After 13 years, it’s hopefully clear that we recommend against having villains trip over their own feet. In most stories, if the villain is a pushover, there won’t be much tension or satisfaction. But why do villains become pushovers in the first place? And what should be done about it? Fortunately, we have thoughts.

Generously transcribed by Ari. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.

Oren: And welcome everyone to another episode of the Mythcreants Podcast. I’m Oren. 

Chris: I’m Chris. 

Oren: Oh no, the bad guy is going to conquer our planet with their mega space battleship as soon as they can get an orbital parking permit. There’s a long wait list, and obviously they’re not gonna invade without a permit. Can you imagine the kind of ticket they’d get? 

Chris: Well, it’s okay. Once they do manage to park, we have all of the big weapons anyway. 

Oren: Yeah, but they’re very scary ’cause, like, they had some dialogue about how they would want to see the world as a diamond that they wear on a ring. And it’s like, okay, yeah, that’s… Sure, bro. 

Chris: Well, they are keeping one person hostage and threatening to kill that person, so we should probably… you know, we’re just gonna have to surrender all of our weapons. 

Oren: Just have to give them everything they want, as opposed to just put someone in charge who isn’t that hostage’s parent? [laughter] Pro tip! West Wing did a whole story arc about this, about how, like, the president has to step away when his kid has been kidnapped, ’cause the president can’t make logical decisions at that point. Come on, guys, West Wing figured it out! [laughter] So this week we are talking about when the villain is too weak. And I’m including both villains who are just straightforwardly underpowered, like they’re just not powerful enough to defeat the heroes, or also villains who, in theory, should be, but just make comically bad choices to the point that they should be easy to defeat at that point.

Chris: What about villains that the storyteller just doesn’t like, and so they just fall on their face? 

Oren: Yeah, I guess there’s always the, like, they didn’t technically make a bad choice, but they are just constantly– failed anyway, right? Like, they constantly have bad luck or whatever. 

Chris: Actually, this usually happens, I think, in a lot of children’s cartoons or other lighter stories where the heroes are just not allowed to lose. You know, so, the most recent She-Ra had this problem, too, where it’s like, okay, we need to see the heroes triumphant every single time, and so then by fiat, the villain just always loses. It’s, you know, hard for them to not feel too weak. 

Oren: Right. Well, and, and She-Ra has that problem from multiple angles, right? Because it has the issue where the heroes just always have to win, right? They are never allowed to lose. But they also are just, on paper, way more powerful than the villains, right? Because each of the princesses is, like, at least as strong as any of the bad guys, and there are only, like, two or three named bad guys who can fight worth anything, and there are eight of these princesses or something like… Oh, gosh, maybe it’s not eight, but there are a bunch, right? 

Chris: Yeah. Maybe we should cover signs your villain is too weak because, again, a lot of storytellers do this, they don’t realize their villain is too weak. Like, obviously, a big one is, is the villain outnumbered? And to be clear, minions don’t always make up the difference. Like, if you put some time and effort into your minions, the minions can matter, but there’s just a lot of stories, especially if they escalate too quickly and the heroes are just steamrolling over hordes of minions immediately, where the minions just don’t feel significant enough. And then all we see is that, well, the villain is one person who has superpowers or incredible abilities or whatever, but then the team good is like, five people, and that just– doesn’t look even.

Oren: Yeah, we’re just gonna gang up on him. And also, authors often do this when they want to portray the villain as, like, scheming. Sometimes because they think that makes them look more evil. Uh, looking at you, C.S. Lewis, with the scheming White Witch. Oh, she’s scheming! But what you neglect to notice is that, A, every adaptation has made the White Witch hotter than the last adaptation. [laughter] So we’re doomed already. But also, the White Witch is the one putting in all the work to come up with this clever plan against a much more powerful enemy! 

Chris: Right. If your villain has to be clever to win, they’re not powerful enough. 

Oren: And She-Ra also had that problem sometimes because Catra would often come up with these clever strategies, and then Adora’s strategy was, “What if we just ran right at them because we have, like, a bunch of powerful princesses?” And I’m like, “Oh, it feels … Uh, Catra kinda earned this one,” but nope, she still loses. 

Chris: This is why everybody loved Loki, who was originally a villain in Avengers, is because he’s clearly the underdog in this situation, and he has to be clever to get anywhere. Like, how could you not root for him? Also, he’s good-looking. How could you not root for him? [laughter]

Oren: Yeah, and he’s tortured a little bit. 

