The many villains of the Marvel Cinematic Universe often get the Draco in Leather Pants treatment from the fans, either due to charisma, good looks, tragic backstory, or by having a point.
Films:
- Loki was getting a lot of leather pants treatment from Fandom after the release of Thor. It helps that he is depicted quite sympathetically with a decent Freudian Excuse and is played by the good-looking yet melancholic Tom Hiddleston. He even does wear leather pants. An it's not just the fandom — Tom Hiddleston himself frequently speaks in interviews about how he believes Loki needs a hug and some self-esteem, and that he's doing everything he does in The Avengers because he needs someone to fix him with love.
- In The Avengers, some fangirls jumped off from the Loki worship because of his actions. He kills Agent Coulson, the film-original character who's been present since Iron Man, and he brainwashes multiple S.H.I.E.L.D. personnel and Hawkeye, then has them fight their own comrades. But for many, the Loki love was still pretty high, some even theorizing that he was brainwashed and mind-controlled during The Avengers and wasn't responsible for any of his actions. His getting the tar smacked out of him by the Hulk, while one of the funniest and awesomest parts of the film, enacted the Florence Nightingale Effect on many viewers.
- Come Thor: The Dark World, all the traits he had revoked by his actions in The Avengers were undone and no one really needed to make excuses anymore. He's clearly upset by his mother's death, giving him back any sympathy he lost from The Avengers, and he seemingly dies heroically saving Thor. His gleeful prodding of Thor during their escape from Asgard brings back his lighthearted side from Thor and he still proves he's a cunning master with his not-death and quiet usurping of the throne by the end of the film.
- This gets a Fandom Nod in Ragnarok, where we see Loki's version of the final events of The Dark World (which he's commissioned as a play after having faked his death). Loki is written as a woobie who just wanted his family to love him. Most of the audience is sobbing, while the real Loki, lounging on his throne in disguise and eating grapes, finds the whole thing hilarious.
- In Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Infinity War, Loki performs a Heel–Face Turn when he arrives with The Cavalry to save the day in the first film and performs a Heroic Sacrifice in the second one. He thus drops the "Draco" part.
- Ten years later, Loki deconstructs his character and uses some of the justifications fandom made for Loki back in the day. It states that his viciousness in The Avengers was largely an act to cover up his insecurity, and he only posed as evil and sadistic because he subconsiously believed in Then Let Me Be Evil while being completely un-self-aware. While his fans used to gloss over his crimes, the story makes no attempt to downplay them and inflicts a Trauma Conga Line to karmically punish Loki for them. However, in all other aspects it officially adopts the treatment fans gave to him as canon — Loki was never inherently evil, and all he really needed was someone to listen to him and to show him some love.
- While a complicated and controversial character, Wanda Maximoff's more overzealous fans often downplay her more villainous actions, due to a combination of her sympathetic backstory, charisma, and Elizabeth Olsen's good looks. In Avengers: Age of Ultron, she willingly tried to help Ultron kill the Avengers before turning to the side of good due to disgust with Ultron's plan. However, while she does join the heroes, a lot of fans like to downplay her misdeeds, such as causing the Hulk to attack a populated city, with some even trying to claim that Ultron forced her to do it even when there is no evidence of that. This returned with a vengeance when she became the Big Bad in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. A lot of fans like to portray her as the true hero of the movie due her main goal being wanting to reunite with her children. However, this ignores the fact that to achieve this goal, she plans to kill an innocent girl and slaughters anyone in her path.
- Erik Killmonger of Black Panther (2018), who not only has Evil Is Sexy going for him but is also a Jerkass Woobie with more than a few shades of Villain Has a Point. Regardless of that however, his more zealous fans tend to completely overlook the fact that he's still a remorseless killer who would have no qualms with letting innocent people (even children) die for the sake of instigating a massive race war that wouldn't so much put Wakanda at the top in as much as it would just destroy the whole world, on top of destroying the purple flowers that grant the Black Panther lineage their abilities, and even shot his partner-in-crime/girlfriend without a second thought during a hostage situation.
This is deconstructed in What If…? (2021), where an Alternate History focused on Killmonger seems a downright indictment on his Misaimed Fandom by really showing his negative side with no sympathy. He starts off well, rescuing Tony Stark and uncovering how Obadiah Stane tried to kill him. And then Killmonger is uncovered as a Manipulative Bastard who through Engineered Heroics and playing up several parties (Stark, Klaue, the US military and Wakanda), gets in Wakanda's graces while also having provoked the US and Wakanda into a state of war, along the way killing three heroes (Rhodey, T'Challa, and Stark) with little remorse. - Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War is given more depth than a typical MCU villain as he garners a large amount of sympathy and has a noble goal of trying to prevent an overpopulation crisis that would doom the universe. However, many people still forget that regardless of his motivations and backstory, Thanos is still a genocidal madman whose ultimate plans involves killing half of the population of the universe as soon as he possesses the means to do so. In particular, they offer him a lot of sympathy because he's sad after Gamora dies, completely ignoring the fact that he himself willingly sacrificed her for power. Then there's the fact that his ultimate plan of depopulation is scientifically unsound and logically unsound, which would only cause needless deaths, and with the Infinity Gauntlet he could do literally anything else to solve overpopulation, yet stuck to his plan of murdering half a universe. And when the Avengers are attempting to undo said genocide, he decides to erase the whole universe instead out of the deluded belief that the population will be "grateful" for his act. This gets a nod in What If…? (2021) where Thanos repeatedly attempts to justify his plans the way fandom did it before only for other characters In-Universe to shut him down with "it's still genocide" argument.
- Helmut Zemo from Captain America: Civil War and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is charming and Affably Evil, yes, and he did care deeply about his family, but he's still a Token Evil Teammate with a checkered past as a member of a stand-in version of an infamous real-life perpetrator of war crimes
, and who engages in extreme methods - including cold-blooded murder - that leave behind collateral damage to accomplish his goals of Disproportionate Retribution. But because he's attractive and charismatic and does a funny dance, his fans tend to gloss over it in favor of portraying him as a tortured woobie whose revenge is justified, who is more straightforwardly heroic than Karli (who, despite her villainous methods, does have a noble goal to speak of), an innocent victim of abuse by Sam, or even a gentle lover whose efforts to deliberately upset Bucky are treated as sweet courtship if not outright Romanticized Abuse.
