Superheroes We Lost In 2022

Once upon a time, superheroes were functionally immortal. No writer would dare kill off a potentially profitable intellectual property ... until 1980's "The Dark Phoenix Saga" and 1993's "The Death of Superman" came along. Or, more precisely, until the characters killed in these storylines were resurrected. After Jean Grey and Clark Kent proved death needn't last forever, the days of de facto invulnerability for every cape-clad crimefighter were over. 

Nowadays, superheroes die like flies. Sometimes they die to give monthly sales a quick shot in the arm, sometimes they die for the sake of a shocking plot twist, and every once in a while, they die to bittersweetly close out an era of blockbuster cinema. The good news is, superheroes can also come back from the dead at any time, for essentially all the same reasons. 

What follows is an attempt to chronicle all the superheroes or superhero-adjacent characters across comics, television, and film whose time upon this mortal coil came to a close in stories published or released in 2022. Let us now solemnly mourn these avatars of justice and might with whom we have parted ways ...for the time being, at least.    

Updated on January 4, 2023: Like any year, 2022 saw many superheroes take their final breath, and this list reflects all the do-gooders who fell in the line of duty.

In 2016's "Suicide Squad," only two members of Task Force X bite the big one. In contrast, 2021's "The Suicide Squad" includes a wholesale massacre of DC C-list baddies. Happily, this slaughter does not include Peacemaker (John Cena), allowing him to return for his HBO Max series.

Perhaps in the interest of consistency with the film, "Peacemaker" ends Season 1 with fewer characters than it starts. Most of these characters are ordinary humans or members of the hostile alien race colloquially known as butterflies. The butterfly Ik Nobe Llok, who inhabits the body of ex-mercenary Clemson Murn (Chukwudi Iwuji), is sort of both. And in many respects, his ultimately self-sacrificing quest to prevent his fellow butterflies from annihilating the human race qualifies as super-heroic. 

After the butterflies take over the police force of Evergreen, Washington, Murn/Ik Nobe throws himself under the metaphorical bus to allow Harcourt (Jennifer Holland) and Adebayo (Danielle Brooks) to evade execution and carry on with their mission. In a tragic twist, the butterfly Eek Stack Ik Ik — sometimes referred to as "Goff" and inhabiting the body of Detective Sophie Song (Annie Chang) — happens to be the individual who repeatedly pulls the trigger on Murn.  

This one lands squarely in the "superhero-adjacent" category. Mike Murdock is the twin brother of Matt Murdock, the occasionally secret identity of the crimson crime-slapper, Daredevil. As Mike Murdock points out in 2022's "Devil's Reign #5," he technically doesn't exist. Initially, Matt Murdock uses the phony persona of his imaginary twin brother Mike to throw off folks who've come a little too close to figuring out his secret identity. Later, due to circumstances involving the Inhumans and a reality-warping Norn Stone, Mike Murdock goes from being an idea of a person to a tangible person, and inserts himself into the canonical Marvel timeline. 

Basically, Mike is a fake person with a past that never happened, but he's the only one who knows that. By the time "Devil's Reign" — a miniseries by Chip Zdarsky and Marco Checchetto — rolls around, Mike Murdock is a fairly high-ranking affiliate of organized crime in Hell Kitchen. Also, at his brother's request, he frequently pretends to be Matt while Matt's off doing Daredevil-related business. In "Devil's Reign #5," he happens to be disguised as Matt in Matt's apartment, right around the time Wilson Fisk regains his memory of Matt's secret identity and decides to extract lethal revenge. Lacking his brother's ninja skills or hyper-alert senses, Mike is swiftly beaten to death and returns to his natural state of nonexistence.

In 2022's "The Human Target," private investigator Christopher Chance, aka the Human Target, ingests a slow-acting poison intended for Lex Luthor. He has 12 days to figure out who's to blame for his rapidly approaching death, and the hardboiled gumshoe suspects the involvement of at least one member of Justice League International. The ensuing tale blends elements of noir detective traditions and the irreverent side of DC publishing that emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

Whether or not Tom King and Greg Smallwood's miniseries takes place in the mainstream DC timeline is unclear. Therefore, Guy Gardner may appear in another, more canonical story before the end of the year, or even reemerge somehow in "The Human Target." Nevertheless, the fact remains that the Green Lantern Corps' biggest jerk is evidently killed in a fight with Ice, his ex, and Chris Chance in "The Human Target" #6.

