Villains who had a point

[COMaestro]

What villain doesn't have a point?

A good villain? Like, to have a truly terrifying villain you really don't want to be able to identify with them, or understand them, or relate with them.
A guy who just goes around stealing money, because he wants money, when you also want money, isn't really a villain. Even if he kills people, he's just a dick. Just willing to push a little more.

A truly great villain would be like a Lovecraftian horror or a hell daemon. Something that skins babies alive, and eats people whole, and enslaves entire worlds, boiling entire races alive at once, blasts planets from the skies. Something evil you couldn't possibly comprehend, let alone go 'Well to be fair, those babies were crying too much'

Like a 40k Bloodthirster will always make a better villain than any Marvel anti-hero or Anime kinda emo prince, because what a Bloodthirster does is truly villainous, not just the wrong thing does for the right reasons or the right thing done wrongly.

I disagree. What you describe isn't a villain, it's just a monstrosity or a horror. A villain needs to take actions or have motives that are important to the plot, and a truly good villain, in my opinion, needs to have better than some generic take over/destroy the world goal. If that is the goal, there better be a damn good and original motive behind it for me to invest interest. If you can't comprehend the motive, then it's great as an unstoppable horror in a film, but it's not a villain.

That's why despite my enjoyment of the films, I can recognize that the Marvel movies have had some of the worst villains. Zemo from Civil War was one of the best. Even though it was just a generic revenge plot it took a while before that was revealed, twisting what appeared to be just an elaborate power grab into something much more personal while at the same time holding up a mirror for Black Panther to see how far he could have fallen in seeking revenge himself. It was just really well done in my opinion.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

What villain doesn't have a point?

A good villain? Like, to have a truly terrifying villain you really don't want to be able to identify with them, or understand them, or relate with them.
A guy who just goes around stealing money, because he wants money, when you also want money, isn't really a villain. Even if he kills people, he's just a dick. Just willing to push a little more.

A truly great villain would be like a Lovecraftian horror or a hell daemon. Something that skins babies alive, and eats people whole, and enslaves entire worlds, boiling entire races alive at once, blasts planets from the skies. Something evil you couldn't possibly comprehend, let alone go 'Well to be fair, those babies were crying too much'

Like a 40k Bloodthirster will always make a better villain than any Marvel anti-hero or Anime kinda emo prince, because what a Bloodthirster does is truly villainous, not just the wrong thing does for the right reasons or the right thing done wrongly.

I disagree. What you describe isn't a villain, it's just a monstrosity or a horror. A villain needs to take actions or have motives that are important to the plot, and a truly good villain, in my opinion, needs to have better than some generic take over/destroy the world goal. If that is the goal, there better be a damn good and original motive behind it for me to invest interest. If you can't comprehend the motive, then it's great as an unstoppable horror in a film, but it's not a villain.

That's why despite my enjoyment of the films, I can recognize that the Marvel movies have had some of the worst villains. Zemo from Civil War was one of the best. Even though it was just a generic revenge plot it took a while before that was revealed, twisting what appeared to be just an elaborate power grab into something much more personal while at the same time holding up a mirror for Black Panther to see how far he could have fallen in seeking revenge himself. It was just really well done in my opinion.

I disagree. Dormammu, and when he comes around, Thanos, will be the only real villains in the marvel MCU. Everyone else is just a tragic anti-hero, from a down on his luck blue collar worker, to a betrayed scientist, to a special forces guy trying to stop monsters, to an android just doing what he was programmed to, to a scorned brother or betrayed sister, they've all had something to admire. Something to identify with. Something that means you don't really want to see the heroes win, or at the least the 'villain' survive.

And no villain should be sympathetic. No one goes around like 'Well Jason did have a point, those girls were too slutty to live' or 'When you think about it, it'd be rude not to eat the entire crew!' or even 'Well in her defense, the priest's mom does suck cocks in hell!'
Mammon from Constantine, or the Arachnids or Chaos Gods are great villains because what they do is villainous and you want the heroes to stop them, not just reform them. I mean most of what people think of as villains are one blast from the Elements of Harmony away from being good guys in My Little Pony - and that show had one good villain, Discord, and they ruined him.

 

[COMaestro]

What villain doesn't have a point?

A good villain? Like, to have a truly terrifying villain you really don't want to be able to identify with them, or understand them, or relate with them.
A guy who just goes around stealing money, because he wants money, when you also want money, isn't really a villain. Even if he kills people, he's just a dick. Just willing to push a little more.

