I would have this conversation with a friend every time we watched superhero movies.
She would love the hero.
I’d start explaining why I understood the villain.
And eventually she’d look at me like I had personally offended her.
“Why do you always side with the villains?”
I never really thought I was siding with them.
I was trying to understand them.
There’s a difference.
I have always found it difficult to look at a villain and see only the person they became.
Because before that person became the villain, they were somebody’s child.
Somebody loved them.
Somebody held them.
Somebody probably believed they would grow up to become a good person.
They didn’t come into the world thinking, “One day I’m going to destroy everything.“
Something happened.
Maybe it was one major event.
Maybe it was years of smaller things.
Maybe someone betrayed them.
Maybe someone they trusted hurt them.
Maybe the person who eventually became the hero was connected to that pain somehow.
And when I start looking at a character from that perspective, I can’t simply call them evil and move on.
I want to know what happened.
What did they lose?
Who hurt them?
What did they believe before everything changed?
And perhaps most importantly:
At what point did their pain become something they were willing to inflict on other people?
That last question is important to me because understanding someone’s pain does not mean I agree with how they choose to respond to it.
I have encountered narratives in which one character inflicts harm upon another, and the subsequent response is essentially, “Well, you have achieved your revenge. Haven’t you done enough?”
And I always find myself asking:
What does “enough” really mean?
Pain isn’t mathematics.
You cannot say, “You hurt me by this much, so I will hurt you by exactly the same amount, and now we are even.”
That’s not how people work.
There isn’t a universal measurement for suffering.
One person can experience something and recover quickly.
Another person can experience what looks like the same thing and carry it for twenty years.
So when someone says, “You’ve already gotten your revenge, isn’t that enough?” I understand the question, but I don’t think there is an easy answer.
Revenge doesn’t have a natural stopping point.
That’s where the danger begins.
You hurt me.
I hurt you back.
You hurt me again.
I hurt you worse.
Eventually, the original pain can become almost irrelevant because the person is no longer responding to what happened to them.
They’re simply continuing the cycle.
And at some point, revenge stops being about justice.
It becomes identity.
That is where I think a villain can cross the line.
Not necessarily when they become angry.
Not when they want revenge.
But when hurting people becomes more important than the reason they started fighting in the first place.
And that is why I don’t think every villain is wrong.
Sometimes I actually agree with what they’re fighting against.
Sometimes their criticism of the world makes more sense than the hero’s.
Sometimes they’re the only person asking the uncomfortable questions.
Sometimes they’re the person saying, “This system is broken,” while everyone else is busy pretending it isn’t.
But then there are villains who take a legitimate grievance and push it so far that they become the very thing they claimed to hate.
And that’s where I stop agreeing with them.
The same thing applies to heroes.
I don’t automatically trust a character because the story tells me they’re the good guy.
Sometimes the hero has a beautiful idea.
“Let’s save the world.”
Okay.
From what?
Why does the world need saving?
Who decided what the world should look like afterward?
What happens if your plan fails?
What’s the backup?
What happens to the people who don’t agree with you?
What happens when your attempt to save one group puts another group in danger?
I think a lot of writers give fictional heroes what I would call a butterfly-and-fairytale mindset.
They have this beautiful vision of what the world could be.
And I love beautiful visions.
But eventually someone has to ask:
“How?”
How are we getting there?
What happens when this doesn’t work?
What happens when someone fights back?
What happens when the people you’re trying to save don’t want to be saved?
What happens when your perfect plan creates an entirely different problem?
Ideas are wonderful.
But the world doesn’t run on ideas alone.
It runs on consequences.
And sometimes the hero’s biggest weakness is that they don’t think far enough beyond their good intentions.
That’s probably why I rarely choose a side when I’m watching these stories.
I can understand the hero.
I can understand the villain.
I can agree with one decision the hero makes and disagree with the next.
I can sympathize with the villain’s past while condemning what they’ve become.
I don’t need one person to be completely good for me to like them.
And I don’t need another person to be completely evil for me to understand them.
People are complicated.
Why shouldn’t fictional characters be?
Maybe that’s why psychology and human behavior fascinate me so much when I read.
The most interesting stories aren’t the ones where I know exactly who I’m supposed to support.
They’re the ones that make me stop and wonder:
“Wait.”
“What if they’re both right?”
“What if they’re both wrong?”
“What if the hero caused the villain?”
“What if the villain is right about the problem but completely wrong about the solution?”
And sometimes, I think those are the best stories.
Not because they give me a side to choose.
But because they make choosing a side uncomfortable.