Originally one of Christopher's suspects, subzero superheroine Ice eventually becomes his romantic interest, much to Guy's jealous fury. The third-most famous Green Lantern attacks the new couple after a night of passion, only to find himself frozen solid and shattered to pieces, in that order. Let that be a lesson to awful exes everywhere — nothing good ever comes from stalking and harassment, even if you have a power ring from space.

With so many supervillains hatching so many devious plots at all times, you'd think there'd be no original scheme for world domination left untried. The "Young Justice" version of Orm the Ocean Master might be Arthur Curry's answer to Loki with a lot less charisma, but let's give him credit — he attempts what truly seems to be an original evil plan.

Correctly guessing he could charm the people of Atlantis by embodying an imagined glorious past, Ocean Master transplants his consciousness into a clone of Arion, the original leader of the undersea kingdom. As this Atlantean George Washington, Ocean Master wins major battles and makes plenty of inspiring speeches. To cover his bases, he also clones himself and loads that clone up with memories, so only an expert mind reader could sniff out his ruse. 

As it happens, the "Young Justice" crew includes prominent telepath M'gann M'orzz, who easily figures out what's up. But by the time M'gann warns the Justice League-adjacent Atlanteans of Ocean Master's presence in Arion's body at the end of Season 4's "Leviathan Wakes," it's too late — "Arion" is declared the new king of Atlantis. Luckily, thanks to an ancient prophecy involving the Lords of Order and Vandal Savage, "Arion" spectacularly explodes the instant he puts the crown on his head.      

At this point, the Inhumans are basically the inverse of the Guardians of the Galaxy, where the prominence of superheroes in live-action media has actually hurt the prestige and credibility the characters enjoyed in the Marvel Universe back when there was no serious possibility that they'd have to function in other forms of media. The Inhumans TV show is the biggest abject failure in MCU history, and there is not a close second. The X-Men's movie rights returning to Marvel pretty much destroys any remaining chance of the Inhumans occupying the MCU's lane for genetically gifted outcasts. And Black Bolt (Anson Mount) probably died the most gruesome and unsettling demise of any Illuminati member in "Multiverse of Madness," which is saying something. 

After Reed Richards of Earth-838 informs Wanda that Black Bolt can annihilate her with a whisper, Wanda replies, "What mouth?" The king of the Inhumans then notices that his mouth has vanished. He panics, and the resulting yelp causes his skull to pop like a blister. We don't think the mainstream MCU timeline's Black Bolt, also played by Mount, would ever be dumb enough to use his unfathomably destructive vocal cords while his mouth was sewn shut. He might be a commercial failure, but the Black Bolt of the ABC television network is probably way harder to kill than this guy.  

In the primary MCU timeline, Maria Rambeau (Lashana Lynch) is Carol Danvers' friend, the mother of Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), and passes away during the years between "Infinity War" and "Endgame." In Earth-838, evidently Maria became Captain Marvel instead of Carol Danvers, and she went on to join Reed Richards' Illuminati. Sharing the attitude of the rest of her pompous secret society, Maria tells Strange they "can handle your little witch" if Wanda Maximoff shows up looking for America Chavez. 

As it turns out, Earth-838's Captain Marvel can not, in fact, handle the "little witch," who squashes Captain Marvel by dropping a statue on her. 

Somewhat curiously, Earth-838 Maria wears a teal-colored costume similar to the uniform Carol Danvers fights in during her time as the amnesiac Kree warrior Vers in 2019's "Captain Marvel." In theory, this could indicate that some sort of diplomatic relationship exists between the Kree and the governments of Earth-838, but who knows if we'll ever hear more about this timeline's history. 

In 2021's breakout hit series "WandaVision," Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen) transcended her status as an ill-defined supporting character in "Avengers" movies and evolved into a morally ambiguous and all-powerful magic wielder. Under the corruptive influence of the Darkhold, Wanda has gone full-on evil in "Multiverse of Madness," only to switch gears in the climax by seeing the error of her ways. As a result, she collapses the Mount Wundagore temple on herself, closing the Darkhold once and for all.

