Over the years, X-Men fans and general comics fans alike have come to actually love the slogan “Magneto Was Right.” What was originally conceived as an in-universe way for mutants to acknowledge their feelings on Magneto came to the real world as a way for fans to express the fact that they agree with a lot of what Magneto does. While he does make dramatic calls sometimes, it is often in pursuit of the greater good.
Magneto believes that the ends justify the means. He also endorses occasional extreme measures when necessary. As time goes on, people realize more and more that extreme measures may be necessary more often than not, and that Magneto was justified in a lot of what he did. However, the guy still slipped up a few times, and didn’t always succeed; sometimes, he just went too far. He walks a fine line most of the time, but, ultimately, Magneto is justified in much of what he does.
10 Justified: Seeking Vengeance Against Nazis Around The World
When Magneto was just a child, he was imprisoned in a concentration camp. There, he saw his family killed— including his own mother, right in front of him, at the hands of Sebastian Shaw. After Erik grew up, he decided to travel the world in search of Sebastian Shaw.
Not only is he seeking Shaw, but he’s also looking for revenge against Nazis who did terrible things during the Holocaust. Magneto is shown traveling to multiple locations to kill different Nazis. He’s more than justified in his actions here, and most people would love to see an entire movie where Magneto hunts Nazis.
9 Went Too Far: Shooting Charles In The Spine & Abandoning Him On The Beach
Unfortunately, Erik and Charles teaming up to hunt down Sebastian Shaw ended terribly for the both of them. When Charles Xavier was attempting to stop Magneto from firing missiles back on the humans who had fired them in the first place, he actually ran at Erik and started physically fighting him.
During this fight, Erik accidentally deflected one bullet directly in Charles’ back. He ran to Charles and caught him, removing the bullet, but Charles was paralyzed by this action. Erik then chose to leave the beach, taking Mystique with him and abandoning Charles with the remaining X-Men, all alone.
8 Justified: Hunting Sebastian Shaw Down & Killing Him
After what Sebastian Shaw did to Erik and his mother, Edie, there are few people who wouldn’t find Magneto’s actions against Shaw justified. It takes Magneto a while, but he has to find and hunt down Shaw before he can successfully attack him.
When he finally does, Erik is able to fight and trick him into getting his helmet off and having Charles take over Shaw’s brain. Though Erik puts the helmet on his own head, which is its own whole problem, nobody can fault Erik and Charles for killing Shaw after what he did to Erik as a child.
7 Went Too Far: Trying To Turn The World’s Leaders Into Mutants
As an elderly man, Magneto was the head of the Brotherhood of Mutants, and frequently found himself opposing the X-Men as he attacked humanity for their wrongs against mutants. At one point, Magneto even tries to use Rogue so he can use a machine that would mutate the world’s leaders.
The machine could kill these leaders in the process— which Magneto knows, but he doesn’t really care. His ultimate plan is to make them into mutants so they understand the plight of mutants, or just kill them to replace them with mutants. This is just too far, even for Magneto, and isn’t one of his better thought-out plans.
6 Justified: Forming A Group To Combat The Mutant “Cure”
Just as there are good and bad humans, there are good and bad mutants. However, humans grow more and more hateful towards mutants in the X-Men universe. Eventually, humans create a mutant “cure”— an injection that theoretically removes the mutant X-gene from mutants and turns them into regular homo sapiens.
This is a horrifying supremacist concept, and one that Magneto has seen before in his life. He’s more than justified in forming a group to combat the use of this mutant “cure” that is more of a genocidal eugenics quest than anything else. In fact, Magneto would be wrong if he supported the so-called “cure.”
5 Went Too Far: Trying To Kill Mystique To Prevent Trask From Getting Her Blood
Magneto’s first timeline ended in tragedy when Bolivar Trask’s Sentinels created a world where mutants could not live. When Magneto found out about this in the past, he wanted to do anything in order to prevent the Sentinels’ creation. His plan was to simply kill Mystique, rather than allowing her to be captured by Trask.
It was her blood that allowed the Sentinels’ existence in the first place, and so Magneto’s thought process was that killing her would solve the problem before it could happen. However, not only did he nearly kill one of his only remaining comrades, he also was the reason Trask got her blood at all.
4 Justified: Exacting Revenge On The People Who Killed His Family
Eventually, Magneto wanted to live a normal life. He fell in love with a woman named Magda and got married; together, they had a daughter named Nina. They lived in Poland together in hiding until Erik was discovered due to his powers.
When the authorities showed up to confront Magneto, they were panicked by his daughter Nina’s mutant abilities, and their actions resulted in the deaths of both Magda and Nina. Devastated, Magneto killed all the men responsible for their deaths, from the authorities to the factory workers who turned him in. Nobody can blame him for wanting revenge against those responsible for killing his innocent family.
3 Went Too Far: Attempting To Instigate A Revolution By Murdering People On Live Television
Erik found out that the Sentinels were going to cause a horrible future in X-Men: Days of Future Past, and so he ended up finding the robots himself and controlling them with his own powers. He wanted to send a message, as Magneto so often does. However, Magneto’s message extended beyond the display of power he showed by controlling the Sentinels.
Magneto also tried to kill a number of people on live television as he attempted to instigate a revolution amongst mutants. While Erik isn’t wrong that the government wronged mutantkind and should pay for it, Mystique is the one who realized this wasn’t the way. She stopped him, proving mutants could be good and that even mutants who could go too far, like Magneto, had heroes who could stop them.
2 Justified: Wanting To Stop Jean Grey From Continuing To Be Dark Phoenix
After everything Magneto had seen Jean Grey do as the Dark Phoenix, nobody would begrudge him wanting to stop her from continuing to act. Even in the original timeline, Dark Phoenix was the one who killed Charles Xavier by literally vaporizing him and wiping him off the face of the Earth in front of Magneto.
In the new timeline, Jean Grey goes to Erik’s mutant sanctuary island of Genosha, but she immediately proves herself too dangerous to stay. Erik even tries to help her, but there’s only so much he can do. The Dark Phoenix continues to wreak havoc, and Erik continues to try to stop her. Hank McCoy even teams up with Erik to stop Jean from causing further damage.
1 Went Too Far: Letting Apocalypse Use Him To Kidnap Charles Xavier & Kill People Around The World
Apocalypse gave Erik a choice, and Erik chose to side with him in the fight against the X-Men. Initially, Magneto was one of Apocalypse’s Horsemen, and he helped them attack Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. He was responsible for helping to kidnap Charles.
However, later, Erik changes his mind, and ends up turning on Apocalypse to try and help. While he originally went too far in attacking the X-Men and Charles directly, he redeemed himself and turned it all around in the end by helping Charles and the X-Men.
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