So, I can’t believe that after all this time I still have to clarify this, but I am still seeing stuff that says something that is majorly wrong, and I wanted to say something about it. I’m going to say it in capital letters, and apologies if that bothers anyone, but it needs to be emphasized. BUCKY BARNES IS NOT NOR HAS HE EVER BEEN A VILLAIN!! Say it with me if you have to. He just isn’t.
The worst you can say is that he was the antagonist in The Winter Soldier and that when you saw the first part of the movie for the first time and you didn’t know who he was, he appeared as the villain and played the villain role. But once it came out who he was and what had been done to him-yeah, absolutely not the villain.
Even Marvel, with their shift in characters, inconsistent writing, and double standards between some of the “heroes and villains”, went to great pains to convey this. It’s canon. There is no ambiguity here; no argument. He never has been a villain; certainly not before The Winter Soldier and not after.
Bucky is a victim of Hydra’s brainwashing, plain and simple. It’s absolutely awful that he killed people, but that is Hydra’s fault, not his. He is a victim and survivor of torture. Would you blame a gun, or a knife, but not the one who used them? I really hate to compare Bucky to one of those, but he was basically forcibly turned into an enhanced human weapon; doing whatever he was ordered to in a zombie like fashion. Whenever he started developing any sort of personality, or memory, he was “wiped”, and we all saw how that went. No one has the right to blame Bucky for anything he did as the Winter Soldier (sorry Tony, I get that you were traumatized, but you were wrong in blaming him. On the other hand, Steve not telling Tony the truth was a really shitty thing to do).
If you say Bucky is a villain in any sense other than the technical one (where he was temporarily in that role during The Winter Soldier movie), you are, quite simply, a f****** idiot. Bucky Barnes is not nor has he ever been a villain and there is no room to argue this. No room at all. None. Period, The End.
Here’s some nasty examples (the first one was said by the writers of TFATWS!!!): and some comments I totally agree with:
