The Bartons (or, one thing Age of Ultron did that was a HUGE improvement on its source material)

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I hate The Ultimates, guys. I hate it even more because this was my first introduction to these characters, and so for ages I actually thought that Steve Rogers was a xenophobic jerk, Black Widow a murdering traitor and so on. But I think I can pinpoint the moment (beyond ‘you think this letter on my head is for France?’) when I started hating it:

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Laura Barton and her three children are killed in the Ultimates not long after they’re introduced. Laura’s shot in the head, one of the children is shot in Hawkeye’s arms, the baby is killed in its crib, and you see one of the children later lying dead in a puddle of blood because of course you do. Their deaths are later used for Hawkeye’s enemies to taunt him with. “The children swallowed bullets, and that fat wife of yours.” It’s a really gruesome, over-the-top fridging. Oh, and it was Black Widow who ordered the hit, by the way.

So even though I doubt the Barton family’s inclusion in Age of Ultron was a deliberate fuck-you to all that, I’m still really glad it stands the way it does. Laura’s alive and fine, her children are alive and fine (though they appear to have had their names and ages switched), Laura is close enough friends with Proper Not-A-Murderous-Traitor Black Widow to name a child after her (hooray! lady friendships!), the kids call Black Widow Aunt Natasha and adore her and she them (aww), and everyone seems happy and well-adjusted etc.

Basically I always thought ‘Laura Barton and her kids deserved better’ and I’m really glad they did eventually get Better. (Of course, if any of them die in a future movie, this is all moot.)