Stories focusing on villains are all the rage in Hollywood at the moment, but they come with their own challenges – as seen in Agatha All Along…
Warning! The following contains heavy spoilers for the entirety of Agatha All Along, including the finale. Mild spoilers also for Cruella, Maleficent and Joker.
Ah, villains. We just love to hate them, don’t we? Even when we root fiercely for the hero to survive, we also can’t wait to see the Xenomorph tear into assorted space-miners or Hannibal Lecter munch on his victims.
There has been a bit of an uptick in villain stories in Hollywood recently. They’re in no way a new phenomenon, but films and TV shows like Cruella, Venom and Chucky all explore some of our favourite baddies. Except, when does a villain stop being a villain when we’re asked to understand and relate to them?
Marvel’s Agatha All Along has aired its final two episodes on Disney+ and has certainly complicated our feelings about Agatha Harkness, played with impressive gusto by Kathryn Hahn. Agatha was the antagonist in Marvel’s first TV show, Wandavision, and her own show has constantly toed the line between making Agatha a protagonist versus keeping her as the villain of the story.
The final two episodes of the show’s first season aired on the same day, and for good reason. Episode 8 saw Agatha sacrifice herself to save Teen (aka William, aka Billy Maximoff – it’s complicated, we know) after a big climactic fight with Aubrey Plaza’s Death. Agatha died as a hero, but the final minutes of the episode revealed the Witches’ Road may not have been quite as real as we thought, as Billy realised it bore a striking resemblance to some of the items in his bedroom…
Read more: Agatha All Along | Teen’s identity is finally revealed, but what does that mean for the MCU?
Episode 9 took us back to 1750, and the opening found Agatha in labour. We already knew that her son Nicky would end up dead, and accordingly we saw Death promise Agatha time, but no way of saving him. We then followed Agatha and Nicky through the years as Agatha killed witches along the way. It was in fact Nicky who came up with the Ballad Of The Witches’ Road and thus, the road was never real.
Instead, Agatha was using the rumour and eventual mythology of the Road to gather witches together to steal their powers and kill them. Her plan was thwarted when the extra-powerful Billy accidentally created a real Road for the group to travel. In the end, Agatha ended up as a ghost, and the two set out to find Billy’s brother, Tommy.
So is Agatha the villain or the hero of the story? And which one do we want her to be?
Venom: The Last Dance has just debuted in cinemas, and the franchise hasn’t exactly been critically acclaimed. One of the biggest issues for me has been that Venom, traditionally a Spider-Man villain, has been reduced to comic relief instead of the powerful, terrifying villain he is supposed to be. Granted, the Venom films exist somewhat separately from their Spider-Man cousins, but why would you make a trilogy about a villain who then isn’t allowed to be one?
It’s not just Venom either. Maleficent and Cruella have asked us to consider the difficult pasts of traditional villains. In 2014’s Maleficent, Angelina Jolie’s titular character has her wings chopped off after being drugged by an old friend. Maleficent placing a curse on Aurora years later was an act of vengeance rather than just pure evil. Cruella, meanwhile, tells us that Cruella De Vil wasn’t always a dog-hating, bitter woman, but a young girl with a dream of becoming a designer who was wronged by her own mother.
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Then there’s Todd Phillips’ Joker and its sequel, Joker: Folie à Deux, which is hitting digital on 4th November following a disappointing cinema run. The first film reimagined the iconic comic-book villain as a regular, if troubled, man named Arthur, played by Joaquin Phoenix. Arthur suffered from a medical condition that caused him to laugh hysterically, often in inappropriate situations, and he was largely forgotten by a society which only values those with power and money.
Phillips has always insisted that his films aren’t exact representations of the villain, but simply reimaginings. Even with that in mind, Joker is a villain – one of the biggest in popular culture. Certainly, his actions across his two solo films make him a villain, except Phillips asks us to understand where Arthur is coming from and what drives him to execute Robert DeNiro’s Murray Franklin on live TV. Arthur is treated like a symbol, a voice for those who traditionally don’t have a voice in society. In the end, Phillips keeps his camera low, looking up at Arthur as he is adored and cheered on by hordes of people, praising him for the action he has taken.
Do villains need reasons for their villainy? Should we always understand why these characters commit these horrendous acts? Are they even villains if the film is all about making them the heroes in their own stories?
Let’s go back to Agatha All Along. Episode 8 felt very much like a finale, but I was immediately annoyed that Agatha turned into a selfless hero by sacrificing herself for Billy. Episode 9 complicated that by showing her killing probably hundreds of witches across centuries, all for her own gain, but it was still deeply connected to Agatha’s grief over Nicky’s death. In a way, Billy was someone Agatha could save, even if she couldn’t stop Nicky being led away by Death.
I like my villains as villains. I also thought Cruella was a really good film and I’ve had a great time with Agatha All Along, which I consider one of the best Marvel series. There’s understandably a desire to explore villains and their motivations on a deeper level, but it comes at a cost.