It's possible we've seen the last of Wanda Maximoff in the MCU, but there are a handful of significant caveats we should keep in mind. We only see rubble falling on Wanda's general vicinity. We do not see her corpse, and this is a movie that very much wants us to show us superhero corpses whenever possible. And while many of the Earth-838 variants of familiar characters we meet in "Multiverse of Madness" don't survive the experience, the Earth-838 Wanda Maximoff happens to the end the story alive and well, as far as we know. 

When the mercenary forces of Talia al Ghul and Deathstroke throw down in "Shadow War," a lot of them die, including Respawn. The promising young killing machine debuts in the League of Lazarus deathmatch tournament seen in the pages of 2021's "Robin," and he initially appears to have lifted his costume style and gimmick from Deathstroke. But Respawn is much more than a Slade Wilson fanboy. Ra's al Ghul, being an utterly insane scientific genius, mixed genetic material from his daughter Talia and Deathstroke to make the baby they would create in the unlikely scenario of their copulation. Damian is initially psyched to find out he has a half-brother, but his excitement is short lived. Shortly thereafter, Respawn hurls himself in front of a hail of bullets and various other projective weapons intended for Pappa Slade, and as a result, he is ripped to shreds. 

While the 1980s heyday of Payback has absolutely come and gone by Season 3 of "The Boys," Soldier Boy's erstwhile trusty sidekick has established a second career as an advocate for Second Amendment absolutism. Gunpowder says he's very worried about a left-wing socialist government taking his guns away, and then, incidentally, Billy Butcher takes a 24-hour-lasting version of Compound V and uses his temporary laser eyes to cut Gunpowder's head in half. Gunpowder is reduced to an inanimate pile of meat, which is unfortunate because the circumstances of his death could teach him an overdue lesson about the fetishization of brute force and the false notion that every conflict should be approached with an implicit threat of violence. In an ironic twist of fate, Gunpowder probably wishes he'd been alive in a country that enforced commonsense regulations on laser eyes, right?

Unpredictable explosions of grotesque violence are a huge part of the appeal of Prime's "The Boys." Sadly, for every Gunpowder or Stormfront the audience is happy to see mutilated, a character we like shuffles off the mortal coil under equally unpleasant circumstances. Based on the remains that Homelander shows to Starlight in "Glorious Five Year Plan," it's hard to tell exactly what the leader of the Seven did to Supersonic. It looks like Homelander punched his face into his skull and cut his leg off with his heat vision, but we can only speculate on the precise nature of Supersonic's multiple fatal injuries. 

Years before winning the American Hero reality show competition and joining the Seven, Supersonic had been Starlight's first boyfriend, and nothing we see on Prime's "The Boys" indicates that he was anything short of a perfect gentleman. In fact, it's his friendship with Starlight and his principled inclination towards doing the right thing that ultimately land him in Homelander's crosshairs.

The Green Lantern of Sector 2813 made his first comic book appearance in the early 1960s and has remained a consistent supporting cast member in comics, animated series, and video games. Plus, he's voiced by bona fide movie star Geoffrey Rush in the humiliating 2011 Ryan Reynolds "Green Lantern" movie. 

We say all this to emphasize that we understand Tomar-Re is fairly significant relative to the literally hundreds of other DC characters who've been created over the years, and talking about him as if he might as well be a red shirt on "Star Trek: The Original Series" is a little preposterous. Nevertheless, it happens to be the case that the "Young Justice" version of Tomar-Re is killed battling Lor-Zod on New Genesis in the Season 4 episode, "Odyssey of Death!" While he's introduced a few episodes earlier, he doesn't get a ton of time in the spotlight before the curtains fall. 

That said, he makes the most of the few moments he does have onscreen. Tomar-Re explains that his failure to prevent the destruction of Krypton has haunted him for decades, as he personally knew and admired Superman's biological father, Jor-El. While Tomar-Re himself doesn't survive Lor-Zod's assault, he does manage to save New Genesis from sharing Krypton's fate and wraps up his tenure in the universe with a little bit of redemption. 

We don't spend a ton of time with Blue Hawk on "The Boys" — he's really only in a few episodes and mostly exists to serve a ruthless and completely accurate commentary on how the America of real life responds to the deaths of George Floyd and numerous others at the hands of a casually lethal law enforcement apparatus. But we don't really need to get to know Blue Hawk because we've all met at least a few guys like him, haven't we? He swears he's not racist, but he also insists that hip hop doesn't count as real music. He went all the way down the birtherism rabbit hole during the Obama administration and frequently bemoans the perceived unfairness of his inability to say racial slurs in public without social consequences. A-Train has made some unfortunate choices over the years but breaking the sound barrier while dragging Blue Hawk across the pavement as if he's conducting a "Zebras in America" reenactment is not one of them.   

