cruel as the result of being hung out to dry by the U.S. government and the Avengers. Sam offers to help clear her name, but by this point Sharon has become so thoroughly villainous that she embraces her role as the Power Broker and uses her restored CIA clearance to sell government secrets to the bad guys.
- X-Men Film Series
- X2: X-Men United shows Pyro defecting to the Brotherhood, and the following one has him going full "fuck you, I'm evil!".
- X-Men: First Class:
- Angel joins the Hellfire Club when Shaw kills every human in the CIA building.
- Magneto counts in the same movie, going from being a cynical Anti-Hero friend of Xavier's to a genocidal Well-Intentioned Extremist who is Xavier's enemy.
- Raven starts off Xavier's friend and adoptive sister, ends up leaving to be with Magneto. Of course, she sees it differently.
- And in X-Men: Days of Future Past, once Magneto is imprisoned, she embraces the heel without shame.
- In The Wolverine, Ichirō Yashida was apparently a genuinely nice and caring man once, but when his cancer started destroying him, he became obsessed with immortality and turned evil.
Live-Action TV
Live-Action TV
- Happens all the time on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., it being a spy show (and part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe).
- A mass face heel turn occurs in the second half of the first season: turns out about half of S.H.I.E.L.D. is actually Hydra sleeper agents, a massive infiltration dating back decades. Thus, this is one of the cases where always-been-heels characters are outed as such. Notable examples include:
- Grant Ward, a notable member of Coulson's team (and the main cast).
- John Garrett, Coulson's friend and colleague and a command-level S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, who turns out to be a mid-ranking Hydra mastermind.
- In related events happening at the same time in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, World Security Council Secretary Alexander Pierce, the ultimate boss above Nick Fury and all of S.H.I.E.L.D., turns out to be the mastermind of a Hydra plot to take over the world, and recurring S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Jasper Sitwell is revealed as a Hydra agent as well.
- Super soldier Mike Peterson winds up working for Hydra in Season 1 after they kidnap his son and put a bomb in his head. They turn him into the MCU version of Deathlok.
- Skye's mother Jaiying becomes the final villain of Season 2 when her desire for revenge against SHIELD and Hydra overpowers her desire to be a good leader to the Inhuman community.
- Season 3's Big Bad Hive has the ability to induce this in Inhumans, enslaving them with his parasites.
- Also in Season 3, Agent Blake, once a high ranking member of SHIELD, is revealed as the founder of the Inhuman-hating group, the Watchdogs.
- In Season 4...
- Doctor Radcliffe reads the magic book the Darkhold, then turns on SHIELD once it becomes clear that they will not support his research into LMDs and virtual reality.
- Later, the LMD "Aida" desires to become a real person and so exploits loop holes in her programming to betray Radcliffe. He even compliments her "genius". It's implied that her desire arose after she, too, read the Darkhold. She eventually becomes a real human with Inhuman powers, as well as the MCU version of Madame Hydra.
- As a result of Aida's machinations within the virtual reality "Framework", several characters switch factions inside. Leopold Fitz becomes the sadistic Doctor, and the most threatening figure within the Framework. Melinda May willingly becomes one of Hydra's top operatives. Most surprisingly, the virtual version of Grant Ward turns out to be a good guy, having been recruited by SHIELD agent Victoria Hand instead of John Garrett in the virtual timeline.
- At the end of Season 5, Brigadier-General Glenn Talbott becomes the MCU version of Graviton and turns against SHIELD. Well-Intentioned Extremist variant.
- Earlier in the season, Fitz tragically suffers a psychotic break that causes him to hallucinate the Doctor version of himself torturing his friends, albeit in service of SHIELD's larger goals. Then Fitz discovers that it was him all along...
- A mass face heel turn occurs in the second half of the first season: turns out about half of S.H.I.E.L.D. is actually Hydra sleeper agents, a massive infiltration dating back decades. Thus, this is one of the cases where always-been-heels characters are outed as such. Notable examples include:
Video Games
Video Games
- Possible in Spider-Man: Web of Shadows if you choose to let the Symbiote have its way. In the end of an all villain story, Spider-Man becomes the emperor of the Symbiotes and rules over New York City.
Western Animation
Western Animation
- In Iron Man: Armored Adventures, Gene Khan does this in spectacular fashion during the second half of the season finale. Given that the writers had spent the entire first season making this character friends with the hero, humanizing him and integrating him into the True Companions, this is actually fairly stunning, especially given that this show loves sympathetic villains being redeemed the way it does.
- One could argue that Gene made his original turn at the start of the series, when he threw down his stepfather and took the role of Mandarin for himself. Outing himself to his friends after they out themselves as Team Iron Man just sealed the deal.
- Whitney Stane has often straddled the line between good and evil ever since she's donned the identity of "Madame Masque", going from Unlucky Childhood Friend towards Tony to Stalker with a Crush to him, with murderous tendencies towards her father, to redemption, to a brief Anti-Hero stint as Madame Masque, and Laser-Guided Amnesia that led her to be Demoted to Extra. Her heel turn is permanently established in "Iron Monger Lives!", where she remembers Tony's identity as Iron Man and her time as Madame Masque. She returns as Masque to hatch an elaborate scheme in order to ruin Tony's life and kill his friends and family. By the time the episode ends, she seems to be continuing her villainous persona and her vendetta.
- The Silver Surver on The Super Hero Squad Show was so corrupted by the Infinity Sword, that he turns his back on Galactus and even tricks Thanos into giving him the complete Infinity Gauntlet. It's rare for a Face Heel Turn to pull a Starscream, but Silver Surfer pulls it off well and becomes the new Big Bad till the end of the series.
