Woman of the Month: Zatanna

Zatanna Zatara from the DCU

Yes, she might be a third-tier superhero that the casual fan has never heard of, but no matter when or where Zatanna pops up, she’s always a delight. I’ve seen her in DC Superhero Girls, Justice League Dark, Young Justice, the graphic novel Zatanna and the House of Secrets – there was even talk of a feature film for a few hot minutes (though Emerald Fennell would have been at the helm so perhaps a bullet was dodged). She was apparently in a few episodes of Smallville as well, though I had checked out of that show way before then.

I’ll admit, I don’t know a lot about this character as she exists in the comics, but I like her style. And sure, we probably shouldn’t fangirl a character for their aesthetic alone, but what’s not to love about a stage magician in a form-fitting tuxedo and fishnet stockings who actually performs real magic for an unknowing audience when she’s not fighting crime? It’s a bit like the vampires pretending to be actors pretending to be vampires on Interview with the Vampire.

Perusing through her Wikipedia page, a few constants emerge: the House of Mystery, dealing with Doctor Fate, a relationship with John Constantine, and the nickname “Zee.” What I think I enjoy most about her is what’s often the case with superheroines: she is permitted to unabashedly wield hard power. And for her specifically, it’s magical power, which means she can go toe-to-toe with the likes of Wonder Woman and Superman without too much trouble (there’s a great scene in Justice League Dark where she does precisely this).

I mean, I’m a Merlin survivor, the show in which all women with magic were evil and/or dead, so for a young woman to be self-assured, proficient at her craft, and respected by her peers across all the different variations of her character is a profound relief. Long may she continue.

(Also, find and read Zatanna and the House of Secrets by Matthew Cody. It’s great!)

Woman of the Month: Stacie Munroe

Stacie Munroe from Hustle

The feminist debate on whether or not a woman can (or should) use her sexuality to get what she wants in life isn’t anywhere near over, and most people can’t even agree on what exactly it might involve. Batting your eyelashes to get out of a speeding ticket? Or a full-blown honey trap to trick an old man out of his life’s savings?

I mean, society looks down on gold diggers and trophy wives and sex workers, dismissing them as manipulative, shallow and deceptive. But in fiction, isn’t it kind of fun to watch? And I mean as wish fulfilment for women, not as catering to the male gaze.

Stacie Munroe encapsulates this debate perfectly: she’s a grifter who doesn’t hesitate to use her beauty and sex appeal for a range of different cons. She’s posed as anything from a museum curator to a high-priced escort, and it’s almost a given that any episode featuring her will include the mark getting Distracted by the Sexy that she brings to the table as a crucial part of the con the team are engaged in. (Though in at least one episode she deliberately subverts this by wearing big glasses and false teeth… while still shamelessly flirting with the mark).

And yet there’s no denying that she’s also an incredibly intelligent woman: not only do you have to be a good actress and a quick thinker in her line of work, but she’s fluent in Japanese and Spanish, is the team member who balances the books, and often steps in as Team Mum when the boys are fighting. Her attractiveness is not even remotely the entirety of her character, and yet she’s a quintessential Femme Fatale, right down to the fair skin/dark hair combo.

Perhaps it’s better to say it’s a role she deliberately embodies rather than an intrinsic part of her nature, and the jury is still out (and will probably never get back in) as to whether a self-aware Ms Fanservice could ever be empowering or feminist. There will always be some that insist she’s giving women a bad name and reinforcing a stereotype, while others point out that if using your sexuality works, then go ahead and use every tool at your disposal.

Woman of the Month: Max Mayfield

Maxine “Max” Mayfield from Stranger Things

It was back in 2019 that I included Eleven on my annual retrospective of notable female characters that I’d watched across the year… which means I can stretch my rule of not having more than one girl/woman featured from a single story, since I haven’t spotlighted any other characters from Stranger Things in one of these monthly posts.

The Duffer Brothers were generally quite good with their female characters (not groundbreaking, but certainly not terrible either) though it interested me that Max ticks quite a few clichéd “tomboy” boxes when she’s first introduced, as well as getting pushed straight into a love triangle. They not only play around a little with the Seamus is a Girl trope considering she first comes to the boys’ attention as “Mad Max” on the scoreboards at the arcade, but have her ride a skateboard around town and be rather abrasive in the face of Lucas and Dustin’s interest in her. She’s a tomboy, but also a tough girl.

Thankfully the love triangle stuff passes pretty quickly, as her most significant relationships early on are with her stepbrother Billy (who is abusive towards her), Mike (who is antagonistic toward her simply because he perceives her as a replacement to Eleven) and eventually Eleven (who also gives her the cold shoulder at their introduction).

To be honest, I never had a problem with Eleven initially rebuffing Max’s overtures of friendship, as she had just spent a year watching turgid soap operas on cable television before seeing Mike engage in low-key flirting with Max after a year-long absence. I knew a friendship between the girls was forthcoming, and they get their own subplot in season three, in which they investigate the increasingly erratic behaviour of Billy and his possible connection to the Mind Flayer. Plus, their shopping montage to Madonna’s “Material Girl” is a delight.

By this point Max isn’t just there to be Affirmative Action Girl or to supplement the boys’ storylines, though it isn’t until season four that her story really starts to kick off. Her grief and depression over the death of her stepbrother makes her an emotionally vulnerable target to Vecna, who needs four victims to kill to open the gates to the Upside Down. Realizing what’s happening to her gives Max an edge, and I’d go so far to say the “Running Up That Hill” scene is probably the best sequence of the entire show. Still, that season ends on a harrowing note: Max ends up in a coma from which she might never awake.

Well, of course she does, and though I’m disappointed that more wasn’t made of her friendship with El at the time, her reunion with Lucas ended up being one of the big successes of the entire show. The scene in which she finally wakes up in his arms easily made it into my list of best film/television scenes of 2025.

I firmly believe that the Duffers did not have all five seasons of this show fully mapped out in advance – in fact we know this from various interviews and behind-the-scenes footage. But in that respect I find Max’s trajectory as a character rather fascinating. Her initial introduction as “another girl” designed to shake up the boys’ dynamic wasn’t hugely promising, and yet her bad girl persona is explained and explored in several interesting ways, and she becomes an absolute lynchpin of the narrative from season three onwards. Say what you will about the rest, but her increased presence in the plot feels very organic and elegant. Heck, I’d go so far as to say that she and Holly are more essential in defeating Vecna than any of the boys!

From a Sixth Ranger to an intrinsic member of the party with her own original moniker of “Zoomer,” Sadie Sink is now all set to become the Breakout Star of the franchise, especially since she’s next appearing in an MCU film. But I’m sure she’ll remember Max fondly, as this tough little redhead ended up being one of the understated highlights of Stranger Things.