A story in which main character Jane Foster spends half her time slowly dying of cancer while devoting the other half of her dwindling existence to eradicating threats to the innocent as a cosmic Viking warrior god sounds way more interesting than anything the MCU's put out in Phase 4. Unfortunately, "Thor: Love and Thunder" is only maybe 30% Jane's movie for reasons we can only offer educated guesses about. Considering she already spent more than half a decade of her life emoting at tennis balls in front of a green screen for a leviathan sci-fi-fantasy franchise currently owned by Disney, maybe we can't blame Natalie Portman if Marvel Studios put something like a six-picture deal on the table and she said, "Not this time, thanks."  

Sometime after her experiences in 2011's "Thor" and 2013's "Thor: The Dark World," Jane Foster breaks up with intergalactically acknowledged hunk Thor and becomes something akin to a contemporary Stephen Hawking-like figure by authoring multiple acclaimed books on theoretical astrophysics. Following a diagnosis of late-stage cancer, Jane finds herself to drawn to the Asgardian hammer Mjolnir, which declares her worthy and transforms her into the Mighty Thor. Tragically, the magic hammer is unable to her cure her illness — in fact, using the weapon is actually hurting her. But she chooses to pick up Mjolnir and save her Asgardian boyfriend right as he's about to meet his fate, and as a result of her selfless decision, she dies pretty much immediately after the final confrontation with Gorr the God Butcher.

This year, part of the team behind the most underrated superhero comic in recent memory, 2019's "John Constantine: Hellblazer," reunited for the three-issue endeavor "Suicide Squad: Blaze." Whether writer Si Spurrier and artist Aaron Campbell clear the sky-high bar set by their previous project is certainly a matter of lively debate. What isn't is that by the end of their "Suicide Squad" tale, everybody is dead. 

Superman takes on the story's enigmatic archfiend in the second issue and gets eaten for his trouble. The rest of the Justice League attacks soon after, but their efforts aren't much more successful. As you might expect, the likes of Peacemaker, King Shark, Amanda Waller, and Harley Quinn fail to survive this ordeal, although some of their deaths are much funnier than others. 

Just about everybody else dies off-panel, including Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Kevin Feige, Zendaya, Neil Gaiman, Zack Snyder, Jordan Peele, Trent Reznor, Si Spurrier, Aaron Campbell, Charli XCX, Danhausen, Hook, Spider-Man, and every other person on the planet. Luckily, we're safe here in a timeline where the events of "Suicide Squad: Blaze" — which are established as occurring in a non-canonical, alternate timeline — never happened. 

As far as DC villains go, Oswald Cobblepot, aka the Penguin, never quite gets his flowers. He's not constantly dropping sadistic one-liners and catchphrases like "Why so serious?" that look cool on T-shirts. He isn't a living visual metaphor for the duality of revenge and justice. He can't pull off a leather catsuit. Nevertheless, hardly anybody's gotten the better of the Bat more often than this black-and-white bird. 

So it is with begrudging, melancholic respect that we report the Penguin — drawn by Jorge Jimenez in a manner reminiscent of Danny DeVito's unforgettable performance in 1992's "Batman Returns" — swallows a cyanide pill in "Batman" #125, just in time for a witness to see what looks like Batman strangling him. Savvy fans might presume the flightless crime-mongering creature will get back to the business of giving Gotham a hard time before long as they read this issue. After all, if Bane only stayed dead for less than two real-world years' worth of comics, how long can DC possibly keep the Penguin on ice?  

"Batman" #126 delivers an answer by revealing that Oswald Cobblepot has not died; he merely underwent plastic surgery to reduce his famously beak-like nose, dyed his hair blond, and relocated to Metropolis under the secret identity of Paul Meredith, harmless proprietor of Blossoms florist.

Back when he was the X-Men's primary villain, plenty of folks accused Magneto of being heartless. Leave it to Thanos' great uncle to turn a figurative accusation into a fatal reality for the Master of Magnetism. 