Chris: And he’s tortured. Angsty boy. 

Oren: Yeah. In The Avengers, it worked okay for a while because there was this period where, like, the conflict was over whether the Avengers could work together, and Loki was very powerful in stopping them from doing that. But once they start working together, it’s like, can six Avengers beat Loki? Half of whom could beat Loki in a one-on-one fight? Yes, it turns out they can. [chuckles]

Chris: And again, Loki is supposed to have minions, but, like, in those Marvel movies, minions just don’t mean anything, right? They’re just there so that we can have more, bigger, flashier fight scenes, and the minions are instantly just fodder for our heroes.

Oren: Yeah, there are a number of Marvel movies that have this problem. Age of Ultron had the same problem, where it’s, like, Ultron is here, and he’s about as powerful as Iron Man, and he’s fighting the whole Avengers team. And, like, yeah, you know, I think we’ll get him. I think we will. 

Chris: So yeah, another thing, if your villains have powers that are just to negate the hero’s powers, that is a bad sign. That is a bad sign that your heroes are too powerful in comparison to your villains. If they have to have, like, the mutant ability neutralizing collar or what have you, that strongly suggests that the villain is underpowered. 

Oren: Right, and I mean, and that’s the case anytime you have to introduce a countermeasure just to, like, turn off an ability or a piece of tech that you’ve added, because that’s just a boring way to handle it. It’s like, oh, well, I wanted to see them use that. Well, too bad, they’re in the can’t-use-that zone. It’s like, all right, well, now it feels like you might as well not have added it. 

Chris: Oh! Bees. 

Oren: Yeah, the Inuyasha bees!

Chris: Yeah. 

Oren: It’s like, “Hey, we gave this guy a black hole in his hand that defeats all enemies.” It’s like, “Well, I guess everyone has bees now, and the bees make the black hole not work.”

Chris: [laughs] That’s just so funny. The bees. Okay. 

Oren: So we’ve talked about villains being outnumbered. That’s a big one. Um, villains being clever. There’s also just the straight up, like- The author loves the hero too much and isn’t, you know, willing to let them ever face enemies who actually know what they’re doing. This one doesn’t come up as often in published stories just because it’s pretty well known by professional authors that your hero is, like, measured by the strength of their villains. There have been enough, like, Batman essays for us to internalize that message. But it still happens occasionally. The Name of the Wind, of course, has this problem because, like, Kvothe is the greatest guy ever, and so when he actually has a rival, his rival has to suck ass and Kvothe is super cool and the best. Weirdly, in The Wheel of Time, Rand has this problem after about book three. He’s just way too strong, and the only way that we keep him from completely winning is by continually cutting away from his POV to a million other characters. 

Chris: Doesn’t Dune have this issue with the rival guy? 

Oren: Yes, Dune absolutely has this problem, where after, like…The first third or so is, you know, House Harkonnen living large, and they’ve got their evil plan, and they’re totally badass. And then as soon as Paul makes his alliance with the Fremen, every fight they have is basically a foregone conclusion, and he just steamrollers over all opposition. There’s one scene just to, like, to really drive home. There’s one scene where the Sardaukar, who are the imperial elite soldiers, ambush a group of Fremen non-combatants, which the book of course describes as women and children, and then have to, like, run away with their tails between their legs ’cause they got beat up so bad by the Fremen non-combatants.

Chris: [chuckling] Oh, no. 

Oren: And this is, of course, where the Dune fans will claim, “Oh, you see? That’s because Paul’s not the hero. You’re not supposed to want him to win.” And I’m like, “Okay, first of all, no.” 

Chris: Yes, you are. [laughs]

Oren: In the first book, you are absolutely supposed to want him to win. Don’t lie to me. But second, if you aren’t, what is the point of any of this? It goes on for a while. Like, that’s arguably worse. If I’m supposed to spend however many chapters watching two people I don’t care about fight? C’mon. 

Chris: Yeah, I don’t know. I have run into a couple books that- were like, villain origin stories or something, and I’ve always been kinda baffled, like, what is the appeal of this? But I mean, if they’re good, they still get you to root for the character. 

Oren: Yeah, I mean, the way that those usually work is they have them fight, like, someone who is more eviler, right? Assuming they’re an actual villain origin story and not just a popular villain that we have reimagined as a protagonist, right?

Chris: Okay, so those are signs that your villain is underpowered. So, you know, what should we do about it? 

