Worst Witch Fangirl

fire burn and cauldron bubble

half the castle turned to rubble—

Cruella (2021) ↳   Emma Stone as Cruella De Vil

Well, I said I was going to do it and I’ve done it. Apparently I am that invested in yet another fictional character, I’m defending their honour via the medium of essay. An article popped up on my social media feed yesterday from Mashable called ‘Agatha was the biggest missed opportunity of WandaVision.’ Now this particular statement I don’t disagree with and I will explain why later, but the quote I took issue with was this – “WandaVision’s Agatha is a straight up villain who attacks and manipulates Wanda in an attempt to steal her power.” Hard disagree on this. Was she a perfect person? No. Was her moral compass off on a lot of things? Sure. But a straight up villain? No. It’s the words ‘straight up’ I take issue with. To me, a straight up villain is someone with no human qualities, no motivations and is just bad for the sake of making the hero look good/to create conflict and there’s very little work for the actor to do (Malekith from Thor: The Dark World anyone? No disrespect to Christopher Eccleston, he’s great but I can’t imagine he had a whole lot of work to do with that character, Kathryn Hahn clearly did on Agatha).

Good ‘villains’ are meant to be complicated; we should be able to sit back and think “you know, they may have a fundamental point, but maybe they’re not exactly going about it the right way” because that is what makes them interesting. Look at Loki and how people reacted to him despite him being a bit shady every time he popped up. Empathy is important. I think it’s also important to remember that we as viewers are on Wanda’s side generally because this is her story, from her perspective mostly. When you think about it, the only person that Agatha was an antagonist or threat to was Wanda and the reality she had created for herself.

This is kind of long so I’ve popped the rest under the cut so as not to take up everyone’s dashboard, but if you want to read on, please do so below!