Marvel did a lot for the superhero over the decades, taking them in directions their distinguished competition didn’t. Things got more serious and real for the heroes, and the same thing had to happen to the villains as well. The House of Ideas has been creating some of the most complex, beloved villains in the history of fiction, many of whom have defined what being a supervillain in the Marvel Universe can be. However, they also pushed the idea that villains can redeemed, something that changed the ways readers looked at their favorite bad guys, opening the door for many of them to join the heroes.
Almost all of the most popular Marvel villains have been redeemed, but that doesn’t mean they deserved it. The publisher has given readers some of the ghastliest villains ever and that can make some of them very hard to actually redeem. These seven Marvel villains are so evil, they’re irredeemable no matter how many times they’ve joined their heroic foes.
7) Cassandra Nova
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New X-Men brought the X-Men into the 21st century, and introduced one of the most evil villains ever. Cassandra Nova is the evil twin sister of Charles Xavier, a mutant with amazing psionic powers. Xavier tried to kill her in the womb, but she survived, and has made it her mission to destroy everything he loves. She committed genocide, killing millions of mutants, not as the ultimate goal of her mission, but just to hurt him. Since then, she’s continued to try to destroy mutantkind and torment her brother, and she has given no indication of stopping.
6) Carnage
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Cletus Kasidy is the last person anyone would want to bond with a Klintar symbiote, and he has proved it time and again. The serial killer has used the power given to him by the symbiote to commit mass murder every time he’s able. There’s not a pleasant bone in his body; he’s unequivocally a monster. The closest he’s come to redemption was when his morality was inverted in AXIS, but that wasn’t actually redemption. On his own, he will never give up killing and if he did, he’s shed so much innocent blood that no one would ever believe him redeemed.
5) Doctor Doom
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Doctor Doom is Marvel’s most complex monster, but he’s a monster nonetheless. We’ve seen Doom on the side of angels numerous times, but that doesn’t change who he really is. Doom is a noble man, but he’s also someone who would kill and skin the love of his life in order to gain the power to kill Reed Richards. He’ll save the universe, but he’ll do it by creating a fiction and ruling everyone with an iron fist. He’ll give the world everything they need, but he’ll also drain the lifeforce of his Latverian subjects to power his spells and keep the world the way he wants it. He refuses redemption, even when he’s heroic, because he believes completely in his own greatness.
4) Baron Zemo
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Baron Helmut Zemo is the son of Nazi leader Baron Heinrich Zemo. He was raised to be a Nazi and a member of Hydra, and has embraced that lifestyle over the decades. He’s a monster who wants to rule the world, and he’ll do anything to make that happen. He’s pretended to be a hero before, and even could have completely left villainy behind with the Thunderbolts, but he always chooses evil. However, with his history and upbringing, even if he decided to become a hero, there would be no making up for all of the terrible, monstrous things he’s done.
3) Sabretooth
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Sabretooth is Wolverine’s most brutal enemy, which is saying something. Victor Creed was abused for being a mutant as a child, and eventually killed his family. Since then, he’s used his powers to do whatever he wants, and what he usually wants to do is kill. He’s done good things over the years, working with the government against all kinds of bad people, but he’s also a mass murderer who loves to cause pain and suffering. He’s tried to fool the X-Men into thinking he was redeemed numerous times and has always betrayed them. He did have his morality inverted in AXIS, becoming a new person, but on his own, he never would make up for his decades of crimes.
2) Mister Sinister
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Mister Sinister is Marvel’s most dangerous villain, and he has no use for redemption. He’s all about experimenting on people and creating a world where he is the top of the food chain. He relishes the suffering he causes, and is constantly out to manipulate everyone so that he can gain more power. He’s the kind of person who worked with the Nazis not because he believed in their ethos, but because it would let him experiment on people. There is nothing good or pure inside of him, and he’s a monster who will never go down any path but the one he’s on.
1) Red Skull
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Red Skull is not just a Nazi, he is the Nazi in the Marvel Universe. Johann Schmidt was specifically chosen by Hitler to become his perfect killing machine and has spent decades living up what the Nazi fuhrer saw in him. There is not a part of him that wants to do good; all he believes in is the racial superiority of the Aryan race (he was inverted by AXIS, but everyone knew that was temporary). Nazis are usually pretty unapologetic, and the Red Skull is definitely someone who isn’t sorry for anything he’s done.
What Marvel villains do you think are irredeemable? Leave a comment in the comment section below and join the conversation on the ComicBook Forums!