Oren: Okay, so the main thing that you have to be thinking about here is what kind of conflicts is my villain getting into with the hero, or in general, right? Like, what are they doing? And you need to plan for that sort of thing. Now, if you have a show like Deep Space Nine, in Deep Space Nine, the Dominion War is not going to be decided by Sisko punching the changeling leader. That’s not a thing that’s gonna happen. So it’s not a big deal that there are fewer named characters on Team Evil because this is not a personal contest. Now, it does kind of become one in the finale when, like, Sisko has to go down and have, like, a personal confrontation with Dukat, but that’s a separate issue. That doesn’t… I would argue that scene doesn’t work very well. But the Dominion War itself is not about that. So in this case, that’s a situation where minions work great, right? The Jem’Hadar are very threatening, and they do what they need to do. But if you’re imagining that your story is mainly going to be about the hero and the villain, or at least important named characters fighting each other, then you just have to balance them for that. And often that’s going to mean making more named villains or making the villain so strong that they can fight all of Team Good at the same time.

Chris: I mean, I also encourage people to not depower minions too quickly. You know, if you can make the minions actually intimidating when the story starts. And I think one reason this happens is the storyteller wants the hero to be, like, super badass immediately, right? And so they show them fighting the minions. So this does sometimes require a hero that’s sort of designed for growth, right? Instead of having that super badass hero immediately, you have your scrappy hero, and then your scrappy hero becomes badass during the story. But it’s certainly easier to keep tension up that way, right? If you have, “Oh. Oh, no, these minions, they’re gonna get me” and then, you know, progress to the point where you beat up the minions. It helps. It makes the minions more intimidating, so we’re not feeling like they don’t matter and it’s just a number of named characters. 

Oren: Yeah. I mean, that’s, you know, basically how Avatar does it, right? Like, early in the show, Fire Nation soldiers are a pretty serious threat, and then as the show progresses, that becomes less true. And, you know, by the time they get Toph, we’ve basically given up the idea that unnamed Fire Nation soldiers can threaten them, which is when we introduce Azula and her crew. So that’s why that worked out as well as it did. It is also important to think through the implications of the powers you give your heroes, ’cause I just mentioned Avatar. The Avatar State’s a huge problem. Like, “hey, we gave the, our main hero a god mode ability, and, uh, yeah, I guess it only turns on when he’s about to lose. Hmm. Y- yeah, okay, I see why that would be an issue, actually.” Now, of course, later, when the Avatar can control the Avatar State, it’s even worse. But even in the original show, if you stop to think about it for a minute, you realize that Aang can’t ever lose fights, barring something really clever like what Azula ends up doing. And so that’s not great. I would probably recommend not doing that. 

Chris: Yeah. And again, if you’re wondering, what do I do when the hero and villain confront each other? If your hero just runs away and focuses on escaping as opposed to defeating the villain, right? You can still have a very exciting conflict that comes to a conclusion that is triumphant for your hero because your hero gets away. But if they don’t beat the villain, then the villain is still much more intimidating than they would be if they were defeated. 

Oren: When it comes to villains just making really bad choices, one that I found that’s an interesting one is when we are shifting from the villain that we thought was the bad guy to reveal the true bad guy. And then there’s this weird period where the protagonist has basically won, but we’re kind of acting like there’s still a chance that the villain could beat them. And the reason that we’re doing that is because we’re about to bring in a new, different villain. 

Chris: See, I assumed the causality was reversed, where, oh, the hero has to defeat this person to move the plot forward. Oh, what do we do? I know, we’ll bring in another villain. 

Oren: Yeah, that’s possible.

Chris: It could be either way, right? We decide, oh, we have a bigger, bad villain we’re ready to introduce, therefore, we now can make our hero defeat the villain we’ve been working on finally. Or, okay, well, uh, that came to a head. What do we do now? Bigger villain! 

Oren: Yeah. I mean, I was thinking of the big confrontation in the show Paradise, spoilers for that show. We have this weird sequence where the main character and his friends have gotten all the guns and have all the power because the villain at this point has no weapons, and so the main character should just be able to march up and take her prisoner. Like, what is she gonna do, right? Her guards have, like, little tasers. But we spend a whole episode with them being like, “Whoa, look at our clever plan for how we’re going to defeat her.” And part of this is rotating her out of being a villain. Like, she’s maybe gonna come back. Unclear, right? But we’ve sort of rotated her out of being a villain. But when you do that sort of thing, it probably should happen in a much shorter timeframe, right? You should treat them like a normal villain who looks like they’re gonna win, and then they are defeated, and there’s this brief period where we think the heroes have won, and then we reveal the new villain.

