Greed, gluttony, pride, ego, hubris, envy: a short list of what powers the darkest chambers of our souls. Seeing a character fall victim to these forces can feel tragic or terrifying–or in some cases even empowering.

These urges and feelings echo into the deeper parts of the human soul. But have they always? Could it be that as time has gone on, humanity has gotten more evil? More sinister? Or is it that humans have grown more reflective and developed the ability to dig deeper into ourselves and grapple with our darkest urges?

While we all have glorified our bright-eyed heroes from the pages to the cinema, over time the antagonist has grown to be more empathetic or reasonable, even perceived as morally righteous in some cases. 

Why is that? The answer may lie in how the villain is depicted in the stories we have told over the past few centuries. From tragic hero to anti-hero, from psychopath to criminal, here is how society has deconstructed the antagonist over time, and how that trend has impacted our culture.  

In the old literature of the 1800s, villains were monsters of our own imagination. Back then, for some reason, humanity could not make sense of its own evil actions, so these characters often had little dialogue and were about as one dimensional as you can get. 

These are the monsters that cannot be reasoned with, ones that are already set in their ways and are just meant to be feared. 

Take Count Dracula, for example, from the Bram Stoker novel published in 1897. While not as one-dimensional as most other monsters you’ll read about from this time period, Dracula is a character made to induce fear, and he does that well. 

At first, he is cunning and full of charm. But as the story unravels, the reader becomes enveloped by fear and has no sympathy for the famous villainous vampire. 

We were never supposed to sympathize with a vampire because it is out for blood, a challenge to our existence as humans. That’s why we cheer for Van Helsing’s hunt for him.

In 1818, with Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, we are put in the shoes of both the historic villains of this story, the loathsome Dr, Frankenstein and his poor, pitiable creation.

When we are first put in Victor’s shoes, it’s easy to understand his actions, but as the story goes on, we start to realize the damage his actions have caused and how reprehensible his motivations are. This depiction is very different in that we are reading Victor’s first person account of his journey, and yet we still hate our protagonist by the end of the story.

Today, it is not uncommon to watch or read from the point of view of the villain. This is what makes Shelley’s work so ahead of her time.

The creature is one of our first popular iterations of a tragic villain. The poor being had his breath forced onto him and was abandoned. Though it is easy to pity the creature and to want to root for him, he is still a villain. A being of such great stature going around murdering family members of someone he wants to take revenge on for abandoning him? Including a child? We might see some justification in these actions given the circumstances, but the victims were innocent bystanders of a greater evil taking place. 

The genius of it is that we are seeing both perspectives–the monster that is Frankenstein and how his ego blinds him to the feelings of others. And the tragic creature who makes us wonder: What if he was just loved, and not feared? 

One of the most iconic villains in history is the Joker, first introduced in spring 1940 during the “golden age” of comic books with Batman #1. Written by Bill Finger and illustrated by Bob Kane, the Joker was originally a clownish mobster who seemed to cause chaos for the heck of it. 

The Joker as an antagonistic force contrasts the dark brooding and serious tone that Batman brought to the pages with a humorous clown who commits crimes for fun. 

He continued being a thief, trickster and murderer up until the Comics Code Authority in 1956 ensured that gore and murder would be heavily censored in comics. The Joker became more of a prankster than a killer. While toning him down could have made him lame, it instead seemed to add more depth to the character as he was adapted to the films. 

Christopher Nolan’s 2008 film The Dark Knight combined all facets of the Joker’s character over his comic book years, taking inspiration from both the prankster and the killer, and making a feared villain whose ideology can actually make a bit of sense. 

The idea that chaos is inevitable and there is true evil in all of us brought out a new perspective on villains. We could see that all it takes is one bad day to push us off the edge and that our desire for peace was nonsensical. 

The 2019 film Joker, however, provides a different take on the clown-dressed killer. In the comics and in the Batman mythos, The Joker’s backstory was either left ambiguous or always changing, adding to the contradictory and mysterious existence of the character.

The 2019 film throws away all of that ambiguity and makes the Joker into an empathetic protagonist, showing explicitly what made the character go crazy. 

While it’s a good film on its own and adds a new layer of empathy to this character, it seems that the mystery of what made The Joker in the first place and his inexplicable thirst for causing chaos is what fans want to see from him.

Standing up against the established order is something humanity is quite familiar with. It’s that random twitch that sometimes happens when you’re riding shotgun on the highway with the window down, with your phone in hand and just imagine for a split second chucking it out the window. Purely because, why not? 

The question of “what could have been” becomes central in examining the case of tragic villains. These are villains who were once hailed as noble, moral or even heroic but went down a dark path and became consumed by their fatal flaw. 

Darth Vader is one of the most famous villains in all of cinema. The amount of respect, terror and attention he demanded from the narrative was more than enough to grip the audience, but then the prequels came along and added context that broadened the scope of his character.

Anakin’s fatal flaw was his fear of death. He feared losing his own life, that of his lover, and those around him. That fear sparked in him a need for power, and it began to corrupt him and made our hearts yearn for the hero he could have been had he not joined the dark side. 

We all love complex heroes who stand up for moral good in a world that is constantly changing while facing internal battles. However, a layered villain can grip audiences’ attention even more. 

As shown by Walter White from Vince Gilligan’s Breaking Bad, villains can bring a more powerful message to us than even the most complex of heroes can. 

Once a hardworking, kind father with a genius-level intellect and wisdom, White becomes a reprehensible drug lord murderer at the end of his cautionary tale.  Walter’s descent into villainy is one of the most popular and prolific pieces of storytelling in the modern day. 

Walter White starts out just about as mild-mannered and soft-spoken as his name suggests. He is your quiet next-door neighbor who would let you borrow his car for a day and not make you pay for the damages. 

But once he is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and given just about two years left to live, Walter’s perspective on life is flipped, and his upset, greedy alter ego is revealed. 

Breaking Bad is one of the first pieces of media that really made us question how far we will go with our protagonist as they keep committing more and more evil acts. 

Walter’s diagnosis revealed to him that life was always a death sentence, and that letting people walk all over him and not fighting for what’s his is what got him teaching high school chemistry instead of being a millionaire chemist off a company that he helped create. 

When Walter decides to pay for his cancer treatment by using his talents to cook meth, he finds out that he likes being outside of the law. In fact, he revels in it. 

We as the audience start to revel in it too. Like Walter, we hate to pay insurance to companies who won’t cover the costs when we need it. We all hate being walked on, seen as less, when we know that we are capable of so much more. 

We rooted and we clapped as he carried out our underdog fantasies of sticking it to the world when the world left us behind, and we didn’t even notice how tainted his soul was getting until it was too late. 

By the time we found out, Walter had already poisoned a child, killed more than 20 people to cover his tracks and enlisted neo-Nazis to carry out his dirty work. And even then, we held onto hope that we would get our sweet, old Walt from the beginning of the series back.

What does that say about us? Rooting for a mass-murdering drug kingpin?  Well, if nothing else, it reminds us that evil is often just a few choices away from the ordinary.

Life has a way of backing us into impossible corners, and how we respond in those moments is the true measure of character.

What really created Walter White’s ruthless alter ego? Was it the cancer? The greed?

Whatever your answer may be, it likely reveals more about you than it does about the story itself.

That’s the most fascinating thing about villains. More often than not, the story is not trying to tell you something. It’s simply holding up a mirror, reflecting the depths of your own desires.

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featured image graphic by EMILY STEPHENS