Woman of the Month: Nala

Nala from Sinbad 

One of my favourite things to do on these monthly posts is to showcase extremely obscure female characters, and this may well be the most obscure one I’ve ever written about. Nala, played by Estella Daniels, appeared in only seven of the thirteen episodes of Sinbad, a 2012 show that was cancelled after only one season. So, why bring her up at all?

Despite this take on the legend being all but forgotten about, Nala left an impression on me. I’ve seen the actress since then (Death in Paradise, Da Vinci’s Demons) and despite her limited screentime in this show, she’s the focus of its best episode. “Old Man of the Sea” is a variation on all those stories about Death and the Maiden, generally revolving around a plot in which the latter is forced into matrimony with the embodiment of Death (or a fey, or even the devil himself) only to outwit him at the last moment.

But Nala is also granted a sense of history and backstory the other characters don’t, as it’s clear from the very first episode that she and her father are running from something. She becomes part of the Providence crew as the requisite highborn and educated one (like Djaq or Toph) and is guided by a sense of morality and idealism. As well as her sense of entitlement, there is also duty – the very thing which prevents her from reneging on the deal her father made with Death when he finally catches up to her.

For whatever reason, Nala was written out of the show at about the halfway mark and promptly replaced by a white woman (the optics – not great), but while she lasted she was the heart of the crew. Perhaps she would have returned in time – we’ll never know.

Woman of the Month: Ellen Ripley

Ellen Ripley from Alien and Aliens

When we discuss trailblazing and iconic female characters from the eighties (or in sci-fi generally) two names spring immediately to mind: Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley. Way back in 2017, I watched the two Terminator films (there are only two) and always meant to follow up with the two Alien movies (also only two), as the comparison between these women is fascinating.

Everyone already knows this, but Ellen Ripley as written in Alien was originally a male character, and when the decision was made to cast Sigourney Weaver, absolutely nothing was changed. This makes sense, as gender is largely irrelevant in the first Alien film. Rape subtext aside, it’s essentially a crew of miners attempting to survive a life-or-death situation in closed quarters, and Ripley’s most defining scene is refusing to let her crewmates back on the ship when there’s the chance they could be contaminated, instead wanting to follow safety regulations.

It’s the exactly opposite of what we’d expect a Screw the Rules, I’m Doing What’s Right protagonist to do, but it’s also indisputably the right call.

It also has nothing to do with the fact Ripley is a woman, in stark contrast to Sarah Conner, who absolutely has to be a woman. The whole reason the plot takes place is because time travellers want to kill the mother of the Resistance leader fighting them in the future – before she’s given birth.

This is of particular interest since James Cameron directed The Terminator before taking on Aliens, which does have more of an interest in the fact Ripley is a woman, particularly as it pertains to motherhood. Waking up from cryogenic sleep to discover her daughter has died in the intervening years, the emotional core of the film is Ripley becoming a mother to Newt, the sole survivor of the latest Xenomorph attack.

It doesn’t feel like a coincidence that James Cameron was the man behind this change, bringing Ripley more in line with Sarah Connor, as a Mama Bear protecting her young at all costs. But that doesn’t change the fundamentals of her character: a determined, no-nonsense, tough-as-nails but fundamentally decent woman who represents the best of humanity – whether it’s comforting a little girl or going back for the cat. This is the reason for the character’s longevity: that she’s a normal woman in terrifying circumstances. No superpowers, no extraordinary talent, just grit and bravery.

(Just like Sarah Connor).

Women of the Year: A Retrospective 2025

It’s time for my favourite annual post: a look back at all the female characters I discovered, revisited, and/or enjoyed watching or reading about across the course of the past year. As I’m sure you know, I start every month with a post that spotlights a female character of note, the only two rules being that she has to be a somewhat inspiring figure, and that I can feature only one woman per project (though I can always include more from the same narrative universe in these end-of-year retrospectives).

But last year I decided to do something a little different and make 2025 the Year of the Villainess.

What struck me whilst selecting and compiling these twelve women is that female villains are so often twisted reflections of abnormal femininity. They are women… but wrong.

There’s the overbearing mothers (Norma Bates, Agnes Skinner, the Queen of Shadows in Mirrormask), the abusive nurturers (the Other Mother, Mother Gothel, Nurse Ratchet), the abnormally masculine (Agatha Trunchbull, Lady Macbeth; who asks to be unsexed: “come to my woman’s breasts, and take my milk for gall”), and of course – the crazy bitches (the Queen of Hearts, Daenerys Targaryen, Hexadecimal, Drusilla, even Azula in her final stretch of episodes). In that last case, it’s often the woman’s loosening grip on reality that proves to be her downfall.

Then there are the monstrous mother-figures (pick a stepmother, any stepmother from a fairy tale), the jealous harpies (now pick a stepsister, or any character that’s ever been played by Lucy Punch), the embittered crones desperate to regain their youth (Lamia from Stardust, the Sanderson Sisters, Mother Gothel again), the Alpha Bitches (Regina George, Libby Chessler), the Ice Queens (the White Witch, Hans Christian Anderson’s Snow Queen), the Women Scorned (Hera, Alex Forrest, Isabella of Gisborne) and the Femme Fatales, who use their sexuality to get what they want (Melisandre, the Brides of Dracula – honestly, there are too many of these to name, though shoutout to Delilah, the Ur-Example).

It was at that moment Hylas knew... he'd fucked up.

Occasionally you get women that’ve been possessed by greater powers that transform them into dangerous threats (Jean Grey, Azkadellia from Tin Man), and sometimes they’re just unrelenting, unthinking forces of nature (Shelob, Eris, the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, weather events that are usually given feminine names and pronouns). Oftentimes, many of these categories can overlap.

Just take a moment here to try and imagine any of these archetypes applied to a male villain. It’s not impossible, and yet it’s also much rarer. When men are villains, it’s usually to do with the corruptive influence of power, or misguided motivation born of desperation or deceit, or the complexities of the human psyche, or… ya know, a woman made him do it. For female villains it’s usually about being the wrong type of woman: a bad mother, or a manipulative seductress, or either so emotional that it disrupts her mental faculties, or not emotional enough for her to count as a proper woman.

Obviously not always, but I feel reasonably comfortable making that generalization. When one looks back at some of our earliest villainesses, the likes of Lilith and Circe and Morgan le Fay, it’s easy to see what they have in common: their own hard power (generally manifesting as magic) and a disregard for male authority. What need have they for men when they have their own inherent abilities to serve and protect them? Stories about such figures read more like cautionary tales to a male audience about the dangers that women pose than anything to do with the characters themselves; a warning not only about the sexuality they embody, which can easily lure a man to his doom, but the dangerous subversion of male power.

