Everybody Needs a Villain

While watching a few recent movies, one question kept me curious. Why most of the movies have villains? Is it for the fun or there is something deep there psychology?

There is something strange about human beings. We don’t just tell stories. We organize our lives around them. And every good story seems to require the same thing: a hero, a conflict, and someone — or something — to blame.

A villain.

Maybe that’s why we keep creating them.

In movies.In politics.In history.In families.In relationships.And sometimes, quietly, in our own heads. We always need someone.

Perhaps humans don’t need villains because the world contains so many evil people. Perhaps we need villains because reality is too complicated without them.

Because sometimes it is easier to say “he did this to me” than to accept that two people, with two different histories, two different fears, two different expectations and two different versions of reality, somehow arrived at a place where everything fell apart.

A villain gives the story a shape. And psychologically, that shape can be very comforting.

I am that villain in someone’s story, may be multiple people think of me as villain. May be I am, may be not. Let’s go ahead and understand the psychology behind it.

We don’t like stories without someone to blame

Imagine something terrible happening to you.

You have two choices.

You can accept that it happened because of a complicated combination of circumstances, choices, misunderstandings, personality differences, timing, mistakes, other people’s decisions and perhaps a little bit of randomness.

Or you can identify a person responsible. The second explanation feels better. There is research behind this instinct.

Psychologists studying scapegoating have found that people can displace disproportionate blame onto another person or group for two important psychological reasons: it can protect their sense of moral worth and it can restore a feeling of control when the real cause of something is unclear.

In other words:

If I know who the villain is, I know why the story happened.

And if I know why it happened, the world feels a little less random. That’s important because human beings don’t deal particularly well with randomness. We want causes. We want explanations. We want someone to point at. We need closure. Sometimes we would rather have a wrong explanation than no explanation at all.

The villain also protects the hero

There is another reason villains are useful. They make the hero look better. Who would consider SpiderMan a hero is he never fights crime and Villains like Goblin, Octavius, Mysterio, and many more…

If I am the good person and you are the bad person, I don’t have to spend too much time examining myself. I don’t have to ask:

Did I make mistakes? Did I hurt you? Did I misunderstand you? Was I selfish sometimes? Did you have reasons I never understood? Did we both contribute to what happened?

Those questions are uncomfortable. A villain eliminates much of that discomfort. The story becomes simple:

I was the victim. You were the villain.

And suddenly my moral identity is safe.

This is one of the reasons scapegoating is so psychologically powerful. Research suggests that blaming an external target can reduce threats to our sense of moral value — especially when accepting our own contribution would produce guilt. There is something deeply human about wanting to believe:

I may have suffered, but I wasn’t the reason this happened.

And then there is the victim

This is where things become uncomfortable. We are usually very comfortable talking about villains. We are much less comfortable examining what happens when someone becomes attached to being the victim. Because being a victim brings something with it.

Empathy.

People listen to victims. People comfort victims. People defend victims. People rally around victims. And there is nothing inherently wrong with that. Genuine suffering deserves compassion.

But psychologically, there can be a temptation to turn suffering into a permanent identity. And for that identity to remain stable, there often needs to be an identifiable perpetrator. Because what is a victim without a villain?

If the story is:

Something terrible happened, and both people were imperfect, circumstances were complicated, and nobody was entirely innocent…

there is much less emotional clarity. No masala(spices) in the story.

But:

I was hurt because that person is terrible.

That’s a much easier story to tell.

Research on the belief in a just world has shown something even more disturbing: when people encounter innocent suffering, it can threaten their belief that the world is fundamentally fair. One way people sometimes reduce that psychological discomfort is by blaming or derogating the victim. The irony is beautiful and tragic at the same time.

Sometimes one person needs a villain in order to feel like a victim.And another person needs the victim to be guilty in order to believe the world is fair.

Both sides can be constructing a psychologically comfortable story. Neither necessarily has the whole truth.

Marvel’s Classic — Villains against Avengers

Think about Thanos.

If you don’t know who Thanos is, I recommend watching Avengers series. In short, there is a way Thanos can wipe out 50% of the whole Universe’s population with just a snap, totally random, without anything or anyone picked or chosen. It was all about fairness.

So, Thanos was one of the greatest villains Marvel ever created till Avengers: Endgame. The Mad Titan. The monster. The genocidal tyrant. The guy who literally erased half of all life in the universe. Yes he did it successfully in Avengers: Infinity wars. It would be very easy to stop there.

