5 MCU characters who died too soon (and 3 who didn’t die fast enough)

Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow

An integral part of the original Avengers in the MCU, Black Widow is a fantastic character who is greatly missed. Played by Scarlett Johansson, Natasha is a highly skilled assassin and former member of a Russian espionage group. Her combat skills and ability to manipulate situations are seriously impressive and as a strong female superhero, she’s an inspiration to many.

Black Widow has appeared in a long list of MCU films, and as she plays more of a significant role we learn more about her backstory and traumatic past. Of course, we also learn more about the character in her standalone movie, which came out in 2021 and explores her history.

Her death occurs in Avengers: Endgame, in which she sacrifices herself to secure the Soul Stone to help reverse Thanos’ snap. It’s a truly shocking and heartbreaking moment, and something she totally doesn’t deserve. This isn’t the last we see of the character, as Black Widow serves as a prequel, but we still wish she was still alive in the current MCU timeline.

VERDICT: Died too soon

Ultron

And finally, last on our list is Ultron, an AI program generated by Tony Stark and Bruce Banner. Though their intentions in creating the technology are pure, they don’t realize how powerful their creation can become. Ultron becomes a destructive villain with his own agenda, believing that eliminating humanity will save the world. While Thanos wants to establish balance in the world, Ultron wants to completely wipe out humanity to start fresh.

Ultron becomes the main antagonist in the movie Avengers: Age of Ultron, which sees the Avengers coming together to take him and his sinister plans down. Ultron has no regard for human life, making him a pretty frightening character, especially in retrospect now that AI is on the rise in the real world.

Fortunately, the Avengers are able to defeat Ultron’s robot army and with the help of Vision, they completely destroy his consciousness. Let’s be real: Ultron doesn’t die soon enough because he probably shouldn’t have even been created in the first place.

VERDICT: Didn’t die soon enough