Superheroes We Lost In 2018

In the season 3 finale of Legends of Tomorrow, the time-hopping team lost the guy who brought them all together: the former Time Master Rip Hunter (Arthur Darvill).

Earlier in the series, Hunter was discharged from his job at the Time Bureau for his obsession with the demon Mallus. Hunter dies in the season 3 finale attempting to save his friends from that same demon. The hero detonated a time core in order to give the rest of the Legends time to escape Mallus. The explosion killed Hunter, but only weakened his demonic enemy. 

Speaking to ComicBook.com about Hunter's death, Legends of Tomorrow showrunner Phil Klemmer said, "I will say that our love for Arthur Darvill exceeds our need for his character...I think he was a reminder of just how far the Legends have come since the premiere."

Hunter wasn't alone in meeting his fate in the season finale. The otherwise nefarious Damien Darhk (Neal McDonough) sacrificed himself to Mallus to save his daughter Nora (Courtney Ford).

It would be tough to blame anyone for not trusting that Loki's fate was what it appeared to be in the opening of Avengers: Infinity War. Marvel's god of mischief "died" twice already — at the end of Thor and later in Thor: The Dark World – and both times he proved more resilient than his adoptive brother or father assumed. Still, after watching Infinity War, it's difficult to imagine how he could have pulled it off a third time. 

After Thanos and the Black Order board the refugee ship, Loki initially seems unwilling to give up the Tesseract. He almost lets Thanos kill Thor rather than hand it over, but apparently the brothers' experiences in Ragnarok awakened Loki's conscience, because he gives in and gives Thanos what he wants, unable to continue watching his brother suffer.  

After the Hulk tries and fails to stop Thanos on his own, Loki tricks everyone into thinking he wants to join Thanos in his search for the remaining Infinity Stones. Even Thor is fooled, until he spots one of Loki's daggers. Loki makes a desperate lunge for Thanos, but the Mad Titan is ready for it. He stops Loki's attack easily, grabs him by the throat, lifts him off his feet, and chokes the life out of him. 

Considering the hundreds (at least) of innocents who died at Loki's hands in the first Avengers — not to mention the murder of his biological father and the attempted genocide of his own race — it could be argued that Loki's death belongs nowhere near a list of fallen superheroes. However, considering his actions at the end of Thor: Ragnarok and what he tried to accomplish before being killed in Infinity War, while the guy might not have been perfect, he clearly deserves to have been considered more than just a supervillain. 

As a character whose very life presumably depends upon keeping hold of one of the Infinity Stones, the Vision is constantly threatened with death in Avengers: Infinity War. He comes dangerously close to getting taken out the first time the Black Order attacks, but he's saved by the timely intervention of Captain America, Falcon, and Black Widow. 

Once he learns of Thanos' plans, Vision insists the only choice is to let Scarlet Witch use her powers to destroy the Mind Stone. Bruce Banner believes there's a way to do it without killing Vision, but that he doesn't have the expertise or the technology to do the job. So the team heads to Wakanda, where T'Challa's sister Shuri gets to work on saving the Vision and the universe. 

Ultimately, everyone's efforts and debates about whether or not Vision should have to sacrifice himself for the good of many prove fruitless. Thanos arrives in Wakanda with every other Infinity Stone under his command. Scarlet Witch destroys the Mind Stone, killing Vision in the process, but Thanos uses the powers of the Time Stone to put Vision and the Mind Stone back together (just as Stephen Strange was able to use it in Doctor Strange to un-destroy Hong Kong and its Sanctum). Thanos rips the stone from Vision's head, caving in the android's skull. Vision's body turns grey and he falls to the ground, presumably lifeless. 

Interestingly, a similar — but not identical — fate recently befell Vision in the comics. In Avengers #685, the freshly resurrected Hulk crushed the solar gem embedded in the Vision's forehead, crippling him. The gem was not an Infinity Stone and the Vision of the comics didn't die, but it was clearly traumatic. Immediately afterwards, Vision was left helpless, repeating zeroes and ones over and over. Five issues later, in Avengers #690, his teammates were still trying to reactivate him.

