Ever since 2012, the Avengers have been perhaps the most beloved superhero team on the planet. However, just because this motley crew of heroes are emblazoned on everything from T-shirts to lunch boxes, that doesn’t automatically mean that they’re the good guys. Today, we’re looking at the Avengers’ report card, and determining if they really are as heroic as they seem…

25. They always settle their disagreements by fighting (and cause enormous damage in the process)

Ever since Captain America referred to a group of thousands of Wakandan soldiers, Asgardians, sorcerers and aliens as the Avengers at the climax of Endgame, it’s been clear that the group now encompasses every possible skill set and superpower.

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However, when the Avengers were first brought together by Nick Fury, they were mostly a collection of people who could punch and kick really well, albeit in a variety of different ways.

The OG Avengers only had two geniuses to rub together at first, and one of them would become a mindless punching machine at random.

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So it’s perhaps not surprising that every time an interpersonal issue springs up between members of the team, they skip straight to running at each other in slow motion and beating one another into submission.

Sometimes you’ll see a scene of the OG Avengers solemnly talking around a table, but the philosophical debates they have never seem to resolve anything.

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The second the group reaches an impasse, there’s no attempt to work through their differences or come to a compromise, and they just skip straight to a contest of who can hit the other the hardest.

24. They’ve left a trail of destruction around the world and don’t seem to care

Ever since Superman smashed into a few dozen skyscrapers in 2013’s Man of Steel, superhero movies have been forced to reckon with how the actions of super-powered people affect ordinary citizens.

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This has mostly come in the form of movies examining just how much property damage your average super-powered person does over the course of one fight, and how little the heroes themselves seem to care.

Even though the issue was first properly dealt with in the DC universe, it was the MCU that first showed off just how much collateral a superhero fight comes with.

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In 2012’s Avengers, huge swathes of New York are destroyed, partly by Loki’s army of armour-plated monsters, but also partly by the newly-formed group of heroes.

Though Spider-Man: Homecoming, Age of Ultron and Captain America: Civil War all recognise the far-reaching consequences of the Avengers’ destruction, the heroes themselves have never meaningfully changed their approach to fighting.

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Even in the wake of the Sokovia Accords, Vulture’s villain origin story and Wanda’s ongoing trauma related to her accidentally hurting innocents, the Avengers still leave a trail of destruction in their wake wherever they go, doubtless leaving countless livelihoods destroyed in the process.

23. They wouldn’t let Bruce Banner live in peace

There are numerous examples in the MCU of super-powered people who received their abilities against their will.

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However, all the Avengers ended up joining of their own free will, because they believed in what the group supposedly stood for or because they believed they could do some good in the world.

In contrast, Bruce Banner only ever wanted to be left alone to meditate, work quietly on science, and try to make the world a better place by hiding in a small community and working as a doctor.

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Instead, the Avengers forced Banner to constantly undergo pain and trauma as the Hulk, regardless of his own wants and needs.

Numerous times, Banner has been placed in a situation where he’s been used as a weapon against his friends, or has been manipulated and used to entertain or terrify others without his consent.

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In fact, Banner was taken advantage of for so long and to such a degree that his Hulk problems were exacerbated massively, to the point where his only strategy to reconciling his psyche involved becoming a giant green man in a suit permanently.

22. They use the Hulk as a blunt instrument

When Captain America first meets Bruce Banner in 2012’s Avengers, he says “Word is that you can find the cube”. When Banner asks “Is that the only word?”, Steve Rogers responds: “The only word I care about.”

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The message we’re supposed to take from this exchange is clear: Banner has been recruited into the Avengers as a scientist, not because of his capacity to turn into a giant green rage monster.

However, as the movies progress, it seems like Hulk is the true member of the Avengers, not Banner, as it is Hulk who is called upon to solve the problems in the MCU most.

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Most of the time, when a new villain shows up or a new world-ending threat is created, the Avengers’ solution involves getting Banner to go green and punch everything in sight.

Not only that, but whenever Banner gets to stick around as himself, it is made clear that Banner’s scientific know-how is no match for Tony Stark’s own genius.

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As further proof that it is Hulk’s skillset that is valued most by the Avengers, when Banner returns to Earth after Thor: Ragnorok having lost the ability to turn into the green monster, he is painted as both hilariously impotent and completely useless.

21. Tony profits from the cycle of destruction he helps to create

All of their interpersonal drama, their tendency to hurt people by accident and even the fact that their very existence invites challengers from other worlds could be forgiven if the Avengers were actually good at their jobs.

