MCU: 25 most heartbreaking Marvel Cinematic Universe character deaths

Marvel’s Avengers: Age Of Ultron..Ultron (voiced by James Spader)..Ph: Film Frame..©Marvel 2015

17. Ultron

Movie it happened in: Avengers: Age of Ultron

Why it was so heartbreaking: It’s not often that a villain’s death can be heartbreaking, but Ultron deserves to have a spot. His death was more than just the end for him. There was an element of a life lesson thrown in.

Avengers: Age of Ultron brought us a villain that thought he was doing the right thing for the world in an A.I. point of view. It also delivered us Jarvis in a way we’d never seen him. The two ended up going head to head, with Jarvis being the one to defeat the James Spader-villain.

There was a sadness to the way Ultron went out. He had been so arrogant and viewed himself as indestructible and then he realized that his efforts would all be for nothing. Jarvis gave us this sense of humanity to the technology, explaining that Ultron felt fear of death. It’s something we see all villains feel by the end, but with Ultron this stood out because, as A.I., he shouldn’t have been able to feel.

And then there was the very end. Ultron wasn’t going to just shut his eyes and stop working. He needed to go out in a blaze of glory. Jarvis never wanted to destroy him but he had no other choice.

We knew that Ultron had to go. There was no other way to stop him and he was never going to fight on the side of the good guys, but that didn’t stop us from feeling something sad for this great and powerful villain.