If there were an Oscar for misleading trailers, Deadpool 2 would be bringing home at least one statue this year. 

In spite of being featured in at least one action scene in the Deadpool 2 trailers, Bedlam (Terry Crews) was the first of Wade Wilson's X-Force to kick the bucket, and he did it before he got to do so much as swing a fist. 

With Weasel's help, Deadpool threw together X-Force in order to spring the teenager Russell from prison and protect him from the vengeful, time-hopping Cable. During an air drop to a prisoner transport convoy, high-speed winds blew the whole team off course and — save for Deadpool and Domino — the entire roster of X-Force ended up being killed. Bedlam was blown face-first into the windshield of a public bus. Deadpool slammed into a sign soon afterward, and eventually found Bedlam's lifeless body still hanging from the vehicle.

There was no word on whether or not Bedlam had used Old Spice that morning, and if so, why he didn't survive. 

When the Vanisher was first mentioned in the X-Force recruitment scene, no one was really sure the guy existed. It wasn't until the air drop began and audiences saw a parachute pack bobbing up and down — and eventually following the rest of the team — that we learned there actually was a team member named Vanisher. Still, it wasn't until X-Force members started making like Marines in a James Cameron movie that we found out who had been cast as Vanisher. As his parachute strayed into electrical wires, we saw the mutant become visible just as he was being electrocuted, and the unmistakable face of Brad Pitt filled the screen. 

The Vanisher of the comics, by the way, is neither an X-Force member nor does he have invisibility powers. Vanisher is one of the X-Men's earliest villains, whose sole power was that of teleportation, minus the blue stinky clouds Nightcrawler leaves behind. 

Still, source-material-correct or not, that was pretty freaking funny. 

When Deadpool uses Cable's time machine to undo Vanessa and Peter's deaths in the mid-credits sequence of Deadpool 2, he also uses it to correct some more notorious mistakes. 

X-Men Origins: Wolverine is often maligned for, among many other things, Ryan Reynolds' ridiculous (and not in a good way) depiction of that movie's Wade Wilson, who ultimately turns into a mouthless, murderous freak who looks like a character who might belong in Mortal Kombat. As much as you may hate X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Ryan Reynolds hates it more (he had to be in it, after all). And he proved it in the mid-credits sequence of Deadpool 2 when he used Cable's time travel device to go back in time and kill this earlier, deeply flawed version of himself. He does it thoroughly, apologizing to Wolverine as he fires bullet after bullet into the already lifeless husk. 

Before now we've seen some of the ugliness of the anti-mutant hate group the Purifiers, but mostly in flashbacks, and their actions don't usually go as far as killing. That changed with the Nov. 6 episode of Fox's The Gifted — "iMprint" — when the mutant Shatter (Jermaine Rivers) died trying to save his friends in the Mutant Underground from a Purifier assault. Shatter has been absent for most of the second season, but appeared regularly in the first.

In the previous episode, disgraced Sentinel Agent Jace Turner (Coby Bell) flirted with the notion of joining up with the Purifiers. In "iMprint," Turner joins the Purifiers while seeming intent on changing their methods. He leads a group of Purifiers in a raid of a mutant-friendly clinic and finds intel pointing to the Mutant Underground's base. Armed with mostly small arms and some smoke grenades, the Purifiers surrounded the Mutant Underground's base. 

Shatter volunteered to distract the Purifiers while Reed (Stephen Moyer), Eclipse (Sean Teale), Thunderbird (Blair Crawford), and others could escape. Most of the Purifier's weapons couldn't pierce Shatter's skin, and one died fighting the mutant off. But former agent Turner brought heavier ordinance. Clearly conflicted but ultimately resolved to his course, Turner fired a heavy machine gun at Shatter, piercing the mutant's chest and killing him. 

The Shatter of the comics first appeared as one of the subway-tunnel-dwelling Morlocks. He lost his powers as part of the 2005 Marvel Comics Event House of M.

Marvel Comics has gotten a lot of press over the last couple of years for drastically changing the status quo of some its marquee characters. One of the changes that lasted the longest — and left the biggest mark — was Thor being replaced by a woman. The Odinson lost his "worthiness" during the 2014 Marvel line-wide event Original Sin, and was forced to leave Mjolnir on Earth's moon. For a time it was a mystery who subsequently lifted the hammer and claimed the thunder god's powers. Soon enough, fans learned it was Thor's former lover, Jane Foster.  