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However, every time they try to come up with a solution more complicated than ‘just punch/throw rockets at/lift up with magic the bad guy’, their plan inevitably makes things far worse than they were to begin with.

Ultron is the most obvious example of this, since the world-ending AI was originally created to protect the humans of Earth rather than eliminate them, but Vulture is another key example.

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Tony Stark’s idea to clean up all the mess caused by the Avengers after every hugely destructive battle they engage with is not actually a bad idea on the face of it.

However, it actually just ends up funnelling wealth into Stark’s already billion-dollar company, at the expense of working-class, non-super-powered contractors.

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Not only does that lead directly to the creation of Vulture, but it also feeds more money back into Stark Industries, meaning more weapon development that inevitably causes more harm in the long run.

20. Other superheroes want nothing to do with them

There’s no better indication of whether the Avengers are a net positive or negative than how other people in the hero business react to them.

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On that front, it’s really not looking good. In Ant-Man, when Scott Lang suggests getting the Avengers involved, Hank Pym is disgusted by the idea of letting Tony Stark anywhere near his scientific secrets.

Pym is definitely the paranoid type, but given Stark’s horrible decision-making, recklessness and insistence that everybody agree to the Sokovia Accords, can you really blame Pym for wanting to keep him at a distance?

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Pym is not the only one who seems unimpressed by the Avengers. Doctor Strange is underwhelmed by both Stark and Thor, and talks to them as if he is a teacher trying to discipline two wearying students.

Since Stange has gone through intense training and study that result in huge responsibilities, both as a sorcerer and a doctor, it’s easy to understand where his condescension comes from.

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T’Challa and Shuri also seem to regard Stark and Banner’s abilities as more adorable than truly impressive, and we get the feeling that all of Wakanda view the Avengers as bumbling idiots way out of their depth. Even Odin seems to think they’re hilariously inept, although that is unsurprising given that he is a god.

19. Captain America stole Peggy’s life

Avengers: Endgame ends with Captain America finally getting to keep his promise and indulge in a dance with Peggy Carter.

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It’s a sweet moment that is well-deserved after all the emotional strife that Steve Rogers has gone through over the years.

However, we already know that Peggy Carter did eventually get over Steve, enough to marry another man, have children, and live a happy and fruitful life that wasn’t dominated by grief over that one awkward co-worker that she kind of had a crush on back in the 40s.

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So by having Steve go back and be with his true love, and settle down with her until his own old age, it’s implied that Captain America changed the timeline.

Essentially, what Steve Rogers did amounts to deleting Peggy Carter’s whole life in order to write himself into it. That’s a pretty selfish decision given that Peggy was undeniably happy with the way things turned out for her.

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Not only that, but given that Rogers himself also attempted to get over his lost love by snogging Peggy Carter’s niece once upon a time, the whole scheme feels doubly icky.

18. Tony Stark inspires villains wherever he goes

Captain America once called Iron Man “Earth’s best defender”, and it’s certainly true that Tony Stark has defeated more than his fair share of dastardly villains over the years.

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What many people miss is the percentage of those villains who Stark single-handedly inspired to turn to evil, just by sheer force of being a cocky, vain playboy.

It’s understandable that, in the world of the MCU, people would be grateful to Tony for taking care of threats like Aldrich Killian.

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But remember: if Stark hadn’t abandoned the lonely scientist on a rooftop on New Year’s Eve in the first place, then Happy Hogan wouldn’t have been put in the hospital and the whole country wouldn’t have been terrorised by a fake, Liverpool Football Club-loving terrorist.

There’s more: if Tony hadn’t taken credit for and renamed Quentin Beck’s technology then Beck never would have become Mysterio, and poor Peter Parker could have had a chilled-out European school trip with his girlfriend.

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The world would, in Killian and Beck, have had two accomplished scientists and inventors, but it instead got two more villains to deal with thanks to Stark’s terrible social skills.

17. He’s also literally created a few of them

Tony Stark’s tendency to inspire people to turn to villainy by force of personality alone is bad enough, but Iron Man has also managed to create a few villains out of whole cloth, too.

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There’s no denying that Stark’s intentions creating Ultron were honourable – who could blame him for wanting to put a suit of armour around the world and make the Avengers obsolete?

But his decision was also an international relations disaster waiting to happen, a huge violation of civil liberties and just a bad idea that wound up costing numerous lives.