It’s rare that a female villain is allowed motivation that transcends gender-coded characterization (“who’s the fairest of them all?”) or which doesn’t embody the anxieties the patriarchy has about them (their sexuality, their mental state, their unchecked emotions), or refrains from commenting (even implicitly) on how she should be controlled, dismissed or ridiculed. When someone like Demona from Gargoyles comes along, who is driven by a multitude of inner demons (her self-loathing and guilt, her desire to protect her people from discrimination, her hatred of human beings), it’s worth sitting up and taking notice.

Again, I want to stress that this is a generalization. I’m well aware that the rogue’s gallery of fictional villains has its fair share of abusive fathers, power-crazy tyrants and tantrum-throwing manchildren (the concept of an incel has definitely been the inspiration for several male villains over the last few years). But are there a lot of old men who are vilified for being old and therefore undesirable? Men that are considered unnatural because they’re unfeeling or “icy”? Do we see a lot of men seducing women for nefarious ends (and don’t say James Bond – he’s not only a designated hero, but considered a stud for how many beautiful women he can bed). Are there as many evil stepfathers as there are stepmothers? And if there were, would they be regarded as being as monstrous as an unfit mother?

When there are more male villains anyway, it’s rather obvious to see how the female ones are broadly divided into several recurring categories and themes, and most of them have their roots in what it means to be an “incorrect” type of woman. Simply put, female villains are often the ones that don’t comply with the patriarchy’s expectations of them: to be nurturing, beautiful, virtuous, young, submissive, obliging and preferably sane.

I could write a thesis on all this, but there’s definitely no time for that! Just food for thought as I delve into some of the other compelling villainesses that didn’t make this year’s short list, but who are definitely worth mentioning in some capacity:

Woman of the Month: Maddy Magellan

Maddy Magellan from Jonathan Creek

Having done this Woman of the Month project for over ten years now, I’m surprised that Maddy Magellan has never come up before, as she truly is one of my favourite characters of all time. A few weeks ago I had Jonathan Creek playing as background noise while I did other things, and I was reminded again of just how vivacious she is.

Sometimes the best fictional characters aren’t necessarily the ones you want to meet in real life. Maddy is bad tempered and dishonest, mercurial and fast talking; ruthlessly ambitious in her pursuit of a story and not above tapping into people’s private phone messages or pretending to be a police officer in order to gain access to a crime scene.

She’s everything we hate about investigative journalists, but damn it if she isn’t fun to watch. More importantly, she has a social conscience. The crime exposés she writes are about miscarriages of justice, and – as she frequently likes to point out – she doesn’t get paid much for them. When the time comes to glean more of her family history, we get a sense of why she’s drawn to this particular subject matter, and she’s definitely someone you want on your side if you’re ever the victim of an impossible crime (and not just because she’s essentially the handler of Jonathan Creek, lateral thinker extraordinaire).

It’s really the sheer levels of gumption and verve that Carolyn Quentin brings to the role which makes her so enjoyable as a character. We couldn’t condone half of what she does as appropriate in real life, but her sheer audacity – breaking into houses, reading people’s diaries, going through garbage bags, lying about being Jewish, recruiting a man to impersonate a police officer in order to extract information from her close-lipped colleague – is something to behold. At one point while under arrest she frets that she’ll be injected with a truth serum. Jonathan reassures her: “it wouldn’t stand a chance.”

The show certainly lost something when Quentin left to have a baby, and then for whatever reason, never brought back again. Because the Carla Borrego mysteries are still pretty good, I include them whenever I do a rewatch, but always finish things off with “The Black Canary,” a standalone Christmas Special that I can pretend takes place after Maddy returns from America, ready to pick things up where she left off with Jonathan.

Assertive and confident and quick-witted and unapologetic, she’s someone we could never be… but would secretly like to.

Woman of the Month: Huntrix

Rumi, Mira and Zoey from K-Pop Demon Hunters

The Year of the Villainess is over and it’s with some relief that I return to the good guys. We need them now more than ever, and the natural choice of heroines to headline January is a no-brainer. K-Pop Demon Hunters took over Netflix last year, and did so entirely on its own merits. With little in the way of promotion, it was down to word of mouth that these girls got the attention they deserved, and well – I give fandom a lot of flak, but sometimes it gets things right every now and then.

Rumi, Mira and Zoey are famous K-Pop stars: they write their own songs, choreograph their own dances, and look out for each other in the glitzy world of superstardom. But they’re also secret superheroes, lending their voices and talent to the upkeep of a magical barrier that keeps demons securely locked away.

Though Rumi is technically the lead, all the girls get their own little mini-arc. Mira finds it difficult to emote, Zoey feels torn between her Korean and American heritage, and demons are exceptionally good at playing on their insecurities. Rumi has it the worst though, for as the offspring of a demon and human, she has to hide her true self from the world.

Of course, it all gets resolved with the power of song, friendship and positive thinking. Okay, that sounded a little glib, but this is the first time that three female characters have featured in a Woman of the Month post, as I found that I couldn’t really separate them. That aforementioned blend of song, friendship and positivity is so intrinsically linked to all these girls and their relationship with each other that it forms the emotional centre of the story itself – and I honestly think that’s the secret ingredient that made this film a hit.

(Along with all the little things; details as simple as scenes of the girls being incredibly silly or stuffing their mouths with food. How often do you get to see THAT in a movie about women?)

At the start of the film, there’s a tantalizing glimpse of the women that preceded Huntrix in the line of demon hunters throughout history (I’d definitely turn up for a prequel about them) and hopefully any potential sequel will delve into how these girls were recruited and trained in the first place. Until then, we have this impossible movie to enjoy: three female protagonists, a largely women-led production, absolutely no support or promotion from Netflix, themes of mental health and the connective power of music… and it was a smash hit.

Woman of the Month: Lady Macbeth

Lady Macbeth from Macbeth

The Year of the Villainess is nearly over, though I still have plenty of candidates left to chose from. The Wicked Witch of the West, Cruella de Ville, Annie Wilkes, Nurse Ratched, Delilah, the White Witch, Agatha Trunchball, Morgana le Fay, Amy Dunne, the Marquise de Merteuil… the list goes on.

But I wanted to end on a strong note, so who better to showcase than Lady Macbeth (no first name given), who is undoubtedly Shakespeare’s most memorable female villain. I mean, who else is there? Goneril and Regan? Tamora? Sycorax, who isn’t even in the play? There really aren’t that many to choose from.

Lady Macbeth obviously embodies traits that Shakespeare’s contemporary audience would have considered “ungodly” in a woman: not only her ambition to become Queen of Scotland by committing regicide, but her expert “wiles” that goad Macbeth into doing the deed in the first place. Like Eve and the serpent combined, Lady Macbeth is a danger to her husband precisely because of her skill at manipulation, knowing exactly what to say and do in order to get him to act.

