MCU: 25 most heartbreaking Marvel Cinematic Universe character deaths

Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War..Vision (Paul Bettany)..Photo Credit: Film Frame..© Marvel 2016

6. Vision

Movie it happened in: Avengers: Infinity War

Why it was so heartbreaking: Admittedly, a lot of the heartbreaking Marvel Cinematic Universe deaths are from the final two Avengers movies. Vision is one of them, but not the death at Thanos’ hands. While that was the permanent death, it was the one that came just before it – the one that Thanos erased by turning back time.

Scarlet Witch realized that there was only one thing she could do to stop Thanos from getting all six Infinity Stones. The Mind Stone was the last, and the one that made Vision who he was. There was hope that Shuri would prevent the need to kill Vision off, but it was never meant to be. There wasn’t enough time.

Scarlet Witch had the power to destroy the Mind Stone. Destroying it meant that she was going to destroy Vision, the man she loved. And that’s exactly what she did.

Full of grief, heartache, and anger, she disintegrated the Mind Stone into hundreds of pieces. It was supposed to be over, a final sacrifice for the fate of humanity.

And then, the Time Stone happened. That’s what made this even more heartbreaking that just watching Scarlet Witch kill the man she loved. Thanos undid it all and made all that pain worthless. And then he ripped the stone from Vision’s head and left the man just an empty machine.

On top of that, it was clear that this would be one of the deaths we’d never see reversed. It happened before the snap, meaning it couldn’t be changed. Like Hawkeye would need to do with Black Widow, Scarlet Witch would need to make Vision just a memory and act in that memory moving forward.