10 MCU Characters Killed Off Way Too Early

Despite an ever-growing lineup of big-screen superheroes, people have, indeed, been known to kick the bucket in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Some are gone for good, others leave us with just the right amount of ambiguity to tease a potential return - and some create such a devastating void that their departure sets whole subsequent story arcs in motion.

What is certain, however, is that a select few of these characters were shown the door shockingly early, despite us having a lot more to see from them. Heroes and villains alike have fallen victim to this premature termination, leaving us to speculate as to how they might have grown and evolved had they stuck around a little longer.

The point of this list is to identify those fallen characters of the MCU that left us before their time, no matter if they had it coming or if there's a chance they might still show up again further down the road.

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!

The average movie-goer would be forgiven for assuming that this character was included just for some nice CGI fight scenes. In fact, Kurse is an established character in Marvel Comics lore, every bit as important as the main villain of the movie in which he appears.

In Thor: The Dark World (2013), Algrim the Strong is a member of the Dark Elves, awoken along with his leader Malekith after a five-thousand-year hibernation. He becomes the last of the Kursed, a group of hulking berserkers that tore through their enemies in ancient times.

Later, he runs afoul of Thor and Loki, who are able to best him with one of his own implosion grenades, causing him to be crushed down into nothing.

It's certainly a cool manner of departure - but the problem here is that Kurse is given the Bane treatment from Batman and Robin, i.e. his personality from the comics is stripped away to leave him little more than a mindless beast. Had Algrim been treated more as a real character and not just some dumb henchman, he may have been deserving of a more timely death at the hands of the God of Thunder.

Also, in the comics, Kurse eventually turns on Malekith, so that would've been interesting to see. Oh well.