Chris: Yeah. I mean, we definitely wanna time it so it’s clear that the story is gonna continue and we don’t actually think this is the real end, so you don’t get a false ending there. But yeah, it can get really dull if we’re like, “Oh, okay, they won, so there’s no threat on the horizon.” Yeah, the thing with Sinatra in Paradise was very strange because first, okay, we find out she has a hoard of guns when no guns are supposed to be allowed in… They’re in this, like, post-apocalyptic large bunker, basically. And so then we just give the heroes all the guns, and, like, the storytelling didn’t have to do that, right? They could’ve gotten their hands on a few guns. They could’ve… But no, we’ve established that the heroes now have, like, maybe there’s a few in enemy hands, but they have the mother lode of guns. And okay, that was an unforced error, so now they’re way more powerful than the villain. And then we need the hero to do something that to me seemed very unwise, right? And his daughter is taken hostage, but at this point, if he has all the guns, I feel like he could solve that problem without giving back all the guns.

Oren: Right. I mean, for one thing, he could take the villain hostage and be like, “Okay, well, now I have you as, like, a surety that my daughter won’t be hurt, right? ‘Cause presumably you care about being alive.” And then it was even weirder because for some reason, the other good guy who was sort of his, had become his partner, she also gave in even though she has no attachment to his daughter.

Chris: Why did she give up the guns, right? Like, if your side has all the guns, you’ve won, right? That’s how this works. I- I’m thinking about this and I’m like, should they have just not had guns, or the guns were locked up the entire time, maybe we only learn about them next season? ‘Cause I’m thinking about this, I’m like, I don’t really think we actually needed guns for any of this.

Oren: ‘Cause they have this whole plan to, like, trick the villain and all of her supporters into a bunker that they then seal off, right, to imprison them, and the villain’s you know, aha moment is realizing that’s what they’re doing and then not going into the bunker. But, like, it doesn’t matter because the good guys have all the guns, so it doesn’t matter if she’s in the bunker or not. But if we hadn’t done that, if we hadn’t given the heroes all of the firepower, then the heroes could have done their plan to, you know, shunt all of the bad guys into a bunker prison and then the main bad guy could have realized it and not gone in, and then that would’ve been like, “Oh, damn, she’s not in prison. Our plan didn’t work. Now we have to try to take her out, like, personally.” And that would be different, right? That wouldn’t feel like an auto-win. 

Chris: Yeah, I mean, considering that this story, Paradise, one of its issues is that it’s supposed to be post-apocalyptic, but it never feels like it. Because their bunker is designed to look like just a normal town on the surface, and so it just– it takes away a lot of the novelty of the scenario ’cause it feels too normal. If we were to have all these modern-day people with smart devices and everything in this town, but there were no guns, and they were figuring out how to combat and fight each other without any guns present, that would be actually more interesting. 

Oren: Yeah, they’d have to work a little bit at it.

Chris: Yeah, yeah! That would’ve been a really interesting sequence, and I feel like they could have done pretty much the same thing and just… you know. But yeah, that was a weird one, ’cause we gave the good guys all the guns for some reason, completely unforced error, and then the hero just gave them all back, and it’s like, “Don’t do that!” This is the issue, again, guns are not the easiest to use in stories because they’re just too powerful. 

Oren: Yeah. Another place that I see this come up a lot is in stories where the author wants the villains to kind of start their own downfall via, like, overreach or just to demonstrate the way that villains in real life often make very silly mistakes. And that can work, but you need to bring in some real-life dynamics to that. It isn’t gonna work in a story where the heroes are operating on more or less the same plane as the villains, even if they’re a little less powerful. If this is a clash between near equals, you can’t have the villain just, like, messing up and causing their own problems. You can do it if it’s a clash between an insurgency and a giant empire, like Andor for example. It works there. A lot of the rebellion is caused by the Empire’s own overreach, but the Empire is so powerful that we have room to do that in. Whereas if this had been a traditional space war story where it was gonna be decided by Luke Skywalker fighting Vader in little fighter planes, you can’t have Vader just tripping over his cape one day. That’s just not gonna work. 