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Stark was also in charge of Stark Industries when their weapons were bought and used to destroy civilian homes in Sokovia, so it’s fair to say that Tony is also responsible for the creation of the Scarlet Witch.

Wanda Maximoff experienced massive trauma thanks to Stark, and would go on to stack up her own horrific body count even once she had been redeemed and inducted into the Avengers.

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Even the boyfriend Stark accidentally made for Wanda only ended up causing her more emotional turmoil in the end, since the loss of Vision and Wanda’s Stark-based childhood trauma combined to make her accidentally hold a whole town hostage.

16. Captain America has also created his fair share of villains

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Nobody is knocking Tony Stark off the top spot when it comes to villain creation, but Captain America also has some bad guys to answer for.

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Brock Rumlow, the Hydra agent tasked with pretending to be a S.H.I.E.L.D operative and shadowing Steve Rogers, was hardly on the side of good in the first place, but by all accounts, he was just a dude attempting to do his job and live his life.

That is until his clash with Captain America and the Falcon caused him to get crushed almost to the point of death under a building (he was also dramatically scarred in the process).

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Obviously, someone would hold a grudge after something like that, which is why it’s unforgivable that Rogers was so preoccupied that he allowed Rumlow to escape from the hospital and evolve into the freelance terrorist Crossbones.

That would be a big enough failing on its own, but Captain America was also too mired in his own interpersonal drama to notice Crossbones’ bomb vest and intention to blow himself up – which led to Scarlet Witch throwing Crossbones into a building where he subsequently killed countless people other than himself.

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All of this could have been solved if Captain America could have just waited around in the hospital to ensure Rumlow didn’t escape. Why didn’t he? Could he just not handle terrible vending machine coffee?

15. They worked for Hydra for years without realising

The OG Avengers have at least two geniuses on their roster, along with someone who’s supposed to have an intimate knowledge both of Hydra as an organisation and how military operations work.

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They also have a long-time S.H.I.E.L.D special agent for good measure. So how is it that nobody was even a little bit suspicious of S.H.I.E.L.D until Natasha Romanoff uncovered their secrets in Captain America: The Winter Soldier?

If two genius scientists, a literal god and one of S.H.I.E.L.D’s own special agents couldn’t even notice that the organisation they put their trust in was actually being run by one of the oldest terror organisations on Earth, then why do they keep being trusted to solve more complex problems?

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Whenever they can’t punch their way into saving the world, the majority of the Avengers become completely useless, leaving Natasha to do all the heavy lifting.

It might seem completely normal that S.H.I.E.L.D could be overrun with corruption without the Avengers noticing, but the team has always maintained a healthy amount of scepticism towards Nick Fury himself and the organisation more generally.

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Not only that, but Tony Stark has access to the most powerful and far-reaching AI software in the world – so why was it left to Romanoff to figure it out?

14. They recruit children

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The fact that the Avengers can’t help but respond to every ideological difference by punching, electrocuting, shooting and throwing each other rather than successfully talking things through like grown-ups is bad enough.

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However, the way the OG group consistently pull other people into their petty problems is definitely even worse, especially when the heroes they pick to get involved have their own lives to live.

Captain America calling on Ant-Man is deeply unfair, since the fight has absolutely nothing to do with Scott Lang (also, the poor guy has a family he’s supposed to be focusing on).

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Lang’s involvement in the fight leads to him being placed under house arrest, which in turn temporarily ruins his relationship with his new girlfriend and his mentor in one fell swoop. However, what’s truly unconscionable is Tony Stark’s decision to bring in Peter Parker, a literal high-schooler with zero stakes in the fight.

Iron Man uses Spider-Man in the hopes that Captain America will be forced by his own inherent goodness to take it easy on a kid, but even if he was right that’s still a huge risk to take!

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The whole thing is made even worse by the fact that Parker idolises Stark and has just received a high-tech suit from him, so he obviously couldn’t say no even if he wanted to. Parker should be focusing on exams and prom, not beating up a supersoldier from the 1940s! How is this OK?

13. Many of the Avengers became superheroes out of self-interest

There are numerous examples of heroes who were burdened with superpowers without their consent, both within the MCU and outside of it.

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Spider-Man, Scarlet Witch, Bruce Banner and even Vision are all examples of heroes and members of the Avengers who never set out to save the world, but ended up having to do so anyway.

On the other end of the spectrum, however, are those members of the Avengers who either sought out the role of hero or ended up becoming one because of their own self-interest.