Foster was suffering from cancer when she took up Mjolnir. Eventually she learned living as Thor was killing her. Every time she transformed into Thor, she undid all of her chemotherapy treatment. As more people in her life learned of this, they grew more adamant that she stop turning into Thor and let the rest of the world's heroes do the heavy lifting. 

When the Mangog was unleashed on Asgardia, at first Foster listened to her loved ones' advice. But it soon became clear that without Thor and Mjolnir, Mangog would finally achieve his hellish goal of killing all of the Asgardian gods. 

In Mighty Thor #705, Thor used the unbreakable chains that once held the wolf Fenris prisoner, wrapped them about Mjolnir and Mangog, and hurled the both of them into the Sun. Mjolnir was destroyed, and Mangog was forever imprisoned (for now). Without Mjolnir, Thor reverted back to Jane Foster and died. 

Jane Foster would survive. When Mjolnir was destroyed, it released the Mother of All Storms that resided within it; Odin and the Odinson (the original Thor) channeled the storm into Foster and brought her back to life. But the Mighty Thor — the Jane Foster Thor — was dead, along with Mjolnir. 

While the Enchantress of the film Suicide Squad wound up being the team's Big Bad, the Enchantress of the comics has been a loyal team member (well, as loyal as a Suicide Squad member ever could be) since the title's relaunch during DC's 2016 Rebirth event. She'd even struck up what must have been a physically...interesting romantic relationship with teammate Waylon Jones, a.k.a. Killer Croc. That ended with Suicide Squad #39 and Enchantress' death. 

The Squad faced off against the Wall, an ultraviolent patriotic-themed villain sponsored by the U.S. government. Rick Flagg scooped Enchantress out of the prison Belle Reve for extra muscle against the Wall, but the red-white-and-blue bad guy was ready for her. 

When the Squad confronted the Wall, he revealed he'd been remotely downloading files from the government, including Amanda Waller's files on the Squad. One of those files included a way to kill The Enchantress: a 3-D digital reproduction of a mystical key to Hell. What appeared to be cement arms rose from the pavement and dragged Enchantress below, presumably back to the Hell she came from. June Moone — Enchantress' human half — resurfaced and cried to Killer Croc for help, but he and the rest of the Squad had been knocked off their feet by the summoning. 

Unsurprisingly, Killer Croc gave the Wall a savage beating immediately afterwards, but the villain was able to fight off the Squad and escape.

One of the DC titles considered part of the fallout of the line-wide event Dark Knights: Metal, the six-part miniseries New Challengers is a reimagining of the early Silver Age group the Challengers of the Unknown. Unlike earlier incarnations of the characters, the quartet in this series are essentially prisoners. Trina Alvarez, Moses Barber, Robert Brink, and a big guy who refuses to be known as anything other than "Krunch" all appear before their mysterious benefactor — who calls himself Prof — and are told they have all just died. Each of the Challengers bears an hourglass tattoo, and just as Prof is explaining that nature of that tattoo, one of the Challengers dies before he can go on his first mission.

Robert Brink, a Spyral operative, steps into a portal without looking back or waiting for Prof to explain what will happen to Brink if he leaves. As soon as Brink is on the other side of the portal, he screams and his body dissolves, as if he were literally melting. As Brink dies, Prof tells the other Challengers that he tried to warn the melting hero about what would happen if he left before he was done "coalescing" and that the same will happen to them if they try to follow Brink through the portal. Whenever the Challengers leave their base of operations known only as "The Mountain," they're on borrowed time. They'll share Brink's fate if they're ever gone for too long.

Seconds after Brink's death, a portal opens and deposits his replacement — Bethany Hopkins – among the group. A frozen hologram bearing Brink's likeness appears among those of other dead Challengers.

Slade Wilson is at war with Batman. In Deathstroke #32, Batman tries to stop Wilson from assassinating his latest mark, an obscure hero named Ace Masterson: The Human Dynamo. Deathstroke succeeds in killing Masterson, mainly because it's Masterson who hired him.