Villain.

End of story.

But Marvel deliberately made the story more uncomfortable than that. Thanos genuinely believes he is saving the universe. He sees a universe of scarcity, overpopulation and suffering and believes that eliminating half of all life will restore balance. His reasoning is horrifying. But it isn’t meaningless. He has a philosophy. He has conviction. He has sacrifice. And, most importantly, he has something resembling love.

Gamora is perhaps the best example. Thanos doesn’t merely use Gamora as another soldier. He raises her. He trains her. He develops an attachment to her.

Marvel itself has explored the question of whether Thanos is capable of love and has described Gamora as the person who forces him to confront his own madness. And then comes the most disturbing part.

The only way to obtain Soul Stone is to sacrifice one person you love the most. Thanos has to sacrifice Gamora, once person he considered his daughter and loved more than he loved his own daughter.

And he does it. He kills her. Not because he hates her, that would have never worked. But because he believes his mission is bigger than his love for her. That is what makes Thanos terrifying. He is not simply incapable of love.

He is capable of love — and still chooses something he believes is greater than love.

That doesn’t make him good. It makes him human in the most disturbing possible sense. Because humans have always been capable of sacrificing one value for another. Freedom for security. Truth for loyalty. Justice for revenge. Love for duty. Peace for power. And sometimes, morality for ideology.

What happens to Thanos

He finally gets all six Infinity Stones and snaps his fingers.

Half of all life disappears. He has won. The heroes have lost. The universe has been fundamentally changed. And what does Thanos do?

He doesn’t build a throne. He doesn’t celebrate. He doesn’t create an empire. He disappears, goes somewhere quiet and watches the sunset. after destroying all the stones.

Marvel’s own Avengers: Endgame Prelude describes Thanos settling down to watch the sun set after accomplishing his mission. There is something almost haunting about that scene. Because the villain has completed his story. And there is nothing left for him. He has sacrificed everything — including the person he loved most — to accomplish the thing he believed was his life’s purpose.

And when it is finally done… he is alone.

He has won the universe and lost himself. That is a very different kind of villain. And the question becomes, is he really a Villain?

Villains bring people together

We are making a whole community villain and suddenly are loved by our ow community. Not religious enough?

Lets take a country. Or a movie, or a gender, or a person according to its skin complexion. Its all debatable and controversial.

Or may be at a smaller level, you got separated and suddenly your partner is a monster and for the whole bunch of friends and family.

Everyone was living their lives separately and suddenly they got a common enemy. Look around, you will find hundreds of examples daily.

But who gets to decide who the villain is?

This is where history becomes interesting. Consider Bhagat Singh. Today, for millions of Indians, he is a hero. A revolutionary. A martyr. A symbol of courage and resistance.

But history is rarely written from only one side. To the British colonial government of his time, Bhagat Singh was not a heroic freedom fighter. He was an enemy of the state. British parliamentary records explicitly referred to him as a “terrorist” and condemned his actions as murder and political violence.

The Indian government later celebrated him as a national hero. Same human being. Different story. Different moral framework. Different villain.

My blood is boiling, but its my perspective. He was, is and will always be our war hero.

That’s the point. The label changes depending on where you are standing. That doesn’t mean morality is completely subjective. It doesn’t mean every action is equally justified. It means something much simpler:

A person’s role in a story does not automatically tell us the whole truth about that person.

Maybe everybody is a villain somewhere

Think about your own life. How many people have you hurt? Probably more than you remember. Maybe not necessarily deliberately. Maybe you disappointed someone you rejected someone. Maybe you walked away when someone needed you the most. Maybe you chose yourself when someone wanted you to choose them. Maybe you said something you wish you hadn’t. Maybe you failed to say something you should have. Maybe someone loved you more than you were capable of loving them. Maybe someone remembers you as the person who broke their heart. And perhaps you remember the same relationship completely differently.

That’s the uncomfortable truth.

You can be a good person and still be someone’s villain.

You can have good intentions and still cause damage. You can love someone and still hurt them. You can be right about one thing and completely wrong about another. You can be the victim in one chapter and the villain in somebody else’s. Depends on who’s writing the book.

And perhaps the most mature thing we can eventually understand is that these identities don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Perspective becomes the lead hero.