That womanhood and weakness are considered intertwined is apparent when Lady Macbeth first learns of the opportunity that lies before her husband, and so in order to rid herself of any femininity that might hinder her capacity for murder, she gives her most chilling monologue: “Come, you spirits, that tend on mortal thoughts! Unsex me here, and fill me from the crown to the toe top full of direst cruelty; make thick my blood, stop up the access and passage to remorse, that no compunctious visitings of nature shake my fell purpose.”

This notion has always unnerved me; the idea that someone could self-consciously pray for evil to come upon them so that they might have the “courage” to go through with an evil act.

Yet despite all the powers of persuasion she has at her disposal, she’s also an active participant in the murder. She is the one that prepares King Duncan’s bedchamber, ensures that his attendants are inebriated, and makes sure that weapons are in place for her husband to use. Afterwards, she has to hurriedly clean up Macbeth’s mess when he neglects to place the daggers alongside Duncan’s attendants in order to frame them.

Although she also manages to salvage the situation when Macbeth has a vision of the murdered king at a banquet, her own grip on sanity starts to wane, and after her famous “out damned spot,” sleep-walking scene, she drops out of the action entirely. News of her off-screen death is brought to Macbeth only a few minutes before his own.

And yet despite this lacklustre conclusion to her character, it’s a testimony to her impact that she’s one of the most unforgettable parts of the play. I’ve heard it said that every serious stage actress should play Juliet in their youth and Lady Macbeth in their prime, and there’s certainly a line-up of talent when it comes to those that’ve taken on the role: Vivien Leigh, Isuzu Yamada, Judi Dench, Helen McCrory, Keeley Hawes, Alex Kingston, Marion Cotillard, Frances McDormand, Tabu, Ruth Negga, Saoirse Ronan, Indira Varma and Valene Kane (and those are just the ones I recognize).

I’ll end with a quote from her, which in many ways could be attributed to any and all of the women I’ve written about this year, demonstrating their drive, their tenacity, their cruelty, and their allure: “you shall put this night’s great business into my dispatch, which shall to all our nights and days to come, give solely sovereign sway and masterdom.”

Woman of the Month: Rebecca de Winter

Rebecca de Winter from Rebecca

This is the first time I’ve added an entry without an image of the woman in question, because the whole point of Daphne du Maurier’s famous novel is that we never get a glimpse of Rebecca, just as we never find out the name of the story’s narrator, the second Mrs de Winter.

Rebecca is a posthumous character, yet despite being really, most sincerely dead by the time the story starts, she is the novel’s main character, her presence still looming large over Manderley and all its inhabitants. Heck, it’s right there in the title. She’s the subject of the book, and our actual protagonist is so overshadowed by her that she doesn’t even warrant a name.

SPOILERS

The new Mrs de Winter is at first cowled by tales of her predecessor, the beautiful, glamourous, vivacious Rebecca, and struggles to assert herself – especially when it comes to the housekeeper Mrs Danvers, who was devoted to Rebecca and resents the arrival of her replacement. She’s convinced that Maxim could never possibly love her as much as he did his first wife, but just over halfway through the novel the truth emerges: Rebecca was a cruel and manipulative woman with clear psychopathic tendencies.

Yet once you finally get the whole story, you can’t help but admire her just a tiny bit. As it transpires, Rebecca was terminally ill with cancer, and in order to spare herself prolonged suffering, she goaded her husband into shooting her dead by taunting him with a lie about how she was pregnant with another man’s child. Her plan worked perfectly: she got her relatively painless end, and her husband was left guilt-ridden and paranoid.

Even when the reality of Rebecca’s true nature becomes public, Mrs Danvers ensures Maxim and his young wife will never enjoy her true mistress’s home without her, and burns it to the ground. Rebecca has won, did win, and was always going to win.  

The allure of Rebecca is her unknowability – she’s dead before the narrative starts, so all our protagonist ever learns of her is second-hand. There are plenty of Sapphic undertones in her relationship with Mrs Danvers, and it’s made clear she was carrying on a love affair with her first cousin, as well as many others. Her husband says of her: “she was not normal,” and that she had told him things about herself that he would never repeat. To some she was a virtuous and charming woman, to others a pathological liar and narcissist. But the final word on her must simply be: “She did what she liked. She lived as she liked.” And ultimately, she died in the way of her own choosing.

Woman of the Month: Drusilla

Drusilla from Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel

As soon as I decided that 2025 would be the Year of the Villainess, I knew that Drusilla would be my choice for October. A Cockney Victorian psychic vampire who dresses like a Goth princess and talks to her dolls? That’s a perfect Halloween aesthetic.

On consideration, there were surprisingly few female villains in a show that was all about strong female characters. Glory is the standout for being the only female Big Bad, and of course we had Darla and Drusilla across the seasons… but that’s about it really. The First could take on feminine form, but was essentially genderless. Amy Madison eventually broke bad, but in a rather confusing way. There was Harmony as well, I suppose, though she was never taken particularly seriously as a threat.

The likes of Faith and Dark Willow always had redemption on the cards, while over on Angel there was Lilah Morgan and Jasmine. Apart from all that, any other female villains were just one-shot guest stars: Catherine Madison, Gwendolyn Post, Vanessa Brewer, Sunday… do you even know who I’m talking about?

But I digress, let’s get back to Drusilla. I’m happy to say on the record that Drusilla is the show’s most tragic character, bar none. Born some time in the Victorian Era, she grows up a pious Catholic girl who believes her psychic abilities are the work of the devil. This is something her sire Angelus is all too happy to take advantage of. To quote him: “It was over the moment I saw her. She was my opposite in every way. Dutiful daughter. Devout Christian. Innocent and unspoiled. I took one look at her and I knew. She’d be my masterpiece.”

After the murder of her entire family, Drusilla flees to a convent for safety, though the church ultimately offers her no safety: Angelus and Darla break in, kill all the nuns, and turn her into a vampire. Just for good measure, they have sex on the altar in front of her while she suffers a complete mental collapse.

Yeah, there are no happy endings here. In a twisted sort of way, turning her into a vampire is almost a kindness after the torture Angelus inflicted on her, as at least the loss of her soul frees her from the burden of her religious guilt. Interestingly, her psychic abilities pass with her into her new existence as a member of the undead, and between her madness and her precognitive gift, she’s one of the most captivating, terrifying and (like I said) heartbreaking characters of the entire franchise.

Although most of her history is presented to the viewer via flashbacks (most notably how she came to sire Spike), she first appears in Buffy the Vampire Slayer in quite a vulnerable state, having been badly injured in Prague. Spike has brought her to Sunnydale for mystical treatment, and the viewer is initially presented with a vampire who is certainly eerie, but not a huge physical threat – at first.

Once recovered, she’s a force to be reckoned with, and as a player in the show’s mythos, is best remembered for killing Kendra the Vampire Slayer and re-siring Darla over on Angel. Sadly, her last chronological appearance was in season five of Buffy, trying and failing to bring Spike back into the fold, after which she just disappears (though I’m led to believe she turns up again in the comics).

What Juliet Landeau brought to the role is a vibe. She’s a Gothic lady and a Victorian child, a spooky seer and a deadly monster. She’s guileless, deranged, coquettish, driven, unpredictable – truly, a compelling performance from start to finish, and given the impact she had on the show, it’s rather astounding that she appeared in only seventeen Buffy episodes and seven Angel ones (and some of these were entirely in flashback, or as a guise the First took on). She was a force to be reckoned with...

Woman of the Month: Eris

Eris from Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas

For this month, I am allowing myself one semi-obscure female villain.

Of course, the goddess Eris is hardly unknown: she’s a major player in Greek mythology and the deity who kicked off the Trojan War when she threw the Golden Apple of Discord into the crowd at Peleus and Thetis’s wedding (and by doing so, making herself the progenitor of the evil fairy that curses Sleeping Beauty at her Christening, for whether she’s called Maleficent, Carabosse or the Fairy of Red, that character also sows discord after not being invited to a party).

But this particular take on Eris might count as obscure, as she’s from an animated movie released in 2003 that bombed badly at the box office. Yet for all that, she is easily its highlight, and reason enough to watch Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas at least once.

Michelle Pfeiffer lent her silky voice to the manipulative, chaos-loving goddess who has an elaborate plan to strew havoc throughout the known world, but what really gets your attention is the stunning animation that brings her to life. She slinks and glides across the screen, shifting in and out of ink-black smoke, with serpentine hair that undulates around her with an underwater fluidity. Sometimes she’s the size of a mortal woman; other times she expands to frighteningly large proportions, with glowing eyes and elongating fingers. You can’t take your eyes off her whenever she’s onscreen

Truly, she’s a marvel of animation; demonstrating that even a not-great movie can be elevated by a truly great villain.

Woman of the Month: Debbie Jellinski

 

Debbie Jellinski from Addams Family Values

It’s time to showcase a comedic villainess.

I was surprised to discover that Addams Family Values was a flop when it was released back in 1993, as in my opinion it’s far better than the first film, and Joan Cusack damn near steals the show as its villain. She plays Debbie Jellinski, a woman engaged in that noble profession of marrying rich guys and then killing them to inherit their fortunes. She’s been doing it for a while, successfully offing her unfortunate string of husbands and evading law enforcement, but what elevates her from being another run-of-the-mill black widow is Cusack’s performance.

There is truly nothing more fun than watching her go from the wide-eyed, earnest, virginal (yet still aggressively sexual) Debbie in the first half of the film to the cruel, materialistic, vindicative monster-bitch (who remains aggressively sexual) in the second. Joan Cusack just oozes malevolence from every pore, her facial expressions and body language so completely predatory and over-the-top.

Her incredulous “you?” when Fester admits he’s a virgin, her wriggling glee when she watches the Nightline exposé on herself, the look of dark intent when she preps the bomb to take out her latest husband – all done in an array of colourful sundresses. Her manipulations even get Wednesday and Pugsley sent to summer camp.

The craziest thing is that if Debbie had just been upfront about her intentions, the Addams family probably would have welcomed her as one of their own (Morticia is cool with her scheming, it’s the pastels she objects to). They even wish her good luck as she’s about to murder them and make her escape.

What was a pretty clichéd villain is elevated entirely by Joan Cusack’s deliciously evil performance. She practically slithers her way through the role, and is the larger-than-life villain that the previous film lacked; the perfect dark foil not only to the Addams family, but also the obnoxiously chipper camp leaders. Not everyone can paraphrase the Wicked Witch of the West (“I’ll get you, and your little hand too!”) and own it.

Woman of the Month: The Velociraptors

The Velociraptors from Jurassic Park

All the villainesses I’ve featured in these posts so far have been reasonably complex figures, with equally complex motivation – but not these girls. The velociraptors of Jurassic Park (specifically Jurassic Park; I never saw the sequels and I’m definitely not counting the raptors who respond to Chris Pratt’s commands in Jurassic World) don’t want anything beyond hunting people down and eating them.

But the way in which they do so makes them the key antagonists of the film, and the lead-up to their first onscreen appearance is a masterclass in building a sense of dread. The opening sequence involves a team of men transferring an unseen creature from a crate into a walled facility, and the apprehension on their faces (along with the weapons they wield) speaks for itself. Before the scene is over, an unfortunate worker is pulled to his death by whatever’s in the crate – we don’t get the slightest glimpse; we can only hear its unholy shrieks and screams.

With just a fossilized claw, Alan Grant scares the crap out of an obnoxious kid by explaining the hunting techniques of the raptors (“you’re alive when they start to eat you”) and much later, he holds a baby one in his bare hands, realizing what it is: “raptors… you’ve bred raptors?” Right now it’s harmless, but already the audience is trying to imagine what this little thing of teeth and claws might look like when it’s fully grown.

They’re taken to the velociraptor enclosure, where the gamekeeper delivers an ominous backstory: “we bred eight originally, but when she came in, she took over the pride and killed all but two of the others. That one – when she looks at you, you can see she’s working things out.” After explaining how the raptors were attacking different parts of the fence during feeding time, looking for weaknesses, he turns to them with a half-grim, half-admiring look on his face: “they remember.”

At this point we’re about twenty-five minutes in and we still haven’t actually seen them. It’s not until the last half-hour of the film in its entirety that we finally get a good look, after they’ve taken out the gamekeeper (arguably the most capable human on the island) by tricking him into looking one way while they sneak up on him from another – just as Alan described at the start of the film.

Now that they’re Unseen No More, the hits just keep on coming. Nobody can forget Ellie escaping the maintenance shed by the skin of her teeth, or the terrifying cat-and-mouse hunt in the kitchen, or Lex falling through the roof and nearly getting her leg chomped, or my personal favourite: Ellie stating “[we’re safe] unless they’ve learned how to open doors.” The film then cuts immediately to a raptor doing exactly that.

Whereas the other dinosaurs are portrayed as animals, who simply act according to their natures, the velociraptors veer a little closer to genuine, deliberate monsters. There is a malevolence in their design that sets them apart from the rest of the creatures in the park, and their combination of intelligence, speed and cooperative hunting tactics makes them absolutely terrifying. Like the gamekeeper says, there’s something in the way they look at their prey that taps into our primal fear of being hunted, cornered – of there being no escape from a bloody and violent death.

It's no surprise that they ended up being the go-to villain for the franchise, even as their impact is diluted with each passing sequel. But in Jurassic Park at least, the threat they pose looms large over the entire film, and it’s not for nothing their leader has since been immortalized as “clever girl.”

Woman of the Month: Callisto

Callisto from Xena Warrior Princess

There’s an argument to be made that Callisto is one of the most iconic villains of popular culture, breaking more than a few glass ceilings in how women can be represented as compelling, dangerous threats, while also remaining complex and pitiable, with no easy answers provided in how someone like her should (or even could) be dealt with.

But what makes a “good” villain? Panache? Presentation? A sympathetic point-of-view? That debate continues, but on some level it’s generally agreed upon that the most effective bad guys often serve as a mirror to their heroic counterparts, highlighting their foibles and reflecting their strengths, bringing them into sharper focus by operating as a dark foil to their thoughts and deeds.

That pretty much sums up Callisto, who first appears in the episode aptly named “Callisto,” in which she’s introduced destroying villages under the name and guise of Xena herself. When our Warrior Princess rocks up in order to put a stop to it, she’s hit with a devastating truth bomb:

When she was just a child, Callisto was the sole survivor of a raid that Xena led on her community, one that took the lives of both her parents. Driven mad with grief and rage, Callisto has now come of age and is ready to take her revenge. She’s a destructive, unanswerable, in-your-face consequence of Xena’s own past, who has no motive or ambition beyond making Xena suffer as much as Xena made her suffer when she was a girl. She cannot be stopped or swayed or reasoned with. She doesn’t want power or wealth or even an apology – only to wreak havoc on Xena’s life. 

As Callisto herself announces at one point: “you created a monster – with integrity.”

It’s reminiscent of the whole “you made me/you made me first” exchange between Bruce Wayne and the Joker in Tim Burton’s Batman, but with infinitely more depth since Xena has to take full responsibility for what Callisto is. And yet her existence leaves Xena powerless: she can’t deny what she did to Callisto, and she certainly can’t defend it. She can’t apologize for it in a way that changes anything, and she can’t make it better in any meaningful way.

What gives Xena the right to kill a woman whose family she murdered and life she ruined? And yet, how can she justify sparing her when Callisto kills indiscriminately? It’s the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object: an enemy of Xena’s own making.

This of course is where the show stumbled a little. Being naturally unwilling to kill Callisto off permanently, and yet not being able to let her roam free or incarcerate her for any length of time, the writers relied heavily on cave-ins and falling rubble and other contrived ways of rendering her incapacitated until the time was right to release her from these narrative holding pens.

Which was often, as she was a recurring villain throughout five of the show’s six seasons. Though her final fate was a bit of a headscratcher (she’s eventually reborn as Xena’s daughter), until that point you could guarantee that any episode which featured her was sure to be a highlight. Her episodes often focused on the cycle of vengeance and its inescapability, and along the way she also murdered Gabrielle’s husband, temporarily swapped bodies with Xena, allied herself with a demonic child, died and started working for the devil, and became an angel before her eventual rebirth. She even enjoyed a few guest appearances on Hercules.

And none of this would mean anything if it wasn’t for Hudson Leick’s performance. In the past I’ve described her as a blend of cat and spider, child and woman, mental insanity and clarity of purpose, complete with a little-girl voice, creepy mannerisms and deranged look in her eyes. As Xena’s accidental protégé, physical match and living reminder of her past sins, she was easily the show’s most evocative villain.

Woman of the Month: Demona

Demona from Gargoyles

With each year that passes, Demona feels less like a villain and more like an anti-hero. She wants to destroy all of humankind, and these days, who can really blame her? TV Tropes would probably describe her as a Well-Intentioned Extremist or a case of Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters, and if she was in a Marvel movie, she would be one of those patented “has noble motivations but is going about achieving their ends in the wrong way” left-coded antagonists, who fight for things such as equality and freedom and essential supplies for the underprivileged, but blow up buildings along the way so the audience doesn’t become too sympathetic to their cause.

Demona is someone who has a very real set of grievances, though back in the halcyon days of the nineties, the oppression she faces must be met with boundless patience and forbearance, as demonstrated by her partner Goliath, even when her fellow gargoyles aren’t allowed into the dining hall built upon their ancestral land without being called “beasts,” or hang out on the clifftops where their eyrie is situated without someone throwing a burning log at them.

Understandably, Demona despises this treatment, and so comes up with a plan to reclaim the land for her own people. Sounds pretty fair to me! But of course, nothing ever goes according to plan...

What follows is a saga that spans hundreds of years, forming the backbone of the show in its entirety. From surviving the massacre at Castle Wyvern to her generational feud with the Hunters, her immortality granted at the hands of the mysterious Weird Sisters to the stable time loop in which her future self appears to show a young Demona what the future holds, thereby ensuring the entire tragedy is set into motion in the first place, Demona’s life story was Shakespearean in its grandeur. And I mean literally – a huge part of it involved Macbeth himself.

Goliath and the other clan members may have been the show’s protagonists, but you knew you were in for an incredible episode whenever Demona turned up.

Marina Sirtis voiced the character with an arch, sharp elegance, though the most compelling thing about Demona was that you could never fully discount her opinions on the cruelty of humanity or the state of the world. Still, the moral framework of the show made it clear that her one-woman war against mankind was a misguided cause, one that leaves her embittered and hateful, thereby rendering her the very thing she initially wished to destroy.

Yet despite her blind hatred and inability to take responsibility for her actions (perhaps her most telling line is when she looks upon the destruction at Castle Wyvern and cries: “what have I... what have they done to you?”) according to creator Greg Weisman’s website, his long-term plans for Demona would have eventually included a redemption arc, largely brought about by her love for her daughter Angela. I hope one day we get to see this story play out.

Until then, Demona remains one of the most complex and three-dimensional villainesses of all time. Truly, I’m struggling to think of anyone comparable, and that she appeared in a Disney cartoon back in the nineties is just astounding. As pitiable as she is terrifying, surely her most memorable moment would have to be at the end of “City of Stone,” in which the other characters implore her to tell them a password they need to reverse a potentially fatal timed chemical reaction that she’s sabotaged.

After some cajoling from mystical forces, she eventually divulges the word she chose to override the computer system: “alone.”

Whew. If that doesn’t break your heart, I don’t know what will.

Woman of the Month: Medea

Medea from Greek Mythology

What is the most heinous crime a human being can commit? I think most would agree it’s filicide; the murder of one’s own children.

