Villains becoming sympathetic - done well, done poorly, general discussion

Cafe Society
1

So something I’ve been thinking about for a while is cases (I’m thinking in TV series and film franchises, but presumably this could apply to books as well) where a character starts out as a villain, and then transforms, over the course of the series, into a “hero”.

(Spoilers likely for series more than a year or so old.)

A few related phenomena which don’t really “count”, at least as I intend:
(1) Darth Vader. Sure, he sacrifices himself at the end of ROTJ, but he never then starts hanging out with Luke and Leia and Han, just one of the gang

(2) Magneto (in the movies). Sure he’s a fascinating and sympathetic character from day one, and we’d be very sad if he died, but he’s consistently opposed to our heroes throughout (even when temporarily working with them). We don’t want him to die, but we don’t want his plans to succeed.
So, what am I talking about? Well, here are four examples, two that I think are well done and two that I think are poorly done.
Done well:

(1) Jaime Lannister in Game of Thrones (both book and TV). He starts out as a psychopathic albino emotionless murdery creep… kind of like the bad guy from karate kid, or one of those eurotrash James Bond villains. By the time we’re in book/season 4 he’s an incredibly complex character who we sympathize with in so many ways. Is he a “good guy”? Well, GoT is ethically complicated enough to defy simple labels, but… we generally want him to thrive, and he befriends Brienne, probably the most purely “good” character in the series.

(2) Al Swearingen in Deadwood. When we start watching the series, Sheriff Bullock seems to be the “hero”, and one of the first things we see Al do is murder someone to get his gold claim. Al and Bullock start out on the opposite side of most issues. By the end of the show, Al is the heart and soul of the town, and we’re cheering hard for him to triumph over that rich guy (whose name I’ve forgotten).
So what do those two examples have in common? Two things, I think:
(a) To a certain extent, it’s not that the villains become heroes, it’s that things become more complicated, and the labels “hero” and “villain” are no longer good enough. But that’s not really it, because in both shows that are still SOME characters that are clearly good and clearly evil

(b) Much as I love both shows, I think both of them cheat a bit. In both cases, we first meet the character doing something absolutely reprehensible (throwing Bran out of a window, ordering a cold-blooded murder). And while their characters generally remain intact, they don’t continue to periodically do similarly vile things that we just overlook because of how much we like them.

Done poorly:
(1) Benjamin Linus in Lost. He starts out as a super-manipulative mysterious antagonist. By the end of the series, he’s a milquetoast uninteresting member of “the gang”.

(2) Sylar in Heroes. In season 1 he’s the super-evil villain, cruel and self-centered, finally defeated, and should-have-been-killed, by the heroes at the end. In season 2, for no reason whatsoever that I can remember, he’s suddenly teamed up with a policeman, and is basically neutered and uninteresting.

What do these have in common? It definitely feels like the characters were kept on beyond their time not for any in-story reason, but because the actors were so good. The characters became “beloved”, even though they were evil, and the writers weren’t clever enough to think of a way to keep the around without compromising their evil character.

Thoughts? Other examples?

2

Spike on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He was a great villain and the move to good guy in the gang seemed reasonable within the narrative.

3

This probably doesn’t count but Walter Bishop was done really well on Fringe.

4

G’Kar on Babylon 5 is one of the best examples of a “villain” (or at least someone portrayed thusly) with a clear arc to hero. In the pilot he’s making crude sexual overtures to Lyta Alexander as part of a request to use her as breeding stock. By the end he’s a fully-fledged holy man, er, Narn, and his progression from one to the other (paired with Londo’s arc) is one of the best-written and best-acted character developments in sci-fi. A pity not all the writing on the show was nearly that good.

Totally agree about Sylar, though. At the time I likened him to the Krusty doll from The Simpsons’ Halloween episodes, with a Good/Evil switch on his back the writers would occasionally flip when they got bored. Back and forth, back and forth, and often for no good reason at all.

5

An even worse common enemy is a great way to turn an ‘evil’ character into a good or at least neutral one. Also, a traumatic experience. Vis:

  • G’Kar’s arc in Babylon 5, from minor asshole, out to the brink of ‘serious villain’, avoiding that and ending up as a hero.

-Crais in Farscape being supplanted as villain by the far more evil Scorpius, and ending up on the side of Moya’s crew

-Ferdinand in Orphan Black - always a character to be wary of, but you tend to sympathise a lot more with him by the time he’s being doused with petrol and threatened with a match by Mrs S, than at the start when he’s the invulnerable-seeming envoy of Topside

ETA: Ninjas. Do we like them? Good? Evil? Enquiring minds need to know!

6

I got all of the old Dark Shadows series on DVD for Christmas and I’m binge-watching my way through it.

