Mandarin (Marvel Cinematic Universe)

For example:

The Mandarin (MCU)

The Mandarin (Comics)

The Mandarin (Iron Man: Armored Adventures)

Xizor (Star Wars)

Xu Wenwu

Xivhkalrainik (Xalek)

Am I the only who's a little tired of almost every antagonist from phase 4 being redeemed or reformed. Let's look at how many...

-Wanda has been redeemed like 3 times at this point.

-Ikaris changed his mind at the last minute because love? Even though he was ready to kill his friends

-Gorr also redeemed or at least gave up villainy at the end

-They turned Taskmaster into a controlled puppet instead of a ruthless killer

-Red Guardian and Melina all of a sudden become heroes even though they are terrible people and were Dreykov's allies

- All of the villains from Ms Marvel also made last minute changes of heart because reasons

-All of the Spiderman multiverse villains were redeemed/cured even if didn't make sense

- Abomination went from a Power-Hungry, sadistic murderer to a nice guy (this is easily the dumbest change)

-Wenwu also sacrificed himself and redeemed himself Vader style

-Namor and US Agent seemingly redeemed themselves as antiheroes but this makes sense for them though

Only Dreykov, Karli, Arthur Harrow, Sharon, Agatha and Infinity Ultron didn't redeem themselves and most of them are either really lame or pure evil. I'm not saying there should be no redemption for any of them, but redemption shouldn't be a common and easy way. It's become too common and it's done extremely lazy.

Anyway, what do you guys think?

“I told my men they wouldn’t be able to kill you if they tried. Glad I was right.”

—Xu Wenwu—

Xu Wenwu (徐文武) AKA The Mandarin from the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Although Lyutsifer Safin is my other favorite villain of this year, Wenwu got my attention the first time I saw him in Shang-Chi and the legend of the Ten Rings. I thought Wenwu would be a Pure Evil villain who is like Ego, but after I saw the movie, I was wrong, he is a tragic villain who lost his wife due to his past coming to haunt him and denying him a chance of happiness and became the monster he is now…

Even though he trained harshly his son and neglected his daughter, he still loved them both nonetheless. By the time I watched him, he reminded me of Dracula from Netflix’s Castlevania show, as they both lost their wives and returned to their evil ways after that, both almost killed their children and both were defeated not by any sorts of magic or power, they were defeated by the love of their respective sons (Dracula to Allucard, Wenwu to Shang-Chi).

Sorry if this was already asked btw.

But if I had to make a list of my favorite villains from the MCU, I would honestly put Xu Wenwu (The Mandarin) on top of the list.

He is first portrayed as a megalomaniac and a sociopath but he’s actually one with a soul. The one thing he loves more than power is his family.