What you see and what you hear depends a great deal on where you are standing. It also depends on what sort of person you are.

– C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew (1955)

Why do we like Villains? Why is there often something so endearing about characters in a film, play, or a book that we as the audience are supposed to hate? There is a lot to unpack here, but if I had to get to the essence of the villainphilia, I would say that villains allow people to explore a darker side of our personality and it allows the hero to shine more when the villain is a worthy adversary.

I recently watched the film The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes based off of a book of the same name. Both the book and the film serve as a prequel to The Hunger Games trilogy. Without getting into the spoilers, it revolves around Coriolanus Snow, a student tasked with mentoring his tribute from district twelve. Snow’s role in the trilogy is quite different than in the prequel as the prequel takes place sixty four years before the events of the trilogy. By the time of the trilogy, Coriolanus has become President Snow and is the leader of an authoritarian regime. I will try not to go any further into the specifics of the story, so that I do not lose anyone on this journey of villainy. It goes without being said that if you have not yet seen the film or read the book, I highly recommend doing so.

As the story unfolds and the audience are introduced more and more to Coriolanus Snow, one thing becomes apparent; he definitely started the film as a ‘good’ character, but by the very end he is pretty unambiguously ‘bad’. What happened? I think what happened here is a common trope in the making of a good villain story. The main character continues along their story making a series of micro decisions that seem rational at the time, but by the end we as the audience realize that our beloved main character has ended up becoming the bad guy. This intrigues me, not the least because this moral decay is very possible in our own lives. When we do not look at the bigger picture, and focus only on a small scale, we can make a series of rational decisions that leads us further and further down into the pit of hell. Only after going too far down the rabbit hole do we stop and ask the infamous phrase: “Am I the baddie?”

It is interesting that it is so hard to tell exactly when the transition from good guy to bad guy occurred. It is endlessly fun to speculate on when exactly that was and what decisions were the most impactful. These facts are also critical in why we get invested into characters in the first place. A villain who is just pure evil and has no depth to their story is really boring. I think this is because we all want to relate to a character in some way, and a villain who is pure evil seems like someone we could never be. Villains represent the ways in which we sometimes wish we could act out, but know we should not.

Another villain with endearing character and appeal is John Smith from the Amazon Prime TV series The Man in the High Castle. This series, like the film mentioned above, is based on a book. This time a book authored by Philip K. Dick. John Smith continues to become a defining character of the show as its four seasons go on, starting as almost a minor character and ending with his life being inextricably intertwined with the events of the overarching story. John Smith is a high ranking official in Nazi occupied America, and yet a character who is rather endearing, at least in the beginning.

In some ways John Smith represents the perfect family man. He has three kids and a wife. He lives in suburban America and could be seen as an inspiration for many. This is until his quite dastardly role in the Nazi government of the occupied United States becomes more and more explicit. What makes John Smith quite the likable villain is that he is so close to what many of us strive to be, all the while also being quite literally evil. This is another way in which villains can appeal to us as people; when they represent a perversion of good and an example of how we could have gone down a darker path in our lives.

What both Coriolanus Snow and John Smith have in common are good sides and qualities of their character that later become either twisted for the sake of an evil cause, or disappear altogether.

Protagonists of a story are the characters that we are supposed to relate to the most. Generally, if a protagonist is written well this is not a problem. A way in which the hero can be seen to shine is by having a worthwhile adversary. Protagonists like Superman and Captain Marvel tend to be incredibly boring, especially nowadays, because they are indestructible. While maybe decades ago that was an interesting concept, it just leads to writers having to come up with ridiculous and concocted scenarios to try and balance things out. As long as characters are not invincible, and with a good villain, confrontations become much more believable. For example, in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, Voldemort is such a powerful wizard that people can not even bring themselves to mutter his name. At the end of seven books, Harry Potter facing Voldemort seems like the battle of the century, because the protagonist is human, and his foe has been shown to have bested Harry Potter in many prior instances.

A worthy villain who is almost too strong for the hero to handle makes the story all the more impactful.

Another example is the White Witch from C.S. Lewis’ The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe. She is so dastardly that she made Narnia live in Winter for one hundred years without it ever being Christmas. If you are not sure how evil this truly is, let me recommend the reader to ask a child how they would respond to this scenario. At any rate, for a few children and some talking animals to defeat the White Witch, someone who is powerful, a self proclaimed queen, and an adult, this would appear to be a daunting task. Spoiler warning, with her defeat the children are both exemplified and made into Kings and Queens, and their personal strengths are able to shine. Making the four Pevensies beloved literary characters. Without a strong villain, how can any hero prove themselves?

Shifting gears a bit, a good villain can also appeal to something deep inside people: the shadow. Most people spend their days worrying about work/school, family, and friends. Whether one has to deal with traffic, overpriced coffee, or stress related to a project that was supposed to be on the boss’ desk a week ago, villains offer a release. One has to be careful, as we all have original sin, but rooting for a villain can be a great way to rebel a little bit from the system. Instead of taking our frustrations out on friends and family, seeing a villain destroy an existing fictional institution can be cathartic.

A related effect of villainy is that villains are often less likely to solve their problems the ‘correct’ way. Many villains and heroes are appreciated when they are able to bend the rules and accomplish their goals without dealing with mountains of paperwork, but by getting dirty and doing the work personally. I believe that nowadays villains are more likely to take this approach, although there are exceptions. For the working man or the poor college student, it can be nice to see systems fall and institutions destroyed. Not because this is what we want in the real world, but because great villains allow this tendency of ours to be expressed in a much healthier manner.

Going back to Coriolanus Snow in The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, the idea above applies well. Snow uses the system to his advantage and bends the rules as much as he can get away with. This example also lends itself in being incredibly interesting because for the sake of this novel/film Snow is the protagonist. Whereas later in the trilogy, he will be the main antagonist. Nonetheless, the character of Snow allows one to relate to making the best of the situation and then running with it. In this way, John Smith from The Man in the High Castle is much the same. Even though he is an American, he has joined the Nazis before the start of the first season. He ends up capitulating to the system, but as time goes on, he uses it ruthlessly to his advantage. Because of Snow and Smith’s willingness to bend the rules from the inside, it makes both of them even stronger foes towards the hero of each respective story.

A villain can be many things. Done well this is a character who the audience can secretly hope succeeds or a character who we are genuinely relieved to eventually see defeated in the final act. Either way, it is a tragedy if the villain is not someone we really love or really hate. Depth of personality and motivations make the character, and I hope going forward that we can all appreciate a well written villain that much more.

Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! – Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)

Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners. – 1 Corinthians 15:33 (KJV)