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I'm not averse to villainous character who undergo redemption, per se. It's more that if a character is going to make a sincere change, then they have to be held accountable for their previous behavior.
When a character does something terrible (all of Alopex's murders, including the ones she was shown to enjoy, making a game of them) but they want to make good later on and go for a sincere change, then the writer can't just sweep those terrible actions under the rug and forget about them. It may be more convenient to do so for the writer, but for the consistency of the narrative and the integrity of the character's growth, you can't just IGNORE events that might get in the way of the new direction.
Steve Murphy pulled a similar move with Ninjara in TMNT Adventures. She teamed with a villain bent on mass genocide and was fully on board with his plan. When it came time for her to be Raph's love interest though, Ninjara's attempt to ethnically cleanse the globe was forgotten and never referenced again.
The writer may want the characters to forget that such inconvenient events took place, but the READERS won't, and doing so allows us to see the seams in the story and that breaks things down.
I think there's room enough for villains with conviction and villains that can be swayed; I'm not an all or nothing kind of guy. But if a writer is going to aim for the latter, then they have to take EVERYTHING into account, even the behavior that will most get in the way of that character's redemption.
Leo spent more time atoning for his actions as Dark Leo (where he didn't kill anybody) than Alopex has spent atoning for her time with the Foot (where she killed numerous people for kicks). And there's just something really wrong with that.
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