10 MCU Heroes Who Started Out As Villains
6. Nebula
Nebula was much the same as Gamora in her early years. Another of Thanos’ adopted daughters, she was trained to be a master assassin and to aid in his infinity quest, but she kept losing to Gamora whenever they fought.
This led to her father replacing her piece by piece with machinery, never hiding the fact that Gamora was his favourite. With a stronger desire to please Thanos than her sister, Nebula took a little while longer to come around to the forces of good, but ultimately joined the Guardians in their fight against Ego.
Still potentially counted as more of an anti-hero at this point, Nebula’s only drive after defeating Ego was to murder her father. She failed to stop him from snapping his fingers, but in the five years that followed, she joined the Avengers, and truly became a superhero.
Her knowledge of Thanos, space, and the Infinity Stones were invaluable when plotting the time heist, and she was instrumental in defeating Thanos in 2023. Quite literally, she had to kill her former, villainous self, and if there is a better metaphor for a redemption arc in the MCU, this writer hasn’t found it.