A truly great villain would be like a Lovecraftian horror or a hell daemon. Something that skins babies alive, and eats people whole, and enslaves entire worlds, boiling entire races alive at once, blasts planets from the skies. Something evil you couldn't possibly comprehend, let alone go 'Well to be fair, those babies were crying too much'

Like a 40k Bloodthirster will always make a better villain than any Marvel anti-hero or Anime kinda emo prince, because what a Bloodthirster does is truly villainous, not just the wrong thing does for the right reasons or the right thing done wrongly.

I disagree. What you describe isn't a villain, it's just a monstrosity or a horror. A villain needs to take actions or have motives that are important to the plot, and a truly good villain, in my opinion, needs to have better than some generic take over/destroy the world goal. If that is the goal, there better be a damn good and original motive behind it for me to invest interest. If you can't comprehend the motive, then it's great as an unstoppable horror in a film, but it's not a villain.

That's why despite my enjoyment of the films, I can recognize that the Marvel movies have had some of the worst villains. Zemo from Civil War was one of the best. Even though it was just a generic revenge plot it took a while before that was revealed, twisting what appeared to be just an elaborate power grab into something much more personal while at the same time holding up a mirror for Black Panther to see how far he could have fallen in seeking revenge himself. It was just really well done in my opinion.

I disagree. Dormammu, and when he comes around, Thanos, will be the only real villains in the marvel MCU. Everyone else is just a tragic anti-hero, from a down on his luck blue collar worker, to a betrayed scientist, to a special forces guy trying to stop monsters, to an android just doing what he was programmed to, to a scorned brother or betrayed sister, they've all had something to admire. Something to identify with. Something that means you don't really want to see the heroes win, or at the least the 'villain' survive.

And no villain should be sympathetic. No one goes around like 'Well Jason did have a point, those girls were too slutty to live' or 'When you think about it, it'd be rude not to eat the entire crew!' or even 'Well in her defense, the priest's mom does suck cocks in hell!'
Mammon from Constantine, or the Arachnids or Chaos Gods are great villains because what they do is villainous and you want the heroes to stop them, not just reform them. I mean most of what people think of as villains are one blast from the Elements of Harmony away from being good guys in My Little Pony - and that show had one good villain, Discord, and they ruined him.

In my opinion Jason is not a villain except in maybe the second film. Antagonist, yes, unstoppable horror, sure, but not a villain. I think we just have different definitions of these words.

For instance, an anti-hero is just a protagonist that doesn't have the typical heroic values and morals. None of the Marvel villains are protagonists (well, maybe Loki in some Thor movies), but if you were to make him the protagonist, then Thanos would be right there in your list. He'd be doing what he wants to get what he wants and he'd do anything in order to achieve his goals, no matter how despicable. That's an anti-hero.

 

[Auron225]

What villain doesn't have a point?

A good villain? Like, to have a truly terrifying villain you really don't want to be able to identify with them, or understand them, or relate with them.
A guy who just goes around stealing money, because he wants money, when you also want money, isn't really a villain. Even if he kills people, he's just a dick. Just willing to push a little more.

A truly great villain would be like a Lovecraftian horror or a hell daemon. Something that skins babies alive, and eats people whole, and enslaves entire worlds, boiling entire races alive at once, blasts planets from the skies. Something evil you couldn't possibly comprehend, let alone go 'Well to be fair, those babies were crying too much'

Like a 40k Bloodthirster will always make a better villain than any Marvel anti-hero or Anime kinda emo prince, because what a Bloodthirster does is truly villainous, not just the wrong thing does for the right reasons or the right thing done wrongly.

I disagree. What you describe isn't a villain, it's just a monstrosity or a horror. A villain needs to take actions or have motives that are important to the plot, and a truly good villain, in my opinion, needs to have better than some generic take over/destroy the world goal. If that is the goal, there better be a damn good and original motive behind it for me to invest interest. If you can't comprehend the motive, then it's great as an unstoppable horror in a film, but it's not a villain.

That's why despite my enjoyment of the films, I can recognize that the Marvel movies have had some of the worst villains. Zemo from Civil War was one of the best. Even though it was just a generic revenge plot it took a while before that was revealed, twisting what appeared to be just an elaborate power grab into something much more personal while at the same time holding up a mirror for Black Panther to see how far he could have fallen in seeking revenge himself. It was just really well done in my opinion.

I disagree. Dormammu, and when he comes around, Thanos, will be the only real villains in the marvel MCU. Everyone else is just a tragic anti-hero, from a down on his luck blue collar worker, to a betrayed scientist, to a special forces guy trying to stop monsters, to an android just doing what he was programmed to, to a scorned brother or betrayed sister, they've all had something to admire. Something to identify with. Something that means you don't really want to see the heroes win, or at the least the 'villain' survive.

And no villain should be sympathetic. No one goes around like 'Well Jason did have a point, those girls were too slutty to live' or 'When you think about it, it'd be rude not to eat the entire crew!' or even 'Well in her defense, the priest's mom does suck cocks in hell!'
Mammon from Constantine, or the Arachnids or Chaos Gods are great villains because what they do is villainous and you want the heroes to stop them, not just reform them. I mean most of what people think of as villains are one blast from the Elements of Harmony away from being good guys in My Little Pony - and that show had one good villain, Discord, and they ruined him.

I think we're gonna have to agree to disagree on this, since I agree with COMaestro here. We're drawing the same line in the sand, it's just definitions we're debating here. I prefer villains who are more complicated than "I want to kill everything" / "I want to destroy the universe" / "I want to eat babies while their mothers watch". To me, those aren't villains - they're just monsters. 1-dimensional, horrifying for the sake of horrifying, ultimately rather bland. There's no nuance to them. For the sake of this thread, I am looking for what you'd call tragic anti-heroes or antagonists. At least the most interesting among them are what I'm looking for.

 

[Terminal Blue]

So, another example of Caesar was the villain off Watchmen.

I don't know, Adrien always struck me as quite sincere in his motivations. His big flaw is that he buys into his own hype about being the smartest man alive. So when he concludes that nuclear war is inevitable, he decides he has a moral responsibility to do whatever is necessary to avert it. I can't remember the movie very well, but in the comic we actually see the point where doubt enters his mind when he seeks reassurance from John ("I did the right thing didn't I, it all worked out in the end") and recieves only a cryptic answer, ("nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.") The last frame we see of him is him standing alone in his throne room looking troubled.

Ceasar always seems much more overtly cynical to me.

I get sort of get behind your treatment, but I don't know if the Master is better. Mainly because, if I make a mistake, I tend to try and fix it, not kill myself.

He did fix it though. By killing himself, he destroyed the cathedral and the majority of his worshippers, effectively ending his new society in one blow.

I mean, it's not like there's going to be much place for a telepathic mutant monster who devours the bodies and minds of others and slowly grows through an entire building transforming into into a hellish nightmare of living flesh outside of a society specifically devoted to supporting such a thing.

Also, bear in mind that the master has an extremely low opinion of humanity. His final words to the vault dweller are "leave now while you still have hope" (presumably, hope that humanity can survive).

Its not a great resolution but then it felt like that whole experience was trying to get the Master into a logic loop meaning he was just a computer.

I don't really get that. Like, all you do is confront him with evidence that the super mutants are sterile. You need high charisma to persuade him its not a forgery, but if you do then his entire plan comes apart. Super mutants can't replace humans if they can't breed, so the Unity cannot be a permanent solution to humanity's problems. Therefore, not only is humanity doomed (in the master's opinion) but all the terrible things the master has done to create the Unity were for nothing.

My other problem with Caesar is that the Roman fetish was not representative of Rome. I guess they learnt nothing further after the 1950s

Yeah. Although it is very, very reminiscent of many points of Italian fascism, which also based itself on a made up or imaginary idea of the Roman empire as some kind of glorious example. I'm not sure if that's an accident, or deliberate.

 

[Pyrian]

Dragonfall's Adrian Vauclaire. He just wants to save the world...

 

[LostCrusader]

Surprised I didn't see anyone say Kreia from Kotor 2. She just wanted to stop the force from creating conflicts between the light and dark sides, destroying much of the galaxy in the process.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

Surprised I didn't see anyone say Kreia from Kotor 2. She just wanted to stop the force from creating conflicts between the light and dark sides, destroying much of the galaxy in the process.

I don't believe there was ever a suggestion that she wanted to stop conflict or that the force was creating those conflicts itself.

The impression I got was that Kreia hates the force on a more personal level. She hates that she relies on it and that it's kind of like fate and has its own will that it seems to impose. She wants to be free from that and she admired the exile for cutting themselves off from the force and living

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

Anyways if you consider it, the Transcendent One in Planescape: Torment just wanted to continue to exist as his own sentient being. The cost to everyone else was just too high tho

 

[runic knight]

Aww, people already covered the ones I thought of (Magneto, The Empire)

Ok then, less popular ideas of a villain with a point.

Ursala from little mermaid.

She is an underwater witch by way of used car saleswoman that seemed to fall afoul of the king but still tried to make a legal living bartering in favors for, well, whatever she asked folks for. obviously the king knew she did magic so that wasn't illegal. And despite some slimy salesmanship, she relies on contract and law to enforce agreements she makes. For her troubles at obeying the law, she gets a ship spike to the torso so that the royal family can avoid legal repercussions of some bad deals they didn't like some more. Business woman assassinated by royal family, hired killer-turn-son-in-law.

 

[Dalisclock]

My main one is the entire Templar order from the Assassin's Creed series.

They were painted as villains and irredeemably so basically up until Rogue which finally gave you a proper glimpse of what the Templar Order is like from the inside and it actually sort of makes a lot of sense. They only really appear as the villains because the Assassins paint them as monsters and that's who we, the player, see the events through the eyes of. It's an ideological battle where until Rogue we only saw one side of the ideology presented in any way positively.

When exposed to seeing the other side the argument could very easily be made that, somewhat brutal or dickish methods aside, the Templar ideology is a logical one. What is painted by the Assassins as a totalitarian mindset bent on total domination of those they view as lesser than themselves is actually just the rather obvious idea that for human society to reach it's full potential it needs strong guiding hands with true vision to help it along as left their own devices most people will contently sit exactly where they are forever. They need someone to show them a better path for themselves, even if they may not want to see it, because without it they will continue to do nothing but invent reasons to spend time destroying one another over petty quarrels and achieving nothing of any value.

And is that really so terrible? Considering that the Assassins' pro-freedom manifesto is basically lawless anarchy covered by vague sentiment of tolerance and understanding, and that they murder with reckless abandon to achieve it, I'd say the Templar side of the debate sounds just as credible if you look at things objectively.

Neither side is perfect, neither side is truly evil. But one is painted as the villains when you could easily see the argument from their side and agree with it. That's why I've always chosen to side with the Templars at the end of Rogue and why it's among my favourite games in the series.

I think Haythen did a good job of portraying a Templar who was a honest idealist rather then irredeemably evil. Conor never really got the upper hand whenever they discussed their viewpoints.

The biggest problem with the Templars is that a central tenat of their plans seems to be removal of free will in general to achieve this order. And they don't seem to deny that this is a end goal. In AC4 there's a conversation between a Slave Trader and a Templar where the Templar talks about how distasteful he finds Slavery and the Slave Trader just responds how it's kind of hypocritical considering the Templars wish to enslave mens minds.

Honestly, I'd have a lot more sympathy for the Templars if the Mind Control Angle was dropped.

 

[ObsidianJones_v1legacy]

I hate when the typical answer is the best one, but Ozymandias.

First, what he's doing is actually due to reverence for human life and fear from knowing that we as humans are not capable of dealing with our issues appropriately. We're taught as children because our parents were taught as children the prejudices, the hatred, and the need to be superior to others that stemmed back from when speech was developing.

We needed something bigger to hate and fear than ourselves. Ozy gave it to them.

He's not a straight up villain so much as an antagonist but Walter Peck from Ghostbusters gets a whole lot of crap for what amounts to doing his job.

Bear in mind the Ghostbusters were building and using unlicensed particle accelerators and some kind of energy storage system with an explosive yield similar to a purpose made bomb, none of that stuff was certified safe, the ghost containment was built in the middle of a city for literally no reason beyond laziness and budget. Peck is one of the few people in the film who's behaving reasonably for most of it and by the end of the film when he goes a bit nuts it's after several attempts to be reasonable being rebuffed by Venkman.

Ghostbusters only remains one of my favorite movies to this day because I saw it when I was a child. Literally every problem would have been wiped away clean if Venkman or anyone with some less bravado would say "Hey, Peck, I get it. I don't even think we filed a business license with you, because there's no such thing as what we're doing. Tell you what, stay with us for a week. Come see that we're doing a valuable service as some biblical shit is going down and we at least know how to contain it. If you agree and you still think it will need to be taken in the hands of law enforcement, good deal. Help us patient the technology, we'll train your men for a few years, and we'll retire being insanely rich for not only proving the existence of the afterlife, but being the only people who have the proven science and tools to deal with it."

I would love a follow up to that movie, though. But not at the Ghostbusters level.

I want to see the decline of civilization. Ghost are real. Afterlife is real. Do we have more CEOs pumping toxic waste into the oceans for a profit knowing that countless deaths could send them to a Almost Certainly Real Hell? Do Suicides peter off? Do people go into work, care about living longer, or do anything that matters here when they know for absolute certainty that something else is out there?

 

[Dalisclock]

I want to see the decline of civilization. Ghost are real. Afterlife is real. Do we have more CEOs pumping toxic waste into the oceans for a profit knowing that countless deaths could send them to a Almost Certainly Real Hell? Do Suicides peter off? Do people go into work, care about living longer, or do anything that matters here when they know for absolute certainty that something else is out there?

I like the 2nd movie well enough, but it really dropped the ball following up on the first one. I get the city was mad about having to clean up a ton of supernatural mashmellow goop all over downtown, but somehow 5 years later everyone pretends it never happened at all? Seriously? If they really think the ghostbusters drugged the water supply or at very least, pulled off large scale fraud, they should be in prison, not doing birthday parties. They mention getting sued but that still doesn't address the near Apocalypse which almost happened 5 years prior.

 

[Cicada 5]

Jafar from Aladdin. Agrabah was noted for being a thriving city, of prosperity and fairly peaceful one at that with strong diplomatic ties. Now look at the Sultan. Do you really think he had the brains to maintain such? Jafar was, if nothing else shown that while evil and power hungry he was not overtly malicious. As in, he did not go out of his way to hurt others. If you were a threat, you were dealt with. If you were not, he couldn't care
less.

Tell me, how was Aladdin a threat when Jafar tried to give him his "eternal reward"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0zMEv8fjcI

Hades. Disney's hercules. That he was made the villain was a bit of a cop since anyone who knows Greek mythology knows Hera was the chief antagonist of Herc's life. But let's look over . Hade's got stuck being the ruler of the stinky dead because...he was the youngest of the three brothers. Zues got his position not so much by bno merit beyond being the oldest. Again, in the series we see a point where Hade's undoes fates and has himself put in charge of the heavens and you know. It seems like everything worked out. As in there was little discernable difference. Hell, by Greek mythology Hades was actually the more pragmatic and level headed of his brothers. And also the most fair minded.

You'd have a point if we were talking about the myths but in the movie Hades is very much a villain.

Skynet. Skynet was a sentient being that reacted in response to fear. Look when you realize the sweat meat apes can simply push a button bto end you, of course you're going to take steps to make sure there are none of them around to push that button. Ever.

That's not why Skynet started killing people.

 

[Marik2]

Solidus Snake and The Patriots had good points for their views.

 

[FalloutJack]

Dragonfall's Adrian Vauclaire. He just wants to save the world...

His henchman, mind you, was batshit crazy. Convince Vauclaire of the error of his ways and he shoot the man declare that he wants to see the world burn, hell or highwater. Audran does NOT have a point. However, the Feuerschwinge (Firewing) does.

OT: Okay, so this is going to be obscure. In fact, it's not even a very good anime. I found something called Brain Powerd at a shop once. It's a mecha-anime involving mechs born from an alien 'something' codenaned Orphen that's changing the world. One side is attacking places, helping the Orphen subjugate the world. The other side is defending the world. You get the general idea. One of villain pilots is a jerkass teen whose mother is in the military AND in charge of the opposing forces. During a battle, they get into an argument, because the reason he's on the opposing side is that he's rebelling against strict neglectful parents, as in her.

Now, you could still take that as him being sort of a whiny brat, but the part that stuck out for me was the end of the exchange, where he said he'd be waiting at home alone, every Christmas, and she asked him what he was waiting for. Though this anime was not very good, I still like that he simply threw back "A Christmas present! Or a Christmas card! Or a phone call!". Seriously, shitty parent was very shitty indeed. She didn't even give him the minimum acknowledgement, so while he was a dick at anything else, he won that round hard. Said military mom was so struck by the comment that she went missing, became a sinister villain in disguise, and secretly began indulging her son's aims on the other side. Seriously, that happened.

EDIT: Also, since I think nobody mentioned it.

Spoiler: Persona 5

Masayoshi Shido was monstrous and evil, even if he did not personally believe it. He used and abused and destroyed people at a whim. He cared for no one but himself and believed himself chosen by god himself. A truly terrible man, he was.

However, his desire to take over the Japanese government was out of dissatisfaction for the way it had been running. There would be people to say that that world's Japanese government was ineffectual and slow to act on issues. Therw would be plenty of dissatisfied people. Shido saw himself as a savior, arrogant though that was.

It WAS extreme hubris to believe that he was somehow better, that he would be a better Prime Minister, but the old one was not considered good either, so something would have to be done. My vote would go to 'No Good Tora'. Truly an awesome man.

