Creating Your Own Villain

Being the hero protagonist is hard work. You can’t be expected to get everything right. In The Incredibles, Mr Incredible’s brutal dismissal of Buddy leads him down a dark path of villainy. The young fan grows up to be the arch-villain Syndrome who orchestrates a superhero genocide and threatens the hero's family. Mr Incredible has fallen into the trap of creating his own villain.

It’s difficult to say where this trope originated from, given, as far as I can see, it’s been part of Western culture since literature began.

The key to this trope is, but for the hero's direct action (or inaction) this villain/antagonist relationship would not have been created.

In Euripides’s Medea, the hero Jason dumps Medea (the 'barbarian' mother of his two children) in order a good Greek girl. In the era this was written, this wouldn't have been a reprehensible act, merely a regrettable one. Medea would have been expected to kowtow to her former husband's wishes.

Medea, however, murders the other woman in speculator fashion - in fact, she does this by giving Jason poisoned golden robes for her to wear for the wedding, which frankly should have been a bit of a warning flag.

In certain types of stories, this is a valuable trope to use as it gives the villain a strong motivation. It also gives you the bonus that your hero doesn’t walk into the conflict with clean hands, giving you some exciting emotional baggage.

Tony Stark Will Never Learn

In the world of Marvel, it’s Tony Stark (Iron Man) who gets the full force of this trope. The key to Tony's character development is that he is own worse enemy. His self-absorbed nature and his inability to work as a team are all shown to have real consequences.

These consequences being that every villain he faces is a result of his bad decisions. Compare this against Steve Rogers, who is almost always portrayed as a good man going up against an unjust system.

In the early movies, Tony is shown to be a prima donna genius, uncaring of where his advanced technology ended up. This indirectly leads to the creation of Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch who we see in Avengers: Age of Ultron. Tony Stark is a poster boy for progress, so his villains represent the price we pay for that progress and who we roll over to get there – intentionally or otherwise. In Iron Man 3, Tony literally says "we create our own demons" as he recounts how his humiliating dismissal of Aldrich Killian kicked off the story we're about to see.

Another aspect of this trope is it creates villains who are often dark reflections of the hero. The robot AI Ultron is a product of Tony’s hubris; like Tony, he's intelligent, snarky, arrogant and loney. He feels the burden of his intelligence as Tony does, but this leads to a very different end goal. This is something of a Frankenstein-Monster between Tony and Ultron.

The Umbrella Academy

This trope also allows the hero and villain a common backstory and shows that actions have consequences. The villain generally has a much more thematic reason to be there. They often operate from a point of historic pain, giving their conflict a lot more weight.

In The Umbrella Academy, Vanya is a product of an abusive, dysfunctional family. In this case, the fact that the Umbrella Academy created their own villain is highly thematic as she is the inevitable consequence of the hero's backstories.

The enemy the Hargreeves siblings have to face, the person who is designed to destroy the world, isn't some moustache-twirling villain who hates puppies, but someone they grew up with.

The characters are personally invested in fixing this as she is a product of their own bad decisions. They can't walk away. The conflict here is masterful, as it becomes apparent by the last episode that they will not be able to save Vayna until they've saved themselves. I've already written about how Luther tries and utterly fails at this.

Other ‘Creating Your Own Villain’ Examples

Harry Potter: Dumbledore’s entire backstory with Grindelwald. Barty Crouch Sr and Barty Crouch Jr. James Potter and Severus Snape. Sirius Black and Kreacher.

Harry Potter (again): Voldemort chooses Harry as the boy who will one day defeat him.

Kung-Fu Panda 2: Lord Shen, in an effort to avoid a prophecy that he will be stopped by a panda, kills all of Po's family... ensuring that Po will eventually become his mortal enemy. This is also an example of the Self-fulfilling Prophecy which is an upcoming post.

Batman (1966): Batman turned Dr. Schiml into Mr. Freeze by accidentally knocking a beaker of Instant Freeze.

Animorphs: David, sixth ranger turned arch-nemesis.

Star Wars: Luke Skywalker and Kylo Ren.

Megamind: Hilariously subverted – Megamind’s creation of Titan as a new hero to fight, Titan actually becomes an even worse villain.

Game of Thrones: Cersei Lannister and her terrible parenting abilities comes back to bite her hard throughout the series. Cersei and Tyrion, and Cersei and the High Sparrow.