Bucky Barnes — better known as the Winter Soldier — has had a long and tumultuous journey in the MCU. First appearing as Steve Rogers' closest friend in Captain America: The First Avenger, the Howling Commando resurfaced in 2014's Captain America: The Winter Soldier as the titular antagonist set on dismantling S.H.I.E.L.D.
Since then, Bucky has shines like a hero in brief moments like the Battle of Wakanda in Avengers: Infinity War. Despite the HYDRA assassin's change of heart, Barnes wouldn't begin to experience true redemption until 2021's Disney+ series The Falcon and The Winter Soldier.
9 Bucky Attempted To Kill S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury
Barnes makes quite the debut when he first appears in The Winter Soldier. After a harrowing sequence that sees S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury evading numerous covert HYDRA agents, the Winter Soldier utterly eviscerates Fury's vehicle with a magnetic disk grenade. The one-eyed director barely escapes the dangerous incursion with his life.
Unfortunately, the enigmatic HYDRA soldier tracks Fury to Steve Rogers' apartment. While Fury manages to reveal to Captain America that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been compromised, he is abruptly shot by Barnes before he's able to tell the First Avenger anything else. Rogers does give Barnes a chase, but the Winter Soldier ultimately manages to escape.
8 Bucky Shot Black Widow On A Mission To Kill His Target
Following Fury's 'death,' Rogers suddenly finds himself on S.H.I.E.L.D.'s blacklist when he's attacked by the STRIKE team in a savage elevator fight. After escaping their headquarters, the Star-Spangled Man conveniently runs into Black Widow when seeking to recover a flash drive from the hospital where Fury was pronounced 'dead.'
After confronting the Russian spy and fellow Avenger, Natasha Romanoff tells Rogers about the myth of the Winter Soldier. She goes on to reveal a nasty encounter she had with the assassin in Odessa, where she was tasked with protecting a nuclear scientist. When Romanoff chose to use her body as a human shield, Barnes shot right through her to kill his target and finish the job.
7 Bucky Assassinated Two Dozen People Over 50 Years
In her narration of the Winter Soldier's infamous dark deeds, Black Widow explains to Rogers that Bucky has been accredited with more than two dozen kills over the past 50 years. Obviously, the rumor seems highly dubious at first, until fans account for cryostasis, which is exactly what HYDRA used to keep Barnes alive for so long.
Furthermore, given that the Winter Soldier has a diluted version of the super-soldier serum, the slowed aging likely aids in preserving the HYDRA assassin's youthfulness and lethality. As The Falcon and the Winter Soldier reveals, Barnes is likely responsible for many more unaccounted ruthless casualties than the intelligence community acknowledges.
6 Bucky Ran After He Was Framed For The U.N. Bombing
After Barnes rescues Rogers from a collapsing helicarrier, the Winter Soldier drops off the radar for a couple years. However, a devastating bombing in Vienna during a U.N. meeting set to see the Avengers sign the Sokovia Accords for which Bucky is framed for puts the highly dangerous super-soldier at the top of everyone's hit list during Captain America: Civil War.
When Rogers and Sam Wilson finally track Barnes down in Romania with the help of Sharon Carter, the Winter Soldier is reluctant to turn himself in. Instead, Bucky chooses to make a run for it, consequently involving T'Challa's Black Panther, who falsely believes that Barnes is responsible for his father's — T'Chaka's — death.
5 Bucky Murdered Howard And Maria Stark
It's at the end of Civil War where one of Barnes' worst crimes is revealed to Iron Man. Among the many assassinations that the Winter Soldier completed over the years was the murder of Howard and Maria Stark, Tony Stark's parents. A belligerent Stark proceeds to relentlessly attack Rogers and Barnes in blind rage (albeit justified).
At one point during the fight, Stark angrily inquiries if Barnes even remembers killing them, to which the Winter Soldier replies that he remembers all of his kills. Granted, while Bucky was brainwashed by HYDRA at the time, it doesn't lessen the atrocities of his actions — actions which would continue to haunt the soldier out-of-time.
4 Bucky Stole S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Super-Soldier Serum For HYDRA
Unfortunately, the punchline to the footage that Helmut Zemo showed Stark, Rogers, and Barnes in Siberia was that the 1991 mission the Winter Soldier undertook wasn't even about killing the Starks; rather, Barnes' HYDRA superiors sought S.H.I.E.L.D.'s super-soldier serum they happened to be carrying in their trunk.
Not only do Barnes' actions lead to the death of someone he might've once considered an ally or even a friend, the super-soldier serum inadvertently leads to the deadly expansion of HYDRA's own program in Russia. Fortunately for the Avengers, the program was put on ice, with Zemo suspending it indefinitely by killing the other super-soldiers.
3 Bucky Keeps The Truth From Yuri For Too Long
Following the wild events of Avengers: Endgame, Barnes finds himself shockingly pardoned by the U.S. government, albeit with a couple caveats. Firstly, the former Winter Soldier must attend regular therapy sessions. Secondly, he must find a way to make amends to those he has wronged in the past.
It's revealed in the inaugural episode of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier that Barnes has befriended an elderly man named Yuri. However, Yuri struggles with the loss of his son who mysteriously disappeared some time ago. The connection, of course, is that Barnes is responsible for the death of Yuri's son — a truth he is unable to bring himself to tell the old man until after the damage is done.
2 Bucky Frees Helmut Zemo To Help Find The Flag Smashers
After joining Sam Wilson on his quest to stop the Flag Smashers, an anti-nationalist group on the rise following the Blip, Barnes makes several questionable choices in an effort to find the pair a lead on discovering the whereabouts of the elusive group. Unfortunately, one such decision puts the White Wolf in contact with the morally ambiguous Baron Zemo.
Not only does Barnes attempt to convince Zemo to help him and Wilson, he oddly chooses to free the master manipulator from prison. Fortunately for Barnes and Wilson, Zemo is more determined to rid the world of 'new' super-soldiers than he is interested in betraying them, making for some tense, but comical moments in the Disney+ series.
1 Bucky Helps Sam Reclaim Captain America's Shield
Following the disaster that was John Walker's Captain America, Barnes and Wilson make a controversial choice in forcing the U.S. operative to give up the vibranium shield that once belonged to Steve Rogers. Unfortunately, Walker wouldn't give up the shield willingly, leading to a vicious brawl between the three men.
Barnes and Wilson ultimately get the upper hand, but they're forced to literally break Walker's arm in order to detach the shield from him, leaving him screaming in pain. While Barnes' heart was in the right place, the unceremonious method he used to take back his old friend's shield was anything but heroic.
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