When Barnabas Collins first arrives, he’s your standard predatory vampire and a horrible person. After attacking a girl and draining her blood for weeks, he kidnaps her, keeps her prisoner in his house, and tries to make her believe that she’s his long-lost love Josette. When his victim refuses to surrender her identity and says she’d rather die than become like him, he intends to kill her. She escapes, and he plans to do the whole thing over again with another young woman he sees as the next Josette.

While there is some softening of his character when he actually starts to develop feelings for this next girl–the show’s central heroine, Victoria Winters–he generally continues to behave in a monstrous manner to everyone else. If someone threatens to get in his way, he announces that he’ll kill them, and sometimes does.

Then there’s an abrupt transition and a long time-travel sequence that goes on for months. Vicky goes back into the 1790s to witness how Barnabas became a vampire in the first place.

When she returns to the 1960s, all the plots that were developing before this sequence are dropped: Barnabas gets cured of being a vampire (he goes back and forth on the vampire thing for the rest of the series) and becomes the story’s hero. With his new best friend, mad-scientist Dr. Julia Hoffman, he hunts down other vampires, battles against witches, ghosts, and other evil beings, builds Frankenstein-type monsters, travels through time and even jumps into alternate dimensions.

7

Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Starts out the main villain, trying to capture Aang to restore his honour and regain his father’s respect. Soon displaced by his sister as the main. Eventually comes to realize that he’s the only one in his family who’s not completely insane, and decides helping Aang will actually restore his honour. Has to earn the trust of everyone in the Gaang (except Aang), and accepts that, because he knows he didn’t exactly do the best he could have before.

8

Spike was the first one I thought of when seeing the topic line. There are other examples in the Buffyverse, including Harmony, Anya, and Clem.

9

Then Scorpie becomes a co-belligerent with Crichton in the final season-not exactly best buddies, but he is given a sympathetic backstory, and their victory over the Scarrans at the end is just as much Scorpius’ as it is John’s (and that of the rest of Moya’s crew).

10

In literature, Miss Gwilt in Wilkie Collins’s Armadale, who starts out looking like the villain of the novel and ends up being the heroine. Very well done, too.

Collins also created Count Fusco in The Woman in White. He’s a villain from start to finish, but is extremely sympathetic throughout.

11

The Grinch who stole Christmas has to be the winner.

12

Horribly done: Doc Oc’s 3 second turn around in Spider-Man 2.

13

Hannibal Lecter. A great evil person turned into mush.

14

A lot of fans of Giant in the Playground Games put Redcloak into this category. He is still pretty evil, but not EVIL like Xykon. And he has some good ends to justify his means, depending on how sympathetic you are to murdering people for a chance at racial equality.

15

Marc “Blackie” Duquesne becomes semi-sympathetic by the end of **Skylark Duquesne[b/]. I found it believable, with enough moral ambiguity in it to keep it mysterious.

16

If we’re going there, I’d vote for Mr. Scrooge.

17

On TV I think your best example might be Hank in “Breaking Bad.”

At the commencement of the series, Hank is a braggart, a loudmouth macho man who likes showing off his gun, quick to anger, and an antagonist to the show’s two main characters.

At the end of the series, Hank is a braggart, a loudmouth macho man who likes showing off his gun, quick to anger, and an antagonist to the show’s two main characters.

But what you find out that although those things are still true, he is a good person with a clear moral center. Yes, he’s a big aggressive lunk, and we are conditioned to assume that guy will be the bad guy. But as it turns out, he isn’t. For all his oafishness, Hank is ethical, loves his wife, is honest, and does the right thing as best he can. He knows right from wrong, even if he is not perfect, and he knows full well he is not perfect. Conversely, his evil mirror, Walter, is a quiet, seemingly okay guy who turns out to lack the moral courage Hank possesses.

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Scrooge’s transformation was ultimately based on fear of his own morality - though some sympathy towards Tiny Tim, The Grinch was more on Sympathy, even if for himself when he realizes that there is much more to Christmas (community, family) then gifts and realizes how he can contribute and experience and be part of this joy that was so missing in his life.

19

I think Redcloak is more of a Magneto type: You can sympathize with him some but he’s still firmly aligned against the heroes and will never be hanging around with them as pals.

20

Spidey enemy Scorpion turned good and was teaming with Silver Sable for a while. I think they turned him back some time ago though which I think is unfortunate because I liked the idea of him trying to redeem himself.

Venom is a good guy now. Flash Thompson is wearing the suit and it will blow up or something if it takes over. Eddie Brock is now a good guy as Anti-Venom (get it?) but all things Vemon is bad, so bleah.

Destro and Baroness had face/heel turns during Larry Hama’s run on G.I.Joe but were turned back by brainwashing shenanigans.

Well liked antagonists tend to become good guys along the way. It happened to Rowdy Roddy Piper. :wink: