“You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher.” - Firelord Ozai - Avatar: The Last Airbender
Villains come in all shapes and sizes. Some are masterminds who are above it all, scheming and plotting. Some are driven by a lust for power. Some are driven by good intentions but then experience a fall. Some are just monsters who don't have a mind of their own other than destruction. Some have some direct personal relevance and relationship to the main protagonist. Still others find themselves an unfortunate part of the MCU without even a hope of having an interesting quality1.
The most iconic of children's stories often have villains who fit into more than one of these qualities. Often, the sweeping tales have a big bad main villain who is a mastermind but then also some other antagonists that fall into other categories. Avatar: The Last Airbender (ATLA) is my spouse’s favorite TV Show. Not unlike Animorphs, this is a show with fantastic storytelling for younger audiences with dedicated fans. It is probably worth a series of reviews in its own right2.
“Water. Earth. Fire. Air.
Long ago, the four nations lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. Only the Avatar, master of all four elements, could stop them, but when the world needed him most, he vanished. A hundred years passed and my brother and I discovered the new Avatar, an airbender named Aang, and although his airbending skills are great, he has a lot to learn before he's ready to save anyone. But I believe Aang can save the world.”
One way of looking at villains in stories is as a statement of evil in the world. What does evil look like, where does it come from, how do we recognize it? Who the villains are and what they look like in stories tells us something about what authors think evil looks like. Hopefully, villains also tell us a little bit about what evil around us looks like and helps us recognize it. The very premise of ATLA is that there was a peace and harmony disrupted by the evil of the Fire Nation. That harmony can be restored by the embodiment of good in the Avatar, an airbender named Aang. The good news about the Avatar is narrated in the show’s premise by Katara, a character who believes in the saving power of Aang.
Ok, rereading that previous paragraph hopefully it isn’t too difficult to see some of the Christian allusion within ATLA. There was harmony that was disrupted by an original sin of the Fire Nation attacking. The person of the Avatar is the good news, or gospel, who saves. Katara testifies to the good news just as the gospel writers or John the Baptist point to the good news.
Under all of this, we have a fundamental conflict between good and evil. Though the story of ATLA will have some deep exploration of themes like redemption, the evil is plain and simple. The Fire Nation attacked, unprovoked. Good and evil are distinct, separable entities with good setting out to save the world from an evil that has caused suffering for a hundred years. And while the good is personified by Aang, the evil is personified by the villain leading the Fire Nation, Firelord Ozai.
Firelord Ozai is the most interesting character ever portrayed by Mark Hamill3. Like many great villains, he starts out sitting both literally and figuratively in the shadows of the story. Throughout the 3 seasons, Firelord Ozai appears in less than 30 minutes of screen time. But you wouldn’t necessarily realize that by watching the series. Ozai’s influence is constant on his tortured son, the Prince Zuko who seeks his approval. Prince Zuko is the main villain at the beginning of the series4, tasked with hunting down the Avatar to regain his honor. We also see Firelord Ozai’s older brother Iroh, who Firelord Ozai beat to the throne when Iroh disgraced himself by failing as a general to capture a major Earth Kingdom city. Iroh acts as Firelord Ozai’s foil and early in the series he tells a story about Ozai that culminates in Ozai delivering the line quoted at the beginning of the piece. The story and quote give a pretty good idea of the kind of guy Firelord Ozai is. Later we see the shadows Firelord Ozai and Firelord Ozai’s father Firelord Azulan cast on his daughter Azula5.
Firelord Ozai is power hungry and ruthless. He admires strength, disgusted with anyone he views as weak. He views caring for others as a form of weakness, so he extends this flexing of his power over even his own family. Near the end, we get to finally see his personal power as a fire bender in the climax. He is a talented bender. There is no but coming on any redeeming quality for Ozai. As a villain he drives the story, he is fun to watch, he is powerful, but he isn't deep or complex. He is evil, driven by power and a lust for more power to take over or destroy the world.
Reading the Animorphs books as an adult, Visser Three functions as a very similar kind of simple villain but in a different way than Firelord Ozai. Where Firelord Ozai sits in the shadows commanding armies and family, Visser Three personally gets into the action with his underlings. Early on, we don’t see deep brotherly relationships, family relationships, or really relationships of any kind with the Visser - just troops at the Visser's command. The main villain isn’t scheming above it all. Right away we get to see the powerful morphs he has captured. The monster he morphs to kill Elfangor is a nightmare, the morph he uses to threaten fellow Yeerks is frightening.
Like Firelord Ozai, Visser Three is also driven by a lust for more and more power. Every time he fights the Animorphs he openly broadcasts plans to destroy them. Visser Three is confident of his own superiority, and views other species as beneath him. Again, a simple villain. Maybe the biggest difference between Visser Three and Ozai is that Ozai displays far more competence at his job of commanding others.
Visser Three isn’t a brilliant commander of troops. He doesn’t lay brilliant traps. He doesn’t even keep his every waking thought secret from everyone within shouting distance of him. From the very beginning, Visser Three’s character is just your basic schoolyard bully. He taunts and plays with Elfangor before killing him.
And why do I say he’s not a mastermind? Well, he’s up against a handful of children with the same morphing power they have and an army at his command. And by the second book he’s freaking out about them, calling one of his apparently top-level commanders whose host’s power is that he is an administrator at a school with Jr. High School students. He consistently yells at his underlings and threatens them with death. This isn’t just to inspire them to get the job done, he also murders staff when they point out that something he’s asking them to do might require some amount of thought.
Throughout all of this, he also continues to believe that he is up against trained Andalites instead of children. This is despite the fact that if he managed to discuss anything with the people below him, he probably could figure out they might not be Andalites. In the first book, the Animorphs run away from the Hork Bajir after witnessing Elfangor’s death. Clearly, the Yeerks know there were children there and are interested in finding them, but after the first book they just kind of forget about all of that. Oh, there were some kids who witnessed aliens? Probably no big deal. The Animorphs do some morphing at the Yeerk pool itself, so it is hard to imagine some Yeerks didn’t see them in the middle of transition to human form. In The Visitor, Rachel morphs nearly in front of Chapman and then later nearly in front of Visser Three.
If you think about it, there may be a Yeerk, or even a human sitting inside a Yeerk’s head, that was smart enough to put two and two together and realize this small group that is the thorn in the side of the Yeerk invasion might not be Andalites6. Of course, someone smart enough to realize that would also realize that trying to explain that to Visser Three would be fruitless. The best case scenario is that you would get yelled at after starting with something along the lines of “Hey, Visser, you know those Andalites that keep screwing with us?” The more likely scenario is that the Visser is in a slightly pissy mood and decides to lop off your host's head which maybe also ends up killing the Yeerk inside.
At first, I thought this stupidity was a shortcoming of the early books in the series. Hey, they are fantastic books with a somewhat one-dimensional villain. We want to focus on our main characters anyways. But the more I thought about it, the more I came around to the idea that maybe a schoolyard bully is a good starting point to introduce children to what evil in the world can look like. Specifically, evil can look stupid.
Firelord Ozai and other antagonists in ATLA, are rarely portrayed as looking foolish or incompetent. This isn't a shortcoming of the series; on the contrary it drives tension and raises the stakes in the story. But the stupidity of the Visser works in Animorphs to portray a stupider kind of evil. Bad outcomes and bad decisions in this world can easily come from the incompetent, the foolish, the thoughtless who are nonetheless powerful. “Evil is stupid” is a theme I’ve been on a bit of a kick for recently.
In a couple books on Pope Pius XI and Pope Pius XII, I found myself most amused by little stupid anecdotes about fascist dictators of the time7. One of my favorites - Mussolini had bad eyesight, so he had his staff retype out official documents in three times the font size because he thought glasses would make him look weak. This wasn’t a simple thing at the time, he had to have a special typewriter made. Just imagining this guy in his military uniform with cartoonishly big font on paper in front of them makes me laugh, especially thinking that looks less stupid than a pair of glasses. I’ve brought up Tony Ginnocchio’s blog more than once which I also finished binging recently. One of the central themes of his work is “hey look at what this idiot did” with the subject usually being someone powerful in the Catholic Church. I’ve been binging episodes of the podcast 5-4 whose tagline is “A podcast about how much the Supreme Court sucks,” and they frequently state plainly how stupid the decisions are of some of the most powerful people in our country, and by extension the world.
Now, saying that evil villains can be stupid doesn’t mean they are not dangerous. Mussolini was an atrocious fascist dictator. Many of the rich and stupid people Tony covers command millions of dollars and are bosses of a lot of people. The Supreme Court has a direct and serious impact on individuals every time they make a decision on a live case. They also then have a broad impact that can make millions of lives worse through how common law is applied throughout the country. And Visser Three does present a legitimate existential threat to all life on earth. Stupid evil is a dangerous evil.
In this book, the Animorphs uncover one of the more intelligent plans the Yeerks have, to Capture8 the governor of the state. This plan is led by Tom's Yeerk using a hospital that will then be used to convert hundreds of people to become Controllers per month. The Animorphs manage to infiltrate the hospital, find the portable pool, and decide to boil the Yeerks inside9. In the process of boiling the Yeerks, Jake falls head first into the portable Yeerk pool and is Captured10 by Tom's Yeerk.
The Yeerk isn't able to hide his hatred of Ax, because he's stupid, and gets found out. The Animorphs keep Jake and the Yeerk in his head from escaping for three days until the Yeerk finally dies of a lack of Kadrona Rays. Of course, Tom is now a Controller of a different Yeerk. Sometimes evil people are just stupid. Counting is hard.
Except Kilmonger. And maybe Loki gets a pass.
For now, I want to focus a bit on the villains in ATLA, doing my best to steer clear of any major plot points or spoilers, so apologies if I am a bit vague on some plot points.
Ok, so now I’ve thrown some shade at the MCU and Star Wars. Come at me!
For the record - I enjoy both. Neither is as good as Animorphs or ATLA.
And perhaps one of the greatest villain story arcs of all-time.
My spouse always reminds me of the ages of some of the characters when rewatching. Seeing Azula as a fourteen-year-old girl really does impact how I think of her as a villain.
Huh, I wonder if that’ll come back around
I bet you thought I was about to call these two Popes evil and stupid. Don’t worry, Pope Pius XI put too much faith in Mussolini, but he wasn’t stupid.
Hey that’s the name of the book!
Awww, mass murder of non-combatants. Babies first war crime!
Hey, wait that’s also the name of the book!