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/Dirks_Knee]

Not a movie but the Marvel TV show Legion did it fairly well. Also in TV, though he's kinda the hero and the villain and...it's complicated...but Mr Robot.

[u/Personal_Reality → u/Dirks_Knee]

I love Legion, but David’s villain turn in the penultimate season almost made me stop watching. It was just everyone saying “you’re gonna turn evil” then that character became evil!

Awesome character in the finale season tho. Then again it was kinda a redemption arc in a way.

[u/Dirks_Knee → u/Personal_Reality]

Yeah, I can see your position. Legion season 1 IMHO is one of the best single seasons of TV ever made and I thought season 3 outside a couple episodes was very good. The season 2 set up should have been less abstract, it doesn't do a great job connecting 1 and 3 (outside the last 2 episodes) and narratively is kinda all over the place despite being visually incredible. I think the more general point wasn't necessarily him turning into a villain, but as the layers of the onion are peeled back the viewers perspective shifts to see that he's basically always been the villain, yet in his mind he's always the good guy and every action is justified.