The act is perceived as particularly appalling when it’s at the hands of a child’s mother. Mothers are meant to be nurturers and caregivers, not to mention the incubators that grow babies inside of them for an extended period of time before giving birth. Mothers literally give people life, and humanity’s collective hang-ups regarding this supposed biological imperative is like, a whole thing.

With that societal/cultural/historical context in mind, it’s no wonder that Medea cannot escape the notoriety of killing her two sons. Even in adaptations of her story that end well before the crime is committed, the fact that she will eventually take the lives of her own children overshadows everything else in her life. Just as Oedipus is the guy who married his mother, Medea is the woman who killed her sons.

The thing about Greek mythology is that a fair number of the stories seek to embody an idea; a concept; a taboo. The aforementioned Oedipus brought forth the theory of the Oedipal Complex, in which little boys secretly want to get rid of their fathers in order to have their mothers all to themselves, just as Electra is the gender inverse of this; girls who imagine themselves in competition with their mothers for their father’s attention.

Within that psychological framework, the figure of Medea might simply represent a dark subconscious desire in mothers to rid themselves of their children, or at least the potential for it. Perhaps there are shades of post-natal depression to be found here, long before people had a term for it.

But within the story of Medea itself, there’s… well, a story to go with it. The reason given for the filicide is that it’s an act of vengeance against her husband Jason when he decides to put her aside in order to marry a younger woman; a match that will grant him political and social advantages. Unable to accept this, Medea kills their two sons to punish him for his betrayal. The ultimate woman scorned.

I’ve no doubt there’s a well-meaning novel out there in the current deluge of Greek mythology retellings that seeks to justify or at least recontextualize these murders. Perhaps Medea went temporarily mad, like Grace in The Others. Perhaps she was driven to desperation like Anna Karenina on realizing she had no home, status or protection without Jason, and that her children would suffer terribly as a result.

Perhaps she felt she had lost everything and so might as well finish the job, or that having sacrificed so much for her husband (including committing terrible acts for his sake, like desecrating her brother’s body) her pride would not allow her to simply give up and let him abandon her without a fight. Heck, maybe as a witch of Colchis, she had a profoundly different outlook on the nature of death and who has the right to deal it out.

Even Euripides’s play on the subject is not without a degree of sympathy for Medea’s plight, stating: “Of all creatures that can feel and think, we women are the worst treated things alive.”

Personally, I don’t buy any of these explanations. The whole point of the story is that Medea does a heinous thing, an unthinkable thing. It’s no use trying to alleviate or rationalize it, for the very crux of Medea’s story is that a mother killed her children – deliberately and with much consideration. Hate overcame love, as she makes clear in Euripides: “I have done it because I loathed you [Jason] more than I loved them.”

Her hate for Jason was stronger than her love for her children. What must that feel like? But what should she have done instead? Admit defeat, bow out quietly, and lose her children to their father? For almost every single mother in the world, the answer would be an incontrovertible yes, that they should indeed swallow their pride and passively accept defeat for the sake of their children.

But not Medea.

The unsettling thing about her is that her logic is sound, and her motivation understandable. Jason threw away her life, and so she had to repay him in kind. The great love she had for him was poisoned in the wake of his betrayal. She had given up so much for him, and was now on the brink of losing everything – including her sons, one way or the other. “Stronger than lover’s love is lover’s hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make.”

And so she does an evil thing, one that can never be defended, for if she despises Jason’s cruel treatment of her, then how can she justify all the innocent people she destroys to obtain her revenge? There’s an ongoing recent trend in fiction to try and soften female characters instead of letting them be cruel and complex, full of rage and hate; perhaps bourn out of people overidentifying with certain characters and so trying to mitigate their actions as a form of self-defense.

But we should be afraid of the dark places in ourselves and what we’re capable of – characters like Medea are what bring them out into the light so that we might examine them at a safe distance. She’s a wronged woman, and a proactive participant in her story, and a human being with all her faculties – and she’s a villain. She says so herself: “I understand too well the dreadful act I'm going to commit, but my judgement can't check my anger, and that incites the greatest evils human beings do.” The most we can do for Medea is let her own the terrible crime that she commits.

(Clytemnestra on the other hand – she did nothing wrong!)

Woman of the Month: Milady de Winter

Milady de Winter from The Three Musketeers

I must start this entry with a confession: I have never read Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers in its entirety – though I am aware that his Milady de Winter is a much darker character than how she’s portrayed in more modern takes on the source material. In fact, I was rather shocked to read the Wikipedia page on her character and realize just how softened she’s become across various film and television adaptations – while still remaining an assassin-for-hire for a corrupt cardinal, of course.

In the book, her worst crime is murdering Constance in cold blood, largely out of spite. Although many adaptations like to depict her love affair with Athos as a romantic tragedy (as well as the impetus for her malice after he turns on her when her history is discovered) the book makes it more of an opportunistic match to advance her fortunes. And it can be very disconcerting to learn that she’s ultimately beheaded without trial by our “heroes” in the original text.

It’s no wonder that adaptations go a little easier on Milady, as it’s difficult to justify her treatment in the novel – Athos discovers a convict brand on her shoulder while they’re out riding one day and promptly hangs her from a tree. Dude! No trial? No opportunity to explain herself? No benefit of the doubt? To your own wife?? No wonder she hates you! Unsurprisingly, modern adaptations try to moderate all this with some tweaks to her backstory: the 2023 films show us the convict brand was administered at the hands of her abusive first husband, while the 2014 series has her claim she killed her brother-in-law in self-defense after he assaulted her.

Plenty of other films and shows have also alleviated her fate, whether it’s letting her survive the film (2011) or allowing her to take her own way out (1993). I’ve no complaints – think of all the male villains, from Dracula to Judas to Loki to Hannibal Lector, who have been humanized across the decades. It’s nice that we’re capable of doing the same thing to a villainess.

Though of course, the reason why Milady is spared in so many adaptations is obvious: in any kind of franchise that has its eye on sequels or multiple seasons, why would you do away with a character who is as much fun as Milady de Winter? She’s a master of disguise, an expert manipulator, a cunning thief, a crack-shot… you can’t just have her executed halfway through the story! She has to be kept around to cause more trouble and torture Athos in a rare example of a bad girl/good man pairing.

(Likewise, adaptations can’t resist leaning into the portrayal of a genuine love affair between Athos and Milady, for who could resist the glorious toxicity of two messed-up people who tried to destroy one another, only to discover that the other still lives? It’s a dynamic infused with the potential for all sorts of drama, though like Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, they can never be fully reconciled in front of the audience. If it ever happens, it must occur off-screen, in secret, and out of sight).