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Doctor Strange is the clearest example of this, since he only set out on the path to becoming a sorcerer to cure his physical injuries, which were in themselves a result of his reckless and selfish behaviour.

Doctor Strange learning literal magic only to use it as a miraculous undo button for his disabilities in order to get back to his day job is pretty egregious, but he’s far from the only example of a self-interested hero.

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Tony Stark, Black Widow and Star-Lord all stumbled into heroism to atone for their less than honourable past actions, and have had to battle selfish impulses at every turn, even after committing to the path of the hero.

As for Peter Parker – did he really get into the superhero business out of a desire to help others, or was it more because he wanted to have some fun doing it?

12. The Guardians of the Galaxy are all literally criminals

The fact that Earth’s Best Defender is a billionaire with daddy issues who is constantly at war with his own tendency to fix every problem on the planet by himself is pretty bad, of that there’s no doubt.

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However, Tony Stark doesn’t even crack the top three when it comes to liabilities who probably wouldn’t be accepted as heroes if the people of Earth knew the truth about them.

The Guardians of the Galaxy are literally entirely comprised of hardened criminals when we first meet them, and most of them don’t seem to have a natural inclination towards heroism.

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The only one who is even vaguely personable and capable of extending empathy to others is Groot, and even he becomes a stroppy teenager by the time Infinity War rolls around.

Even if you excuse the (formerly genocidal) Gamora and Nebula on account of them having been traumatised, kidnapped and raised by an abusive megalomaniac, that doesn’t excuse the fact that Peter Quill, Drax and Rocket seem to have no regrets about their previous lives of crime.

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Since they are accountable to no one and apparently have no qualms about defying the law, who’s to say that the Guardians wouldn’t turn back to lawbreaking the second it stood to benefit them?

11. Doctor Strange is allergic to rules, and causes world-threatening problems he then has to solve

In some ways, Doctor Strange has more of a moral code than the countless other heroes who now comprise the Avengers roster.

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He was horrified the first time he ever killed someone, he has always valued discipline and careful study, and he has always been willing to accept that saving the world sometimes requires sacrifice.

Maybe the best evidence of Stephen Strange’s arc culminating in selflessness is the fact that he was more than willing to spend eternity dying over and over again, just to stop Dormammu from eating Earth.

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With that said, Strange’s capacity for true heroism, foresight and seriousness is balanced out by one great character flaw: he’s a complete narcissist.

Strange always thinks he knows best, even in situations where he knows nothing about the context or consequences of his actions. This often even leads to him causing the problems that he later has to solve, such as the Dormammu time loop.

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There’s no doubt that as Doctor Strange gets more powerful as a sorcerer, without having the decades of formal training that others in his position usually get, his certainty that he can do no wrong will only become more dangerous and unchecked.

10. Nick Fury will leave incompetent shapeshifters in charge just so he can go on holiday

When you really think about it, the incompetence and bad decision-making that the Avengers so often display isn’t completely their fault considering their boss is almost worse than they are.

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Across the MCU, Nick Fury has always seemed like a stoic and intelligent good guy, even once it was revealed that the tragic backstory behind his iconic eye patch was actually just that he got scratched by a stroppy alien kitty.

However, 2019’s Spider-Man: Far from Home revealed that Nick Fury is just as likely to shirk his duty and abandon his post as any other member of the Avengers going through some emotional turmoil.

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The film showed that Nick Fury has been on holiday for an undetermined amount of time, and has been using the shape-shifting Skrull Talos to keep up appearances while he chills out on a beach.

No offence to Talos, since he is a brilliant strategist and leader in his own right, but the Skrull is proven to be seriously out of his depth all the way through Spider-Man: Far from Home.

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Talos doesn’t realise that Mysterio is actually just a former employee of Tony Stark, which is something that Nick Fury definitely would have known thanks to his extensive intelligence on each Avenger. Not only that, but even once Talos realises that Mysterio is evil, he’s less than useless when it comes times to help stop him.

9. Star-Lord single-handedly caused Thanos’ victory

Speaking of gross incompetence, Nick Fury isn’t the only one who completely fails in his duty at a crucial moment.

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In a now-famous scene in Avengers: Infinity War, Star-Lord lets his anger over Thanos killing Gamora get the better of him, and thus ruins the carefully constructed plan that the heroes have put together to stop the mad titan.

