10 Most Heroic Things That Thanos Has Ever Done
You either die a villain, or live long enough to see yourself become a hero.
If there's one thing that most people would consider a firm fact about Thanos, it's that he's completely evil, through and through. After all, this is the entire basis of both his role in the iconic MCU series, and also of much of his time in comics, where he generally exists as the biggest evil in whatever series that includes him.
Bizarrely, though, Thanos being one of Marvel's most intimidating bad guys hasn't stopped him from doing some downright heroic things.
It makes an uncomfortable kind of sense, as while Thanos wants to kill whoever he sets his targets on, he also doesn't want the world to end, meaning that many superheroes actively recruit Thanos to do good when they need a real powerhouse to fight another world-threatening evil.
Though it's weird to see Thanos happily fighting alongside the likes of Thor and Doctor Strange, it also creates an undeniably fascinating dynamic, as any team comprised of people who low-key want to murder each other should.
Between saving the world, saving the universe, and helping his worst enemies, sometimes it seems Thanos exists solely to remind us that even evil has standards.
10. Murdering His Evil Future Self - Thanos Wins
Murder in and of itself isn't all that heroic an action - as the countless prisons filled with those convicted of manslaughter and various degree of murder may have already suggested to you. But, under the right circumstances, it can be, as is the case with Thanos killing his future self in Donny Cates' Thanos Wins series.
Though the pair of purple people-killers do team up at the start of the series, the young Thanos quickly sours on his older counterpart, as he realises the old man is obsessed with murder not to assert his own power, but out of worry that he'll never properly see Death again. He's living in fear due to his profound desire to die and be reunited with her.
Realising that his future self kills countless people not in a bid to change the world but rather out of weakness, Thanos steals the Time Stone, and tells his doppelgänger that he won't kill him, and he won't do any of the things that got him there - which means he effectively saves the lives of half the Marvel universe by refusing to walk in his old footsteps.
While this may not sound profoundly heroic, the fact that Thanos saw a universe where he got everything he'd been after his whole life, and actively rejected it because he felt it was dishonourable, is a surprisingly moral move.