At the height of Deathstroke's battle with Batman, Masterson blasts them apart and tells his story.  In the '60s, he was one of a small group of heroes named the Justice Experience. Unfortunately, Masterson was the only member of the group to survive its first mission. Decades later, he's learned that while his powers are keeping him alive, he's still aging. More importantly, he's beginning to experience dementia, and he worries what might happen to the world if someone with his power were to become too confused. Rather than find out, he's chosen to hire Deathstroke to help him go out in a blaze of glory.

Unconvinced, Batman tries to teleport Dynamo to the Justice League satellite, but Dynamo uses his powers to stop the transport. Finally given an opening free of Batman's interference, Deathstroke shoots Masterson in the head, killing him.

Though obscure, this was not the first mention of the Justice Experience. They were created for the 1998 series Chase and used to bridge the time gap between the end of the Justice Society of America and the coming of the JLA. Most of them were murdered as well, though it turned out one member — the Bronze Wraith — was J'onn J'onzz (a.k.a. Martian Manhunter) in disguise.

Injustice 2 #66 claimed another hero's life in its cosmic war. Two issues ago, Sinestro fell to his daughter who was being mind-controlled by Starro. This time, Booster Gold and Blue Beetle were finally able to bring an end to Starro, but at the cost of Booster Gold's life. 

Beetle's Scarab showed him a scene from the distant past, of another Blue Beetle defeating Starro — but the woman in the vision had to sacrifice herself to do it. The current Blue Beetle tried to do the same thing once he and Booster reached Starro, but once Booster realized what Beetle was doing, he put his own breathing mask on Blue Beetle and instructed his little robot buddy Skeets to get the younger hero out of there. 

Just before his death, Booster was visited by Ted Kord — the Blue Beetle who died earlier in the series. A time-traveling version of Booster Gold brought Kord there so his best friend could be with him in his final moments. 

Cable was the second to fall in Extermination, and his death came at the hands of a fellow time traveler.

Extermination #1 begins with a mysterious hooded figure surveying a recently destroyed Xavier's Institute 20 years in the future. After talking to himself and saying he's going to have to "clean up" an "old bastard's" mess, he disappears in a bright flash of light.

Later, after Bloodstorm's death, the young Iceman is hurrying back to Xavier's Institute. An unseen assailant attacks Iceman, driving him into a clothing store. Cable appears out of the blue, urging Iceman to run. Iceman refuses and is tagged with some kind of dart emitting energy that incapacitates him. The hooded figure appears, overcomes Cable, and executes him – telling him he's "relieved of duty." When the rest of the X-Men appear and find Cable's body, Iceman is nowhere to be seen and none of the team's psychics can locate him.

The issue ends with the revelation that the hooded figure was a much younger and leaner version of Cable. We see him in a chamber with five stasis pods, one of which holds the young Iceman. A nearby screen shows the faces of all five of the original X-Men that Beast brought to the present in 2012's All-New X-Men, with a red X through Iceman's face. The young Iceman is presumably alive (otherwise, why bother with a stasis pod?), but there's no way just yet to know what fate young Cable has in mind for Iceman and his teammates.

Before murdering Lockjaw and Maximus, the Kree villain Vox had already slaughtered four of the lesser known Inhumans. Vox's attack on the Inhuman home of New Arctilan opens in Death of the Inhumans #1 with the villain marching past the broken corpses of Sterilon, Glass Girl, and Naja. Of the four slain Inhumans, we only see Flagman's precise manner of death. He tries in vain to hold off Vox, but the Kree villain runs him through with his energy scythe.

While Flagman is the only character we see clearly, Black Bolt confirms the other heroes' deaths in Death of the Inhumans #3. His voice is deadly, and in Death of the Inhumans #2, he vows to utter the names of fallen Inhumans in his war against the Kree; in the third issue, Bolt speaks the names of all four Inhumans in order to kill Kree soldiers as he escapes their base.  

