MCU: 25 most heartbreaking Marvel Cinematic Universe character deaths

Marvel’s Captain America: Civil War..Tony Stark/Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.)..Photo Credit: Zade Rosenthal..© Marvel 2016

19. Howard and Maria Stark

Movie it happened in: Pre-MCU, but we got to see it happen in Captain America: Civil War.

Why it was so heartbreaking: In a way, Tony Stark needed to lose his parents to have everything happen to him that needed to happen. And in a way, he became a much greater man because of his parents’ deaths. But that doesn’t mean they should have happened, right?

Many of the great superheroes have all developed their powers or skills from loss. Tony Stark is the Marvel version of DC’s Batman. He is a billionaire thanks to his parents’ fortune and his parents’ deaths helped him become the man he is when we meet him. He’s also smart, forward thinking, and has a sort of butler/assistant.

And like Bruce Wayne, we never really got to know Tony Stark’s parents. While their deaths were heartbreaking for Tony, they don’t have that much of an effect on us. It’s because of that their deaths can’t be moved further up this list.

However, they are heartbreaking. The way their deaths happen is what makes them heartbreaking. We see Bucky Barnes brainwashing into killing them. He has no remorse, even after he’s been brainwashed, he doesn’t exactly show how sorry he is for his actions.

Seeing how his parents died is what pushed Tony Stark into another fight against Steven Rogers. It put Iron Man and Captain America on opposite sides of an Avengers Civil War and we’d see Tony act out in ways we’d never noticed before. It also made that moment in Endgame in the past all the more bittersweet.