Evening all. Admin here to share a personal opinion with y’all. After watching Sodor’s Finest about Diesel, I’ve come to realize that none of the eras fully got him right. I mean, in the Model Era, you could tell there was a devolution with him. He went from being a scheming, serial-manipulative villain to being a clumsy bully with an unnecessary redemption arc.
I never like that. Stuff like that’s better suited for other characters like Sir Handel or even Smudger. Like Unlucky Tug said himself, Diesel is a straight-up villain and as such, he deserves to be recognized as one. Kinda like the Disney villains from the renaissance era and everybody adores them.
It is for this reason alone that I prefer Diesel from the Thomas Creator Collective on YouTube. The earlier episodes (more specifically: Night of the Diesels & Return of Diesel) truly understood the full depth of Diesel’s villainy. Hell, the latter utilized a freaking clone army just to conquer Sodor! How badass is that?!
It’s moments like these that truly emphasize the devious in Devious Diesel. He and Duck are like the Sherlock Holmes & Professor Moriarty of Sodor; both flawed yet one comes through at the end. They’re twisted reflections of each other. In my opinion, he’s even more evil than Diesel 10 and he threatened to destroy the magic buffers in Magic Railroad.