It’s obviously understandable that Quill would have difficulty accepting the death of his partner, but his violent reaction single-handedly dooms half the universe.

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His inability to put his emotions aside for the good of the entire world is not only annoying and irresponsible but also extremely telling of his true priorities, which are more about protecting those close to him than actual heroism.

Put simply: the best way for Peter Quill to have honoured Gamora’s memory and satisfied his need for revenge would have been for him to stick to the plan and defeat Thanos once and for all.

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However, the famous Star-Lord didn’t have the emotional maturity or foresight to figure that out, and Black Widow and Vision died – along with many others soon after – in addition to Gamora because of that.

8. They’re all selfish when it comes to love

As egregious as Peter Quill’s actions in Avengers: Infinity War are, he’s not even the only Avenger who has acted selfishly and impulsively because of love.

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Scarlet Witch’s love for Vision led to her inadvertently brainwashing a whole town of people, and forcing them to become puppets in her nightmarish reality show.

Aside from Wanda and Peter, so many of the Avengers have abandoned all of their notions of selfless heroism whenever someone important to them enters the picture.

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For example, Tony Stark refuses to engage with the profession of superhero-ing at all following the defeat of Thanos, even when the stakes involve bringing back half of Earth’s entire population, just because he doesn’t want to risk his young daughter’s life.

Way back in 2012, the very first Avengers movie showed that Thor couldn’t put his love for his brother Loki aside, even when the trickster god was terrorising New York and forcing ordinary citizens to kneel to him.

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This loyalty might be admirable in any other situation, but all it did was lead to Thor getting stabbed in the abdomen, as well as almost allowing Loki to gain the upper hand permanently.

7. They think some problems are beneath them

Early on in Spider-Man: Far from Home, Peter Parker asks in frustration where the Avengers are, and why they can’t come to the rescue and deal with the European threats that are ruining his school trip.

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It’s a fair question, especially since the Avengers are all adults, while poor Peter Parker is still definitely a kid. Talos, masquerading as Nick Fury, completely dodges the question.

At the end of the film, Talos confesses to the real Nick Fury that he simply didn’t know what to say when he was asked about the Avengers, and didn’t have any idea where they were or how to contact them.

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That’s not Talos’ fault at all, since he’s never actually worked with any member of the Avengers barring Captain Marvel, who was certifiably off-world at the time of the film.

With that said, there’s actually no reason the surviving Avengers couldn’t have shown up to help Peter out! They all have the resources, time and money to travel from America to Europe, and the faux-elemental attacks were all over the news.

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The only conclusion that can be drawn from the fact that none of the Avengers showed up is that they all believed that recovering from the trauma of Endgame was more important than helping out a literal child, one who should instead have been attending museums and holding hands with his girlfriend.

6. They were taught all they know by deeply flawed mentors

Requiring your world-defending superheroes to be decent people does feel like placing the bar absolutely on the floor, which is why it’s so horrifying when the Avengers still manage to trip over it.

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However, maybe it is asking too much to expect some of these heroes to act like nice people, when several of them have had such deeply flawed mentors.

There are numerous Avengers who have been taught to be heroes by people who clearly have no idea how to do it themselves, which only perpetuates the incompetence of super-powered people in the MCU.

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The most obvious case is Doctor Strange learning from the Ancient One, who draws her power from the dark dimension and artificially extends her life, while lying to the acolytes who worship her about how she has become so powerful.

However, Ant-Man also learns to be a hero from Hank Pym, who is paranoid, bitter and suspicious of any other people involved in the world of superhero-ing. Obviously, if Scott Lang’s personable nature didn’t override those lessons that he’d been taught, then half the world would never have been saved in Endgame.

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Even Tony Stark, Earth’s best defender and the hero who kicked off the whole MCU, isn’t exactly the best mentor to Peter Parker. He berates him for acting recklessly at the beginning of Homecoming and then rewards him for that same impulse by the end of the movie.

5. Black Panther’s isolationist politics were bad

Compared to the huge personality flaws of characters like Tony Stark, Stephen Strange and Steve Rogers, T’Challa seems like a pretty measured and rational individual.

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However, there’s no telling how long T’Challa has held the position of the Black Panther before we meet him at the end of Civil War.

That means there’s no way to know how long T’Challa was an unquestioning supporter of his family’s isolationist government policy.

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In Black Panther, T’Challa and his family all come to see how badly Killmonger was treated, and this inspires them to begin reaching out to the world and share their resources with the disenfranchised and exploited.

With that said, most of what we’ve seen of T’Challa so far has involved him lionising a father with dark secrets, unquestioningly accepting ancestral policies that leave the rest of the world out in the cold, and getting involved with the Avengers’ petty squabbles in Civil War.

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None of those are super admirable qualities, which is why it’s so damning for the MCU’s superheroes as a whole that T’Challa is considered the most competent of them all.

4. Some of the Avengers literally started out as villains

There has always been room for vigilantes, antiheroes and reformed bad guys in superhero media, as evidenced by the numerous comic books dedicated to characters like Deadpool, V and Judge Dredd.

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However, it is slightly concerning just how many Avengers started out not just as sympathetic heroes who are victims of untenable circumstances, but as out-and-out bad guys from the beginning.

When you saw Loki being likened to a famous German dictator in 2012’s Avengers, did you ever imagine that he’d become a redeemed and beloved member of the Avengers team?

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When Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver made it clear that they didn’t care how many others got hurt so long as they could enact their vengeance on Tony Stark, did you think they would be invited to take up the Avengers’ mantle?

The MCU would be a much darker place if absolutely no one was allowed to earn forgiveness, and villains were condemned to death because of actions that they mostly felt they had no other choice than to enact.

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With that said, it is a concern just how quickly Bucky, Scarlett Witch and Loki were welcomed into the fold, not to mention the countless others whose backstories we know nothing about, like Korg and Rocket.

3. Their untreated psychological issues get people killed

There are a lot of things that constantly threaten the Avengers’ stability, from their squabbles over government policy to their inability to trust each other to their penchant for inviting in new members they know nothing about.

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With that said, the most serious threat to their ability to act as a cohesive unit is without a doubt the fact that they can’t take their own – or anybody else’s – mental health seriously.

Wanda Maximoff’s deteriorating mental state from the death of her brother all the way up to the death of Vision causes her to misstep at several points across the MCU.

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If Stark had been more aware of her mental strife, then he would not have secretly put her under house arrest, which in turn would have prevented her accidental violent outburst. Not only that, but if the remaining Avengers had been more sensitive to her grief following Vision’s death, then the events of WandaVision probably wouldn’t have happened.

Tony Stark’s inability to recognise his own PTSD and panic attacks following the events of 2012’s Avengers also cause the events of Age of Ultron and Iron Man 3.

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Had Tony Stark taken his own mental health seriously and attempted to treat it with therapy rather than with more suit-building, then he probably wouldn’t have sabotaged his relationship with Pepper, jeopardised her life by giving his address to the press, or allowed her to be subjected to the tortures of the Extremis program. Whoops.

2. Hawkeye was a murderous vigilante for five years

To some degree, it’s understandable that the Avengers are willing to accept former villains or troubled characters into their ranks.

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Taking dangerous, super-powered people away from the general population and helping them to learn the value of saving people is definitely a noble project, as well as one that helps to keep the world safe.

However, what’s less forgivable is the Avenger’s tendency to accept people back into their ranks after they’ve descended way past the point of no return into villainy.

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While we can empathise with wanting Bucky to be freed from his Winter Solider brainwashing or wanting Wanda to gain full control over her powers, what’s the justification for Hawkeye?

After the events of Infinity War, Hawkeye distances himself from all his surviving former friends, changes his name and begins roaming from country to country, indiscriminately killing criminals.

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Clint is so brutal, and so intent on covering his tracks, that the Avengers can’t track him down without serious effort, and legendary crime rings are left cowering from him. And yet absolutely no thought is given to whether he can be trusted to be welcomed back onto the team?!

1. Mantis enabled Ego to kill countless people

Ask anyone who the sweetest, least-threatening hero in the whole MCU is and you’ll invariably get one answer: Mantis.

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Mantis’ powers are mostly defensive: she can put people to sleep, sense people’s emotions and even calm people down with her touch.

Mantis isn’t really a fighter, is completely naive, and doesn’t seem to take offence to anything that anyone says to her, even when she is being insulted directly to her face.

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That’s why it’s so hard to reconcile her sweet nature with the fact that she aided the celestial Ego as he tricked countless amounts of his estranged children into coming to his planet and then dying for him.

Mantis’ sweet facade is so terrifying because it hides the fact that she has been complicit in Ego’s murder and manipulation for an indeterminate amount of time. She only breaks away from him because she finally learns that other beings are capable of love… which makes her even more terrifying if you think about it.

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