All four heroes premiered in various series leading out of 2013's Inhumanity event which brought the Inhumans back to the Marvel forefront. Readers first met Sterilon and Naja in 2014's Inhuman, while Glass Girl and Flagman were introduced in 2015's Uncanny Inhumans.

While it would eventually be revealed that many of Vox's victims were not dead but instead were transported to the Kree empire, it seems unlikely this included these four Inhumans. We don't see exactly how Glass Girl, Naja, or Sterilon die, but their corpses are clearly shown in Death of the Inhumans #1. We do see how Flagman dies, and it has nothing to do with Lockjaw's teleportation powers (which were being mistaken for Black Bolt's destructive voice). Vox runs Flagman through with an energy scythe, and we see Flagman's lifeless body fall to the ground.

The 4-part "Sink Atlantis" storyline running through Aquaman and Suicide Squad ended with Task Force X losing one of its newest members — Master Jailer. 

Atlantis rose to the surface of the ocean because of the repercussions of Dark Knights: Metal, and as a result tensions mounted between the Atlanteans and the surface world. When they were sent on a covert mission to Atlantis, the Suicide Squad were shocked to learn the device they were supposed to activate in the underwater kingdom was a thermonuclear device meant to vaporize Atlantis and everyone in it. One of the two new recruits — the D-list mystic villain Lord Satannish — had no scruples about destroying Atlantis and used the opportunity to raid its vaults for the magic artifacts found within. 

It was one of these artifacts that helped save Atlantis. Once the Squad and Aquaman defeated Satannish, they still had to figure out away to stop the nuke. With the abilities both to unlock or lock anything, Master Jailer grabbed the nuke, used his abilities to unlock a magical casket, and put the nuke inside. Fearing there would still be a blowback from the nuke that might open the casket, Master Jailer kept it closed manually with his powers and was killed instantly by the resulting blast.

If you can judge by the opening salvos, Spider-Geddon — the sequel to the 2014 event Spider-Verse — is going to be just as bloody as its predecessor. Spider-Verse united dozens of alternate reality versions of Spider-Man from across Marvel's vast multiverse in battle against the Inheritors: a family of vampiric sadists who feed upon any Spider-themed heroes. 

With Spider-Geddon, the Inheritors are back — and their first victim was Spider-Man Noir, a gun-toting, grittier version of Spider-Man from 1930s New York City. Noir tried to stop the Inheritor Morlun from reviving, but he was too late. Before the hero could stop him, Morlun grabbed Noir and quickly devoured his life force. 

While many of the spider-killings we saw in 2014's Spider-Verse were affecting simply because of their brutality, the majority of those deaths didn't exactly send shockwaves through Marvel fandom because most of the victims of the event were created precisely to be victims. But that isn't the case here. Spider-Man Noir enjoyed two solo miniseries, was one of the more prominently featured Spidey alternates in Spider-Verse, and was one of the four playable Spideys in the 2010 video game Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. His abrupt death is a clear signal that Spider-Geddon intends to live up to its name. 

Marvel's latest Sentry relaunch ends with its fifth issue, and it also ends the sad life of Billy, a.k.a. Scout — Sentry's former sidekick. 

The series opened with the revelation that Doctor Strange and Iron Man worked to create a device called the Confluctor that allowed Sentry to live among people without being a threat. Every day, Bob Reynolds would use the Confluctor to transport his mind to a dream world where his split personalities of Sentry and the Void could roam free, leaving no one but plain old Bob Reynolds in the real world. 

Bob's old partner Billy sabotages the Confluctor. Relieved of one of his arms and working as a line cook, Billy is envious of Bob, who at least gets to be the Sentry in his artificial dreamworld. Billy teams up with Sentry's old villain Cranio to steal the Confluctor and to recreate Sentry's powers for himself. 

Sentry #4 ended with Bob merging his warring personalities of Sentry and the Void into a new, more powerful being. Sentry #5 opens with an enraged Scout attacking this new Sentry. It's soon clear Scout's body can't handle the new power coursing through it. The sidekick's body quickly deteriorates and he begs Sentry to end his pain. Sentry breaks Scout's neck, killing him. 

After a quick battle with the Avengers and an even shorter battle with Cranio, Sentry #5 ends with this new version of Sentry flying through space to destinations unknown.