Chris: Yeah. Same goes with other things that reduce the villain’s threat a little bit, where you can get away with them if your villain is threatening enough. Like, for instance, making jokes at the villain’s expense. Usually, that is not something you wanna do, but like in Cabin in the Woods, they do it and it’s fine because these zombies are really scary. And so they have, like, threat to spare, basically. But yeah, that’s also an issue that happens in the new Star Wars movies. 

Oren: Yeah, that happens a fair amount. There’s also, like, you know, when stories that are trying to make the villain sympathetic by giving the villain problems to deal with. And like Kingpin in the original Daredevil, and by the original I mean the one on Netflix– 

Chris: –Oh man, I just don’t like him.

Oren: Yeah, he’s just bad at his job. He keeps pissing off the other criminals and getting them to fight him when he doesn’t need them to. And it feels like if you really want, you know, not to be cliche, but if you want your villain to be sympathetic in this scenario, usually you want it to be for some reason other than them just messing up their evil plan.

Chris: And acting childish and–

Oren: Yeah. I mean, that’s another problem with Kingpin is that he’s, like, supposed to be clever, but he acts like a baby, and that’s… I don’t know why they made the decision to have him do that. 

Chris: And again, he’s been in enough shows now that he has to continually, like, lose. 

Oren: Yeah, that’s another weird part about Kingpin is that he, like, he showed up in several different Disney Marvel shows just to get completely rolled.

Chris: They must really like working with that actor ’cause I don’t know why they keep having him come back when he’s already just lost all of his threat. But yeah, if we had a scenario where a Kingpin was acting a bit childish, but he was just really, really powerful guy, then it might work a little better. Again, it’s hard when, like, real people who are evil act cartoonish, but if you’re really dedicated to, you know, making your story super realistic, that’s a reason to do that. But in many cases, there’s just no reason to have a villain that acts goofy and makes bad choices. 

Oren: So one thing that’s especially tricky is if you’re trying to make a villain that doesn’t make bad choices. Because to a certain extent, this is like how good are your planning skills as an author, right? Like, you know, just have them have a good evil plan. Like, all right, I don’t know how to make a good evil plan. So part of that is, I mean, you just think about it more. Like, I personally like to run the scenario through as if I had my players from my RPG campaigns in it. Like, what would they do? And I found that that works. 

Chris: Always finding solutions to problems even when you don’t want them to. 

Oren: Yeah. And if you’re really devoted, you could just run that as an RPG. Uh, you could run that scenario and see what your players do. 

Chris: Right. Or even, like, talking to a friend sometimes can be helpful, right? You can ask your friend, “What would you do in this situation?” and see if they come up with something that, you know, is interesting. 

Oren: Yeah. This is a situation where beta readers can be very helpful because it’s not really a storytelling expertise thing. It’s just making sure you didn’t miss any big implications.

Chris: And probably mentioned when we’re talking about villains making bad decisions. If you feel like your villain has to make bad decisions for your hero to win, right, that’s a sign of the reverse that your villain is too powerful, right? Whereas a very clever villain suggests your villain is not powerful enough. Like, you can have a clever villain that’s powerful enough, but if they have to be clever to win, like the White Witch has to be in order to have any chance against Aslan, right, then that’s… right? So you know, something to think about. Like, is the villain for making bad choices just to give the hero a fighting chance?

Oren: Yeah. It is possible for the villain to be too strong. Another thing that I meant to mention earlier is that if you wanna have, like, a scrappy villain who is an underdog villain even, usually that is best as like a lieutenant or something. Like, there’s a pretty classic lieutenant villain shows up, is threatening for a while, but then gets defeated by the PCs and then becomes a little scrappy underdog, like little hate goblin, and we either redeem them or they are destroyed by their own hubris and inability to grow, right? You could do something like that. But that’s probably not gonna be your main villain. 

Chris: At that point, they’re kind of our lesser lieutenant and we have a Big Bad that replaces them. Or, I mean, usually you have both. It’s your Zuko and your Fire Lord. 

Oren: Mm-hmm. All right. Well, with that, I think we can go ahead and call this episode to a close.

Chris: If you would like us to build a ray that we can automatically use to strengthen your villain without you doing any work, just like, you know, zap, then, uh, we will, we will work on building that, but we will need more funds, so you should consider supporting us on Patreon. Go to patreon.com/mythcreants. 

Oren: And before we go, I wanna thank a couple of our existing patrons. First, there’s Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. Then there’s Kathy Ferguson, who’s a professor of political theory and Star Trek. We will talk to you next week