Has any sequel successfully pulled off a hero's heel turn into villainy?

[u/Bellikron]

Plenty of standalone movies have a character fall from grace, or be revealed as a villain all along, but this rarely happens with an established character in a sequel. On paper it's a solid twist because you've already grown to trust that character in previous films, but it's really hard to pull off without feeling like a betrayal of a character arc. The Mission Impossible series has one that was received very poorly, and the only reason I hear about Pacific Rim Uprising these days is people talking about how unearned the heel turn from one of the characters felt.

I struggle to think of an example where it was done successfully in a movie. There's more examples in TV I think since there's a much longer time to build a change in a character over multiple seasons, so I'm not really considering those. Since it did start with a movie series, though, and there really isn't too much of an extended character arc given in the show, the example I can think of that kind of works is Sharon Carter in Falcon and the Winter Soldier. It was still super underdeveloped and it doesn't seem like they're going to do anything with it, but I can at least track the betrayal logic since there was kind of a meta angle about how that character had been forgotten by the movies. But even that's rather clunky.

I'm also talking specifically about situations where it wasn't clearly telegraphed by the source material or the rest of the franchise. Anakin becoming Vader was already known to the audience, for instance. I'm on the fence about whether something like Dune counts, since it's in the source material and the first two films are kind of just one long movie. I'm particularly interested in situations where it clearly wasn't the plan in the first movie but was written into a sequel.

[u/mophisus]

I don't think Anakin counts..

He's introduced as a Villain, his backstory comes later than portrays him as a hero.

[u/ZackyZack → u/mophisus]

Not only that, but "pulls off" is a stretch if you only follow the movies. The theatrical cut is very shallow in exploring how broken his psyche was after years of war and weeks of lack of sleep

[u/KarmicPotato → u/ZackyZack]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooo

[u/CitizenTony → u/mophisus]

He's introduced as a Villain, his backstory comes later than portrays him as a hero.

Expect if... you watch the prelogy and then, the original trilogy /s.

I mean, idk whats people's correct order, this is depending of taste.

[u/xrufus7x → u/[deleted]]

They were not.

[u/hotwheeler89 → u/[deleted]]

I don't think so. The back of the VHS of The Phantom Menace straight up says he's Darth Sidious.