Death of the Inhumans #4 ended with the reveal that many of the miniseries' victims weren't dead, and the fifth and final issue clarified things. Vox — the villain who wielded the powers of all the Inhumans — was not using Black Bolt's sonic voice to murder Inhumans, but rather he was using the teleportation powers of Lockjaw to send them to the Kree empire, where they were brought under the Kree's mental control. 

Once Black Bolt and his team discovered this, they mounted an assault on the Kree with the aid of Beta Ray Bill. They found — among many other Inhumans — Triton, Lockjaw, and Crystal alive but changed into new and hostile versions of Vox. 

With his voice damaged from an earlier attack by Vox, Black Bolt had only one good scream left, and he used it to kill almost all of the Inhumans who had been captured and warped by the Kree. Crystal and Lockjaw were able to be saved and their mental conditioning was reversed, but the aquatic Inhuman Triton fell to Black Bolt's voice along with most of his brethren. 

Probably the most blatant way the animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse differed from the comic book event that inspired it is the film doesn't have much of a body count. Marvel's Spider-Verse event didn't just introduce loads of alternate reality versions of Spider-Man; it killed a whole bunch of them, too. Obviously Into the Spider-Verse wanted a family-friendly appeal that would be spoiled by the brutal murders of dozens of spider-themed heroes, but there was one victim among its spiders. Peter Parker (as opposed to Peter B. Parker, the older, slovenly version of the character who survives) is beaten to death by the Kingpin early in the film. Miles Morales and the other Spider heroes from their respective realities rally at the home of Peter's Aunt May, where we learn the late Parker kept his own "Spider-Cave" below May's backyard shed.

Parker's death partly mirrored the character's fate in the now-defunct Ultimate line of Marvel's comics. The Ultimate version of Peter Parker died while fighting the Green Goblin (he has since returned) and was replaced by the new Spider-Man, Miles Morales. 

Extermination #4 ended with what appeared to be the death of the teenage Cyclops; the Scott Summers from the past that Beast brought to the present in All-New X-Men along with the rest of the original team. The mutant-hunting Ahab appeared to have speared the hero to a wall, killing him instantly. But Extermination #5 opened with the reveal that Ahab's real victim was Mimic — a mutant with the ability to copy the powers and appearances of others. Mimic disguised himself as Cyclops to distract Ahab and protect the genuine article. Unfortunately he paid for the ruse with his life. 

The original Mimic was the first member of the X-Men to have powers but not actually be a mutant. The Mimic who died in Extermination #4, on the other hand, was a mutant from a parallel Earth. He debuted in the series Exiles, where he led a team of alternate reality X-Men. 

Thanks to Mimic, all five original X-Men survived the miniseries and were sent back to the past where teen Jean Grey wiped all their memories, including her own. Of course, now that they're back in the past, they're destined to meet the original non-mutant Mimic. Who will also die. It pays to be someone other than Mimic. He dies a lot.

DC's new Freedom Fighters series opened in a manner you don't expect from a team title's first issue — by killing off the team.

Like the original 1976 Freedom Fighters series, this new one takes place on an alternate Earth, where Nazi Germany won World War II and now rules over the United States. The first issue of the new series opens on November 22, 1963 (the same date President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in the real world) at an underground resistance meeting in Dallas. The resistance fighters are pleasantly surprised when their superhero colleagues pay them a visit, but their happiness doesn't last long. The meeting is infiltrated by the S.S.'s Plastic Men (Nazis with powers like DC's Plastic Man). Human Bomb, Doll Man, and Black Condor are all captured and executed. All three are lashed to poles on public display. Doll Man is beheaded, Black Condor is shot, and Human Bomb is set on fire. Uncle Sam is attacked by Plastic Men in the streets, but he disappears into thin air.

Because apparently Freedom Fighters doesn't want the shortest comic book run in history, the end of the comic fast-forwards 55 years to the present day, when an explosion destroys a museum and kills several high-ranking Nazis in the process. A new iteration of Freedom Fighters unveils itself with a new Human Bomb, an African American Black Condor, a female version of Dollman, and Phantom Lady.