 

[Cold Shiny]

Kreia from KOTOR II. The scariest villains are the ones who speak sense.

 

[kitsunefather]

Doctor Doom.

Originally ruling in peace in his homeland (yes, a dictatorship), his citizenry wanted for nothing and all military or police actions were carried out by robots. His intention was to establish a peaceful utopia for his citizenry by using calculation and machinery to maintain order. He was extreme, yes, but his intention was peaceful.

His machinations for world domination didn't come until after repeated attacks by Reed Richards, who Doom felt had wronged him at M.I.T. (Doom had designed a machine with the intention of creating a gate to hell to retrieve the soul of his mother, who had sold her soul to save his infant life from a coup; Reed "fixed" it, and when Doom turned it on it exploded, scarring him and causing him to be expelled).

Yes, Doctor Doom is a huge megalomaniac and real fascist, but his intentions are clear.

Also, the few times he has successfully conquered the Earth (except Secret Wars II), the world tended to manage better.

 

[kitsunefather]

I like the 2nd movie well enough, but it really dropped the ball following up on the first one. I get the city was mad about having to clean up a ton of supernatural mashmellow goop all over downtown, but somehow 5 years later everyone pretends it never happened at all? Seriously? If they really think the ghostbusters drugged the water supply or at very least, pulled off large scale fraud, they should be in prison, not doing birthday parties. They mention getting sued but that still doesn't address the near Apocalypse which almost happened 5 years prior.

I think this last point is why they were talking about doing a shared universe with the Men In Black franchise, back when they thought the reboot was going to be profitable.

 

[Vrex360]

The Covenant in the Halo series:

Spoiler

There was violence on many sides people. Some mighty fine folk marching with the Covenant that day. What about those Earth Humans huh? Do they not have any semblance of guilt?

In all seriousness I find

Spoiler

Grant Ward

from Agents of Shield oddly sympathetic and relatable, at least he was in Season 2. All he ultimately wanted was to help his new girlfriend get a sense of closure and find some sense of acceptance. It's actually kind of interesting how much the show

Spoiler

Subverts the traditional 'redemption arc' angle with him because his former teammates just do not want to give him a chance to do so.

. Honestly I always did hope he'd get some measure of atonement and I guess he 'kind of' did in season 4 but not enough. I dunno maybe I'm just a sucker for his incredible huge sad puppy dog eyes whenever people yelled at him. Or maybe it was because on multiple occasions he called out the other main characters on their bullshit, pointing out that for all their posturing they still did really immoral stuff

Spoiler

I actually loved it when Jemma botched her efforts to kill him and ended up killing someone else instead and Ward had her at gunpoint while she angrily egged him on to shoot her and called him a 'monster' his only response was to say 'I'm disappointed in you' and walk off, leaving her kind of stunned

and of course the show never follows through on this instead having this weird need to keep the characters on the 'good' side, at least in relation to him incorruptible.

Spoiler

Case in point after Ward clearly decided not to kill her and left in a huff and still burdened with the knowledge that she killed a human being which is traumatic as hell, Jemma doesn't have any moment of introspection about her bloodlust and the pointlessness of revenge or anything like that, only lamenting the fact that she didn't manage to kill him and the show never comments on this. The only time this angle is explored is through the character of Coulson which I do actually think was well done

. Multiple times the show, which is about espionage by the way has the chance to call out the main characters for shady shit and multiple times they just give the main heroes an easy moral way out, provided it is

Spoiler

Ward

who is talking about it. As a result yeah it kind of backfires and makes you root for the villain instead because well, he's not wrong even if the show itself refuses to acknowledge it and yeah he's got motivations that are sympathetic. He's almost the protagonist of his own story.

Also while on the subject of Marvel, Hela in the new Thor. She is basically the personification of every atrocity European history swept under the rug during its expansion, the dirty secret. Odin's ultimate skeleton in the closet and the fact that she was wiped from history and Odin effectively gaslit his own nation into believing that the nine realms had always been benevolent and peaceful is something the movie never really addresses in any kind of major detail and yeah truth be told I did feel a little bad for her. Yes she was incredibly evil but she was literally the Goddess of Death. Thor as the God of Thunder can't help but have a very thunderous and booming personality, Loki as the God of Mischief can't help but be mischievous and self serving no matter how noble he tries to be.
Hela was just doing as she was born to do. And yeah she's not wrong, she has a point about sweeping up the ugliness of your past and pretending you were always noble.