Follow-up to last week's discussion topic

[lynnenne]

Hello, and welcome to your weekly Sunday discussion post! Last week's topic about Thanos as an abusive parent got a lot of discussion. Following up on that topic, who are the other abusive parents in the MCU? (Parental figures also qualify.) I honestly don't know the comics backstory for many of the characters, so I'd love to hear your take on some of the protagonists and the upbringings they had to survive.

(Spoilers in comments, as usual, along with possibly triggery subject matter.)

Comments

[silverflight8]

ODIN OMG what a terrible way to raise your kids

[lynnenne]

Yes, between the lies he told to/about Hela, Thor and Loki, not one of those kids ended up without Issues.

[sholio]

The MCU has quite a few terrible parents - in fact it might be shorter to count up the ones who canonically aren't terrible! (.... T'Chaka and Ramonda. Though even T'Chaka was a fairly awful uncle. Oh wait, and the Ant-Man movies have a few decent parents!)

I think Ego might take the prize for Worst MCU Dad other than Thanos, though.

[silverflight8]

I think Scott Lang really shaped up well! Watching him and his daughter interact in Ant-Man and the Wasp was a treat, they were adorable.

But agree. So many terrible parents.

[lynnenne]

I love the moment in Endgame where Scott finds Cassie after five years of being thought dead. "You're so big!" Awwwwww.

[glitteryv]

I'd say that the MCU does not have a good track record when it comes to parental figures (mostly).

Odin was deffo someone who tried to explain his actions (setting his sons against each other, hiding any evidence of his firstborn until the last possible minute, ignoring actual!threat (the Dark Elves) because he refused to even admit the possibility, etc) despite how, when seen collectively, they were on the TERRIBS scale.

However, the absolute worst (aside from Thanos who was shitty AF) was deffo Ego. There's nothing about him that one can overlook/handwave.

[lynnenne]

Ego made so little impression on me that I barely remember what he did. I guess that makes him a forgettable parent on top of a bad one!

[bold_seer]

There's a sliding scale of bad parents and pseudo-parents. Inhuman and horrific: Ego, whose self-love is immense, and Thanos. Human and erroneous: T'Chaka, sure. Howard Stark, who gets the John Winchester treatment – is he supposed to have been an actively (abusive, emotionally abusive) or a passively (distant, neglectful) bad father? EG sides with the latter, some of earlier canon potentially with the former. Even someone like Hank Pym, who was mostly just not there for Hope.

And because I thought about GotG: Yondu is – not that terrible?

[lynnenne]

Howard Stark, who gets the John Winchester treatment – is he supposed to have been an actively (abusive, emotionally abusive) or a passively (distant, neglectful) bad father? EG sides with the latter, some of earlier canon potentially with the former.

Yeah, I definitely got the impression with Endgame that Tony had forgiven Howard for most of his terribleness - but I was also a bit peeved that the movie spent so much time on that. I'm kind of tired of white boys with daddy issues. Plus, John Slattery just bugs the hell out of me and I did not want to spend that much screen time on his annoying face.

[kore]

I was SO PEEVED we didn't get Dominic Cooper, who really could have sold ambivalent Howard.

[lynnenne]

Me too! If they can age Chris Evans' face to make him look like he's 80, why couldn't they age up Dominic Cooper?