I know what it feels like to be the villain

There is a part of my own life I don’t usually explain. Not because there is nothing to say, there is plenty.

But because I have slowly learned that explaining yourself to everyone can become another form of imprisonment. There was a time when I believed that if I simply explained everything correctly, people would understand. I wanted to shout my story from the top of the mountain once.

If I gave enough context, if I explained every decision, every intention, every mistake, every sacrifice, every thing I tried to do right, surely, eventually, the story would become clear.

But life doesn’t work like that. People don’t experience your life. Many of them will not understand and many of them will not change their perspective even if I give hundreds of evidences. They experience their version of you. And sometimes, in somebody else’s story, you become the villain. Even when you don’t believe you deserve the role. I have made mistakes, I am not going to pretend otherwise. I am a person after-all not a programmed machine (which by the way can make mistakes too, but not by themselves). I have hurt people. I am not going to pretend otherwise either.

I also know that there are parts of my story that I don’t owe to the world as a courtroom defense. At some point, I stopped needing everyone to know that I wasn’t the villain. Not because I suddenly believed that I was. In my eves, I never was, am or will be. But because I realized something:

A person’s inability to see your entire story doesn’t make their version of it the complete truth.

And I don’t have to spend the rest of my life proving my innocence to people who have already decided what role I play. Every story needs a villain. Sometimes, someone simply has to occupy the role. And I can live with being misunderstood.

There is a danger in always needing a villain

Because once we turn someone into a villain, something psychologically convenient happens. We stop asking questions, wondering what happened inside them, seeing their contradictions, seeing their humanity, asking whether they were afraid, whether they were hurt, confused, trying, badly, to solve a problem.

And most importantly: we stop examining ourselves.

The villain becomes the garbage bin for everything we don’t want to carry: our anger, guilt, confusion, helplessness, shame. Our unanswered questions.

Put all of it there - Close the lid - Problem solved.

Except it isn’t. Because people aren’t garbage bins. They are complicated. And so are we. Sooner or later the ghosts comes to haunt us.

Perhaps the real villain is our need for simple stories

Maybe that’s the real conclusion. The problem isn’t that villains exist. Some people genuinely do terrible things Some people deliberately hurt others. Some actions deserve condemnation.

We should never use everyone is complicated as an excuse to erase accountability. But there is a difference between:

1. Holding someone accountable vs turning them into a monster

2. You hurt me vs You are nothing but a person who hurts people.

3. I was wronged vs Therefore I must be completely innocent.

4. And there is a difference between: I made mistakes vs Therefore I deserve to carry the identity of a villain forever.

Those distinctions matter. Because the moment we reduce human beings to heroes and villains, we make ourselves incapable of understanding how ordinary people can make extraordinary mistakes. And perhaps that is one of psychology’s most uncomfortable lessons.

We don’t only create villains to punish them. Sometimes we create villains to protect ourselves, our sense of justice, our identity, our innocence, our need for control, our place in the story, our ego.

And sometimes… to protect our right to be the victim.

So who are we to judge?

We are not saints. We are not monsters. We are not heroes.

We are not villains either.

We are just people. A body of flesh and blood and bones and consciousness. People who have loved badly. People who have loved deeply. People who have made sacrifices. People who have been selfish. People who have been generous. People who have broken hearts. People whose hearts have been broken. People who were right about some things and terribly wrong about others.

And somewhere, in someone else’s memory, almost every one of us is probably the villain. That’s not necessarily an accusation. It is simply what happens when different human beings live different stories.

Bhagat Singh was a hero to one side and an enemy to another. Thanos believed himself to be the savior of a universe while becoming its greatest monster. And all of us, on a much smaller scale, have probably occupied both sides of that equation.

Maybe the goal isn’t to make sure we are always the hero. Maybe it isn’t even to prove that we were never the villain. Maybe the goal is to become self-aware enough to ask:

What part of the story am I not seeing?

Because I may be the victim. I may be the villain. I may even be both. And perhaps the greatest freedom comes when I no longer need the story to contain only one.

After all…

Everybody is a villain in somebody else’s story.

And maybe that’s okay.

Because somewhere beyond the hero and the villain is something much more difficult to become:

A human Being.

Checkout more such contents from my profile. One of my recent one is regarding Money Psychology:

https://neemo.medium.com/money-doesnt-buy-happiness-or-does-it-53c65795f385