How to Write a Terrifying & Convincing Villain

There have been many convincing and terrifying villains all throughout film and TV, some of those may be coming to mind now, Darth Vader from ‘Star Wars’, Hannibal Lecter from ‘Silence of the Lambs’, Homelander from ‘The Boys’, Davy Jones from ‘Pirates o the Caribbean’, Negan and The Governor from ‘The Walking Dead’, Omniman from ‘Invincible’, The Joker from ‘Batman’, Joffrey Baratheon and Ramsey Bolton from ‘Game of Throes’, Maleficent from 'Sleeping Beauty' or Cruella De Vill from ‘101 Dalmatians’, all of these villains, and so many more all have four things in common, these four things are what make a villain great, scary, unpredictable and most important of all, memorable. These four things are power, a credible motive, a history of violence & evil and uncertainty/unpredictability.

The first of these, power, there are two power dynamics, one in where the power balance is so close that we have no idea who is going to come out on top, or one where the power balance is so far apart that we’re certain there won’t even need to be a fight. When Captain America and The Winter Soldier first come face to face in combat we’re on the edge of our seats, wondering who is going to win, but when the villain’s power far exceeds that of any of our heroes we instead ask ourselves “what’s going to happen next” because we genuinely don’t know, the villain is in complete control in these scenes and its up to them exactly what plays out next, when Darth Vader ignites his lightsaber at the end of ‘Rogue One’ we know very well that the rebel soldiers in this scene have met their end, but we wonder how Darth Vader is going to despose of them, will he cut through them swiftly or will he butcher them slowly to make a point. A large power gap doesn’t just have to come in the form of super strength or immense duelling skills, it can be anything, a boss talking down to a low-level employee, an abusive and manipulative partner coursing their significant other, in The Walking Dead’s season 6 finale, Negan captivates the audience with fear and dread, he has our group completely broken and completely surrounded, he’s had the upper hand all throughout the entire episode without even revealing himself. If your villain has less power than your hero it’s a very difficult job to make them scary or convincing, there’s no fear over what the villain could do if our hero could stop them with total ease, in ‘Game of Thrones’ Joffrey might be far physically inferior to The Hound and The Hound could kill Joffrey in seconds with his bear hands, but Joffrey is the absolute King, and he knows it, he manipulates The Hound into doing his dark bidding and the Hound does it anyway because he’s given up trying to resist Joffrey and the Lannisters. Obviously when it comes to a scene between Omniman and any low-level criminal, or even an entire civilisation, we know exactly where our fear is placed, it’s in Omniman because he can destroy planets with his bare hands, his power far out-weighs any character he’s faced with. But when you compare a scene with Homelander taking to Madelyn stierwell verses a scene of Thanos talking to Gamora or Doctor Strange we don’t have the same feeling of dread, Homelander is infinitely more terrifying in comparison to Thanos, and this is because ‘power’ is just one piece of the puzzle, Thanos might not tick all four boxes but Homelander and many of the other villains on this list certainly do.

But Thanos isn’t an awful villain, he won’t just kill someone out of the blue to make a point, our second point matters a lot to Thanos, a credible motive. A villain’s motive doesn’t always have to be credible to us, just credible to them. In Pirates of the Caribbean, Davy Jones’ aim is to hunt down the object of power that laid scattered across the sea to earn the respect and loyalty of the first pirate lords, so that the curse can be lifted and he can once again set foot on land, this is a motive I can see and agree with, Davy Jones has been cursed to sail abord the Dutchman for an eternity and he’ll find any way to relive himself of this burden. On the other side of the coin, Hannibal Lecter killed his victims as a form of punishment to himself, but he also saw it as a public service, eating them was a way to despose of those victims themselves. One of these motives I can understand and definitely agree with (Davy Jones) but one sounds completely insane and I could never understand where it’s coming from (Dr. Lecter). A motive can come from a Broken past, some of the best ones do, one of my favourite quotes of all time is “the best villains are those who make you question weather they’re actually the villain”, a villain that you can feel emotions for, and these can intern make you scared of them, seeing who they once where to who they become can be terrifying, Walter White from Breaking Bad is a prime example, he was diagnosed with lung cancer, having accepted his fate but not wanting to leave his family with nothing he turned to a life of crime to make some extra cash but in tern found a love for the life of a drug-lord and kingpin, Cruella De Vill tried to make it in the fashion industry but was stepped on and put don at every turn, Maleficent fell in love with a boy when they where young but he pretended to killed her in order to become king, all these motives all have something in common, revenge on the count of having been broken. Revenge is a strong motive, one people can understand, and that, combined with the other three factors can create a scary villain.         