Then again, death is really more like a suggestion than an inevitability for a guy like Max Eisenhardt. As documented in 2019's "House of X/Powers of X," the X-Men have figured out resurrection, granting de facto immortality to all mutants. Always a trailblazer, Magneto relinquishes his eternal existence in order to more effectively co-govern Arakko, the planet formerly known as Mars. Not long after this decision, the Eternal Uranos launches a ruthless onslaught against the Arakki population. 

In a valiant defense of his people, Magneto faces Uranos and promptly finds  himself lacking a central circulatory organ. With assistance from Storm, Max keeps his blood pumping with a stunning display of magnetic force and eventually dispatches Uranos. But the effort of thwarting a planetary threat without access to a heart proves too much, and Magneto succumbs to the gaping wound in the middle of his chest in "X-Men: Red" #7.

Magneto has dictated that he shouldn't be brought back. But whether or not he ends up returning to the living is largely irrelevant. The important takeaway here is that long-time "X-Men" nerds who prefer stories that depict the character formerly known as Erik Magnus Lehnsherr as the butt-kicker to end all butt-kicking should absolutely not sleep on 2022's "X-Men: Red." 

"Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" certainly compensates for the first "Black Panther" film's underutilization of Angela Bassett's Queen Ramonda, whose tumultuous anguish and steely sense of duty to her nation and remaining loved ones provide a number of the movie's dramatic high points. 

While Shuri escapes into super-science and shuts off her emotions to avoid mourning her brother and processing her grief, the wiser Ramonda tries to nudge her daughter onto a healthier trajectory. Shuri's probably in a better headspace by the end of the movie, but Ramonda isn't around to see it. She drowns rescuing Riri Williams after Namor blows up the royal throne room during the Talokanil attack on Wakanda. T'Challa establishes an unofficial Black Panther policy against revenge all the way back in 2016's "Captain America: Civil War," but after Namor kills Ramonda, even the most pacifistic MCU fan might find themselves rooting for Shuri to put a sharp piece of vibranium between Namor's neck and the rest of his body. 

Overall, the modern era's soft relaunch of Jack Kirby's Eternals is a mixed bag. Director Chloé Zhao's "Eternals" is nobody's favorite MCU movie. Meanwhile, the deathless cohort quietly climbed to prominence in Marvel's comic book division under the stewardship of writer Kieron Gillen and artist Esad Ribić in their 2021 series. 

One thing leads to another in 2022's "A.X.E.: Judgement Day" — one of Marvel's better crossovers in recent memory — and it falls upon Sersi to demonstrate to a literal planet-annihilating god that the Eternals aren't necessary destined to repeat the same malignant loops into infinity. She asks humanity to judge her for the scores of people the Eternals have obliviously murdered over the years (long story). Humanity judges her harshly, and the aforementioned wrathful god — Progenitor — waves her out of existence. 

Just about everybody dies at some point in "Judgement Day," but Krakoan resurrection protocols, in addition to other factors, bring almost everybody back ... with the major exceptions of Magneto and Sersi. You might say that the moral to Sersi's sacrifice is that with great power comes great ... accountability.  

First appearing in 2001's "Action Comics" #775, Manchester Black has come a long way since his snarky and homicidal early days. Originally the leader of the Elite, a group of crimefighters who turn into Superman's enemies once they find out he won't let them do murders, Manchester accepts an offer from Superman to join a new version of the Authority. Alongside a team that includes OG Authority members Apollo and Midnighter, Manchester partakes in the instant classic "Warworld Saga."

Sadly, Manchester is in some degree of cahoots with Lex Luthor throughout his affiliation with Supes. Lex eventually explodes Manchester's brain to erase Superman's secret identity from the global population's memory, because ... well, because that's the sort of thing that happens in comics sometimes. Though he may be gone for the time being, Manchester gets to absolutely ruin Lex Luthor's self-esteem before exiting the living world. "Want to know what he thinks about you?" Manchester asks Lex, right before the arch-fiend flips the head-exploder switch. "What he says about you in his darkest moments? You won't believe it, honestly, but if you ask me, I'll tell you." "What, Manchester?" Lex responds, in a rare moment of genuine excitement. "What does he say?" "Nothin'," Manchester replies. "All your years obsessin' over him like a lovesick tween, and the trillions you've spent trying to kill him or make him look like a fool ... and he doesn't think about you at all."