So I don’t know if you know of Doug Walker, but recently released his Disneycember review of The Owl House.
While he praised a majority of the show, he criticized the main villain, Belos, of how he was written.
Many of the comments tried to defend the writing of the villain.
Now that's a name I haven't heard in a long time.
Yes, I am very familiar with Doug Walker; I loved his stuff along with Channel Awesome years ago and then the allegations came out and fortunately, the other contributors on that channel moved onto bigger and better things. Meanwhile, Doug just stayed the same, so I don't watch his stuff anymore.
Any way, I think it's funny people are scrambling to defend Belos' writing because, despite my own personal opinions on Doug as a critic, I actually agree with him.
For a show that is ostensibly about subverting tropes and not judging a book by its cover, by showing how people can choose to change or not, etc. Belos is a throwback to an earlier era where the Big Bad had basic motivations and characterizations. And for a show like toh, that actually ends up hurting the narrative.
I have categorized the comments I found defending the writing and here are my responses to them:
Belos does have a deeper layer, you just have to look for it.
While a show can certainly foreshadow and provide little hints about a major character, eventually all of that setup will have to pay off somehow. There has to be a reveal both to reward the viewers that have been paying attention and to inform more casual viewers who may not have. Fans analyzing every little frame to extrapolate a major character's backstory only for that backstory to really not matter in the end despite it being set up for a season is just bad writing. full stop. [A viewer should also not have to look on social media for crucial information on a major character.]
It's also not clever that the show left so much room for interpretation on Belos; it just means that they didn't make a commitment to what was being set up and reduced his character to glib one-liners whenever we learn something interesting about him (Masha's "little bro was jealous of big bro" line and Papa Titan's whole spiel).
2. Belos would have been written better if the show had more time.
The Toh crew knew about the cancellation during production of Eda's Requiem and wrote all of 2B with it in mind. So they knew they were working on a time crunch but still introduced elements like the Collector when they should have spent the time wrapping up their story. The cancellation is not an excuse for sloppy writing.
3. Belos as a villain works more on a meta level.
So the argument here is that Belos is the antithesis to the BI; it's accepting and diverse while he is hateful and only accepts things that conform to his worldview. The characters in the story change and grow, while Belos does not. The problem here is that a villain can't only work on a meta level, it has to work on a narrative one as well.
If the BI is place that accepts weirdos then how did someone like Belos come to power? Oh, he lied his way to the top and created problems that never existed? That just makes your populace look dumb and easily manipulated. The BI being so accepting also undermines the threat credibility of the Emperor's Coven because why should we worry about them if they have no real influence over how the BI residents think or behave aside from when the plot needs them to?
Also, I strongly disagree with anyone who says that toh has a "people are complicated and choose to do good and bad" theme when all of the good characters can blame their bad actions on being manipulated or on circumstances outside of their control OR the narrative ignores/downplays anything bad they did (cough cough Amity and Lilith). Meanwhile, the villains are just shallow with basic motives and this is supposed to be a deep message about how Some People Are Just Bad.
If you're going to contrast why your good characters are capable of growth then you need to show why your villain does not. What is stopping them? How do they react if given a legitimate reason to change (that isn't a cheap jab at Steven Universe)? What is their justification for their actions?
Whatever the answer is, the narrative has to support it and not undermine it with a stupid joke.
4. Belos is so refreshing when every villain character is redeemed.
Watch more shows. If you think that every cartoon villain post-Steven Universe is being redeemed then you're incorrect. Redemption of a show or movie's Big Bad is still in the minority while the redemption of the main villain's lackey is a dime-a-dozen.
Ultimately, I think the problem with toh is that so many of its fans take its thematic statements at face value without ever really stopping to think about the execution of those themes and if they really work or not.
Belos just happens to embody this little trick that toh does: it claims to have bold and timely statements and important themes, but the structure and execution of the plot, character development, and world-building undermines any attempt at a consistent or coherent message.