But a villain can have a credible and logical motive and can be at the higher end of a power dynamic, but they might not necessarily be terrifying, or even a little bit scary, this is where our third point comes into play, a history of violence and evil. When Negan is introduced into The Walking Dead, we knew instantly that at least one fan-favourite character was going to die, and this was because of all the stories we’d heard throughout season 6b, and even seen some of Negan’s famous kills too. We know Homelander is capable of committing such atrocities in any scene he’s in because we’ve seen him do it time and time again, mostly just to prove a point or to ease himself. We have a very hard time believing a villain can do such horrors if we’ve never seen it before, in Star Wars general grievous can challenge Obi-wan or Anakin to a duel, but if we hadn’t have seen him massacre sholes Jedi prior to the scene we might not even pay full attention to the duel itself, we’d just have total faith in Obi-wan being able to win because as far as we’re concerned this could be Grievous’ first fight and it might not last all of 30 seconds, but we know how brutal and killed a-warrior Grievous is, so we do fear the upcoming fight. 

Our final point may be a conflicting one, but I believe it’s one of, if not THE, most important to get right, and that is uncertainty and unpredictability, always keep something about your villain unknown, a villain should always have some cards held close to their chest throughout their entire arc. You should never be able to completely predict what a villain is going to do, this can be in the form of making them cunning or paranoid, there must always be an aura of mystery around them in some capacity. This is when any villain is at their most terrifying to their audience, not knowing what a villain is going to do can leave people guessing and panicked, even if just for a moment. This uncertain or hidden aspect can be anything from how a villain would react to a certain type of person, down to their entire appearance, if a villain’s appearance is kept hidden then you are left guessing where or if a villain is even in the scene, you don’t know who or what they are, and this fear can transfer over to the real world. In The Boys season 2, when Homelander meets Blindspot, it’s all smiles and conversation until out of nowhere Homelander kills Blindspot by bashing his head so hard that his eardrums explode, but this wasn’t a random action, his credible motive is revealed afterwards, he tells Ashely that “a cripple doesn’t belong in the seven”, Blindspot’s inferiority to Homelander triggered his narcissism in the worst way possible, Homelander was overcome with so much rage instantly but he bottled it up until the exact right moment where he’d explode and kill Blindspot. An example of uncertainty gone wrong is Eddie Redmayne’s Balem in ‘Jupiter Ascending’, he was unpredictable because he’d just scream and shout mid-calm-conversation, the writers had made him unpredictable but at the expense of competence and the other three points, he was so volatile that he came across as completely incompetent. Volatility can be scary, Tuco Salamanca mastered it in Breaking Bad seasons 1 and 2, he wouldn’t just scream mid-sentence, he instead would judge weather to go crazy depending on weather a person had shown him respect, by not mumbling and speaking to him as an equal, this is explored further in Better Call Saul’s seasons 1 and 2, in season 1 when Jimmy McGill is faced with Tuco he stands strong and holds his ground, speaking to Tuco as a true equal in order to make a deal, and in season 2 in order to rile-up Tuco Mike Ehrmantraut mumbles and walks past Tuco numerous times. But you can follow these rules in order to please Tuco, but it is completely up to him how he handles the situation, and the outcome of any confrontation is something that he decides. The main difference between Balem and Tuco is that Balem’s unpredictability comes in the form of being such a man-child, but Tuco’s fear unpredictability comes from a clear power balance, a credible motive (a lack of respect) and a strong history of violence and evil, Balem just shouts. Its true, volatility is a great tool to make a villain scary, example: Tuco, but it’s not necessary in very villain, Hans Landa in ‘Inglorious Basterds’ doesn’t need to be volatile because he is so calm and composed his actions come out as remorseless and systematic, showing that he is in complete control, unnecessary volatility can come out in the form of insanity and sometimes a villain can become so insane that they don’t need a motive, completely ignoring the second point, you should never justify horrific and nonsensical actions by saying “they’re mad”, because that doesn’t work, just being a psychopath isn’t enough to carry motivation, it has to be credible, you need to establish the terrible philosophy that drives them. but on the other hand, if mastered, insanity can work perfectly, when you nail the mental condition your trying to depict these types of characters become terrifying in their own unique way, making them memorable, yes they have their own motives, morals and philosophies but the audience can’t quite grasp how those philosophies work, I made this point with Hannibal Lecter earlier, but this means we’ll never quite know what they’ll do next, if on some level you don’t understand or relate to the character that means you cant predict them and that makes them all the more terrifying.    

Its through these four points that your villain can become one of the scariest on screen, all four are crucial tie in to one-another, they work together to make a villain scary and memorable, each is needed equally in order to craft your villain.