[b]Spoiler warning: This thread will contain heavy spoilers for The Owl House.[/b] Good evening everybody! This is Aifos coming to you alive from the Conformatorium, where I have been locked away for crimes against the throne! What crimes you ask? I'm... Not actually sure. I tried asking for an explanation, but they wouldn't give me any more than that. As I wait for an opportune moment to make my daring escape, however, I thought I'd talk to you about villains! Pure evil villains are something of a dying breed nowadays. Most villains we see in more modern works usually have some sort of driving motive behind them that makes some lick of sense, and to some extent may even make you sympathize with them. Overall, I think this is a good thing, as it generally leads to the villains being more complex. However, pure evil villains do still have their place, and I always love to see one. The role of a pure evil villain and how they're still good writing is an essay for another time, but for now I just want to tell you about one of the best--or rather, one of the worst villains of all time. Emperor Belos of the Boiling Isles. In the early parts of The Owl House, it's very clear that Belos is going to be the villain of the story, but we don't actually know why. His underlings make up most of the show's early antagonists, but, like, Eda--one of our protagonists--is a criminal, so, y'know, that makes sense. However, we eventually learn that Belos' plan is to kill everyone on the Boiling Isles. And... Honestly, while that is obviously awful, it puts him on a pretty low evil level compared to someone like, say, Frieza from Dragon Ball, who literally wipes out entire planets. What makes Belos so evil, though, is not the level of death he's wanting to spread, but how he goes about it... Phillip--who would eventually become Belos--and his brother Caleb were witch hunters in the human realm, who chased down a witch and wound up in the demon realm--a magical world full of demons and witches. When they first arrive here, it's not really all that hard to understand why they'd think the place is evil. It's twisted, and disturbing, and hostile, and given that the two brothers were, of course, witch hunters, they likely resorted to attacking the citizens here which almost certainly resulted in the population trying to kill them back. But, things changed. The details aren't super clear, but Caleb eventually entered a relationship with a witch named Evelyn, showing that he at least saw the good in witches. As a result, however, Phillip killed him, claiming he wanted to "save his soul". From that point on, Phillip continued living on the Boiling Isles, and this leads to the first reason why Belos is one of the most evil villains in fiction. Many villains kill whole swathes of people, but usually they do so at a distance. Frieza may destroy entire planets, but he's usually sitting comfortably in his spaceship, or in the event that he does kill them face to face, they're still aliens that he's only just met. The less connection you have to a given people, the easier it is to dehumanize them. But that's not what Belos did. Belos lived on the Boiling Isles for decades. And while many of his experiences with witches were likely not very good, we know that there was at least one time where witches treated him with genuine compassion and kindness--namely, when he met Luz and Lillith as they were traveling back in time. And furthermore, when he eventually became emperor, people looked up to him, worshipped him even. Yet, despite how long he spent living alongside witches, he still despised them to his core. If he'd never become emperor, this could've maybe been seen as someone who lived in a world that hated him, and so he hated it back, but that's not at all what Belos' life was like. He had every opportunity to see the good in these people--he lived among them, talked with them, ruled them. To some extent, he did have to confront and try to solve their problems--we know, if nothing else there were things like child safety laws, keeping the children of the future safe. Yet the entire time he hated every single one of them, even those closest to him. He climbed to the top of the ladder, and sat upon the throne, purely just to watch it burn. But okay, so the guy is a racist, that's pretty bad, but "one of the most evil villains in fiction ever"? No, the reason he gets that title isn't because he hates witches and wants to kill them all, it's because of how he decides to do it... We're not totally sure how good Phillip is at fighting. We know that he's able to use Glyphs, just like Luz, and thanks to Luz we know that Glyphs are no joke. However, we also know that--in Belos' own words--the Titan itself seemed to be trying to keep that knowledge from him. As such, he likely wasn't as proficient with Glyphs as Luz was. And, while he eventually manages to cobble together some form of artificial magic, killing everyone on the Boiling Isles by hand is still a bit out of his reach. Even if he became the strongest mage on the Isles, killing everyone one by one was simply unfeasible. Once word of what he was doing got out, he'd be hunted down and killed. So, Phillip abandoned his old name, and became Belos. Belos then started a propaganda campaign, claiming he could speak to the Titan itself--the very being whose corpse makes up the Isles. He staged attacks from supposed "Wild Witches", and claimed that the Titan wanted to put an end to this so called "Wild Magic", convincing people to join Tracks--limiting what magic they could perform. Eventually, he convinced enough people of his power to speak to the Titan, and the danger of Wild Witches that he managed to climb all the way to the top, becoming the ruler of the Boiling Isles. Emperor Belos. From here, he was able to pass a law, forcing every witch to join one of the nine Tracks. To do this, they would get a sigil, and this sigil would limit their magic to a single type, with only the Emperor's Sigil allowing the user to use all magic. The Emperor's Sigil belonged, of course, to the Emperor's Coven, an elite organization that served the Emperor's every command. One important part of Belos' plan, however, was that getting a sigil wasn't seen as a bad thing. Having a sigil, and joining a coven, were seen as good, sort of like choosing a career path. You join the Healer's Coven, you're essentially on the road to become a doctor. While some people refused to get sigils, and ultimately had them applied forcibly, most of the citizens of the Boiling Isles got them willingly. The Coven system, however, had an ulterior motive. The sigils served a second purpose. They were part of a ritual known as the Day of Unity. In yet another propaganda stunt, Belos said the Day of Unity was a glorious day, where the people of the Isles would finally be free of Wild Magic, and become one with the Titan. The truth, however, was that during the Day of Unity, Belos would cast a Draining Spell, that would kill everyone who had been branded with a Coven Sigil. Or in other words, Belos was heading a genocide, by tricking his people into branding themselves with their own poison. And this is what makes Belos so evil. He needed a way to kill everyone on the Isles, but killing them himself would have simply been impossible. So, what better way to do it, than to trick them into doing the deed themselves? I genuinely cannot think of a more evil scheme than this. To live among a people, to learn about them, to understand them, to help them and claim to guide them towards a better future. To smile in their face, while setting them up to willingly and happily flick the switch that would end their own lives. Betrayal and genocide on their own are both pretty high on the list of "the most evil things you can do", so putting them together is like a double whammy of the worst villainy a villain can be. Especially since his only reason for doing so is racism. This guy has, like, zero redeeming qualities. [spoiler]As a side note, I only just realized after typing this all out that Belos is pretty similar to Voldemort. They're basically opposite sides of the coin; both of their motivations ultimately just come down to racism, but while Voldemort hates non-magic people, Belos hates magic people. Only, if you've ever heard me talk about Harry Potter, you'd know I hate Voldemort. I think he's such a dumb villain. Yet, I love Belos (as a villain, obviously, I hate him as a person). Exploring why may be an interesting essay for some other day, but I'm already basically out of space)[/spoiler] Also, eating Palisman isn't cool. If you needed any more reason to hate Belos. Palisman are supposed to be, like, partners for life and stuff, sort of like familiars, and this guy just mercilessly steals them away from their owners and sucks out their life energies. The jerk. [b][u]Tl;dr? Here's my point![/b][/u] Emperor Belos from The Owl House is a big meanie jerk face! That is all. Also, I'm not sure why you clicked on a thread that literally said "an essay" in the title, expecting something short. But that's all for now folks! Jambuhbye!