Milady de Winter is also one of pop-culture’s quintessential Femme Fatales. The debate over whether a woman using her feminine wiles to get what she wants is to be condemned as anti-feminist or celebrated as sexual empowerment continues to this day, but it can’t be denied that it’s a lot of fun to watch. Milady is a classic example of the archetype, charming and seducing her way across France – though of course, there’s a downside. Whenever power and unbridled sexuality are mingled in a female character, there’s bound to be at least some subtextual commentary on mankind’s fear of both those things existing in a woman.

In that sense, Milady reminds me of so many other wronged women who are also highly sexualized: Lilith, Morgan le Fey, Medea of Colchis, Isabella from the BBC’s Robin Hood – women who end up committing terrible crimes as retribution for how they’ve been treated. Men may be afraid of her, but I’m sure more than a few women are silently egging her on, as the moral of the story shouldn’t be to beware of her, but to not push her into villainy through cruelty and neglect in the first place! 

As befits a mutable figure, who at times can appear vicious and cruel, at others pitiable and ambiguous, Milady has been played by dozens of different actresses across the years: Barbara La Marr, Dorothy Revier, Margot Grahame, Binnie Barnes, Lana Turner, Mylène Demongeot, Faye Dunaway, Rebecca De Mornay, Emmanuelle Béart, Milla Jovovich, Ekaterina Vilkova, Maimie McCoy and Eva Green to name a few.

In the hands of these performers, Milady slinks in and out of the shadows until the next adaptation comes along – to evade execution, to be avenged by her son, to find new outlets for her range of talents, to defy her book fate and survive whatever’s thrown at her. She’s an amorphous figure that’s impossible to pin down – even the original text contains several inconsistencies in her backstory and never even definitively decides on her real name.

Milady’s true self is unknown to all.

Women of the Year: A Retrospective 2024

This post comes a little later than usual, as I feel like I’ve been running behind on practically everything for an entire year. Still, I always get there eventually, and so here is my retrospective on the female characters of 2024: not the twelve I selected as Woman of the Month, but the ones I discovered, enjoyed or was impressed with over the course of the entire year, who didn’t get the chance to be spotlighted. 

Looking back, we actually had a pretty good stretch of female characters throughout pop culture in 2024. The problem is, I didn’t watch any of shows or films in which they appeared. Tired of committing to new projects only for them to get cancelled almost immediately, I stared watching (or rewatching) media that I knew wouldn’t disappoint me.

As such, a lot of the women featured below are from stories that aired or were published some time ago. Two inclusions have admittedly more to do with how the characters are presented in their given narratives rather than the characters themselves, as I’ve noticed some interesting changes in how women are being portrayed across fiction recently, brought on by authors becoming more self-aware about certain gender-specific clichés and tropes (though this isn’t always a good thing).

In any case, you get to read my half-formed thoughts on the subject. I’ve tried to keep my stream-of-consciousness blathering under control, but no promises.

Woman of the Month: Princess Azula

Princess Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender

Looking back, it’s amazing to think that aside from two brief, silent cameos, Princess Azula of the Fire Nation did not appear at all throughout season one of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Amazing because she is one of the most memorable parts of the show in its entirety, and an iconic villain in her own right.

Her first true appearance is one for the annals of best Character Establishing Moments, in which she’s depicted onboard a seafaring vessel, directing its captain to pull into shore despite the tide preventing them from doing so safely. The following conversation commences:

Captain: Princess, I’m afraid the tides will not allow us to bring the ship into port before nightfall.

Azula: I’m sorry captain, but I do not know much about the tides. Can you explain something to me?

Captain: Of course, your highness.

Azula: Do the tides command this ship?

Captain: Ah, I’m afraid I don’t understand.

Azula: You said the tides would not allow us to bring the ship in. Do the tides command this ship?

Captain: No, Princess.

Azula: And if I was to have you thrown overboard, would the tides think twice about smashing you against the rocky shore?

Captain: No. Princess.

Azula: Well then, maybe you should worry less about the tides, you have already made up their mind about killing you, and worry more about me, who’s still mulling it over.

Captain: I’ll pull us in.

It conveys so much of her psyche: her cruelty, her insouciance, her power games, and ultimately, her madness. The captain knows it’s not sensible to pull into shore at that time, but it’s unclear whether Azula does. All she cares about is getting what she wants, at the precise moment she wants it – common sense be damned. And anyone trying to thwart her is in for some public humiliation.

This need for control ends up being her undoing. Generally I’m not a fan of stories in which female villains are defeated after losing their minds, but in this case it was all painstakingly seeded across the course of Azula’s arc, from her emphasis on never having one hair out of place, to the flashbacks that depict her as a prodigy, to her intense sibling rivalry with Zuko. She has to be the best; there is no room for imperfection.

The writers pulled off a massively impressive feat when it came to her as the show’s central antagonist (yes, Fire Lord Ozai is the Big Bad, but Azula is the true face of the narrative’s villainy). She’s loathsome, awe-inspiring, terrifying, ruthless... but ultimately pitiable. That she’s drawn from the narcissist’s playbook is undeniable, ticking every box on the checklist: a sense of self-importance, a preoccupation with power and success, entitlement issues, arrogance, interpersonally exploitative/manipulative for her own gain, a lack of empathy, a need for admiration and praise, and a deep-seated sense of insecurity despite her supposed confidence.

Of course, living in a fantasy world where people can command the elements, Azula can back up her sense of superiority with very-real power: not only the honour and privileges that come with being a princess, but the fact that she can shoot fire from her hands. Blue fire in fact, which burns hotter than red, orange or white flames, demonstrating her absolute mastery over the art of fire-bending.

For most of the show’s duration, she’s always one step ahead, always in complete control, always maintaining the upper hand... which means the only person who could ultimately defeat her was Azula herself. Several crucial missteps put her off her game: she underestimates Mai’s loyalty to Zuko, grows increasingly threatened by her father’s dismissive behaviour, and experiences several visions of her lost mother.

The last we see of her on the show is confronting: she’s been laid low by Katara, a mere “peasant,” whose water-bending prowess exceeds her own. Rendered powerless after being chained to an iron gate, Azula’s mind breaks, and all she can do is scream and sob over the fact her entire worldview has crumbled. Wringing a sense of pity from the audience was a masterful final move on the behalf of the writers, reminding us that this was ultimately a fourteen-year-old girl raised in a way that gave her very little recourse to be anything else than what she became.

Her story continues a little into the graphic novels, but I’m not entirely sure whether they’re meant to be considered canon, and I’m ambivalent over the prospect of whether or not she should be redeemed (however you want to define that). How she’ll be handled in the upcoming animated films is another mystery – if she’s even featured at all.

Personally, I think her story is perfect just the way it is, and Azula is truly one of the most remarkable antagonists in all of fiction. Not just in the category of “female villains” or “animated villains” – but ALL villains.