18 Most Heartbreaking Moments In The MCU (So Far)

If there's one thing the MCU has achieved as a franchise, it's crushing souls - in the best way possible, of course. The emotional beats each film hits have pulled a few tears out of even the most hardened of audiences, and in the past decade, there have been quite a few moments that have achieved certified tear-jerker status in Marvel's filmography.

Not all of them were deaths (but, let's be real, most were), which speaks to Marvel's ability to build up and pay off fans' emotional investment in what are essentially fictional characters, living in a world full of aliens and silly costumes and a man who turns green when he's angry. Audiences have been with these characters for a decade now, and it's easy to feel their pain as naturally as one's own without the filmmakers needing to resort to cheap tricks; stoic, single-tear actor cries, conveniently sharing your mother's name with the guy you're punching, or otherwise.

Here are some of the most emotional, painful, heartbreaking, and tear-jerking moments in the MCU so far, counting from the first Iron Man all the way to Infinity War.

Which is to say, SPOILERS FOR INFINITY WAR are included in this list, along with every single MCU film before it.

Not a death, not even a sad moment overall, but a triumphant one, this particular scene stands out for how well Tom Holland portrays it. It's a scene ripped straight out of his comic book incarnation, and though some have considered it a "cheesy" portrayal, it's still a very effective and faithful rendition of its iconic comics counterpart.

In Spider-Man: Homecoming, following his encounter with The Vulture, Peter Parker is buried under tons of rubble, trapped with no hope of escape. Though the audience knows he'll triumph in the end, his sobbing cries for help, screaming that he can't move, remind the audience in the harshest way that he's just a kid, a scared child who has no one looking for him, nobody who even knows he's there.

This makes his eventual escape, finding the strength within himself to lift the debris, even more satisfying, but the desperation and fear Tom Holland's Peter Parker portrays in this scene hurts the heart. It's especially effective for older audience members, who likely waffled between enjoying Spider-Man's heroic antics and being terrified for the well-being of the quirky, adorable teenager they formed the strange parental urge to protect.