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Ok, now that I’ve given the small basis, let’s get into comparing him to Pythor. Now pretty much everyone has compared these two and said that they are the same character. They both had this plan to reawaken an ancient, giant snake to wreak havoc on the surface world and ended up getting defeated when they were eaten by said giant snake. They’re also both purple and british. So yeah, very understandable to compare the two of them. Luckily for me, this just makes things easier to compare and contrast my points. Now to start off, I will talk about one thing that Pythor does have over Kalmaar which is motivation. Pythor was mainly motivated by revenge as the humans locked the Serpentine in tombs, and yeah that’s understandable to get upset about. Meanwhile Kalmaar doesn’t have much motivation at all. I have my own personal headcanons for why Kalmaar is the way that he is, but in canon, we don’t get an explanation. Trimaar was very chill and had no dislike of the surface dwellers, meanwhile Kalmaar just always seemed to hate them for… no given reason. He’s just like that. And I know some people don’t like that, but I don’t really have a problem with it. Not every villain needs a reason to be evil. Sometimes they are just evil people and that’s ok. That might sound a bit hypocritical coming from someone who shits on the Overlord for being generic evil guy, but that’s mainly because the Overlord has a lot of other problems that I don’t wanna get into right now because this post isn’t about him. It’s about Kalmaar.

So Kalmaar doesn’t have a real motivation or reason as to why he’s evil. Some people don’t like that, but I have little issue with it because in my opinion Kalmaar makes up for it with basically everything else about him. To get back to the Pythor comparisons, I feel like the evil actions Kalmaar takes are so much more impactful than what Pythor does. Again, comparing Kalmaar to Pythor from season 1 since that’s the season where Pythor’s plan is most similar to Kalmaar’s. Pythor manages to rally all the different Serpentine tribes together through deceit by using the flute to defeat the other generals. (And also Skales helping him out). So Pythor gets the rest of the Serpentine to follow his rule, which is impressive. I feel the need to remind everyone that I ADORE Pythor and this post is not meant to hate on him at all. But when you compare Pythor’s rise to power to Kalmaar’s, it is very obvious to me which one comes out on top. Kalmaar gives what I think is one of the most badass lines from a villain in this show during an interaction with his father:

Trimaar: “I will not accept this brazen defiance! You have no power here, Kalmaar. I am your father and your king!”

Kalmaar: “I can’t do anything about the first thing, but as to the second…”

And then Kalmaar proceeds to shoot his own father, ultimately killing him. Not just that, but he also shoots the two guards who try to apprehend him afterwards, presumably killing them as well. After this, Kalmaar throws his trident to the ground and calls for help, blaming the ninja for attacking the king. In an instant, Kalmaar has turned an entire kingdom against the ninja while also making himself the new king. I don’t understand how people can look at this scene and then say that Kalmaar sucks as a villain. And to be fair, it is hard to tell if the people who do actually hate Kalmaar think he’s a genuinely bad villain or if they hate him because he’s a terrible person and they don’t actually think he’s a bad villain, they just hate him as a person. But that still doesn’t change the fact that nobody seems to talk about him, so yeah I feel like this scene is incredibly underrated.

And yeah, Pythor cannibalized the other anacondrai. That’s pretty messed up. But we don’t see that happening, it happens off screen. (Not that they would show that on screen, this is a kids show after all and I don’t think they wanna show on screen cannibalism) But I don’t think it’s ever confirmed whether or not Pythor ate all of the anacondrai, or if they all started eating each other and Pythor was the last one remaining. I always assumed they ate each other but I’ve seen some people argue that it was just Pythor. But with Kalmaar, we see him kill his father on screen. We get on screen patricide AND regicide, all in one combo! We also get an extremely emotional scene between Trimaar and Benthomaar afterwards. You can tell just how heartbroken Trimaar feels after realizing that his son is an irredeemable monster who wants to cause absolute calamity for the world. We never really get a scene like this regarding Pythor. The closest we get is the other Serpentine realizing that releasing the Great Devourer would mean they all get eaten as well, but that’s mainly played up for laughs, at least with the initial scene. We also get comments from Skales saying that he told the others not to listen to Pythor, but they didn’t want to listen. We never actually see Skales doubting Pythor’s plan to reawaken the Great Devourer, he just makes a comment about in season 2, and in season 1 he says, quote: “How was I supposed to know he was mad?” after being questioned on why they listened to Pythor in the first place.

Going back to Kalmaar for a bit, his relationship towards Benthomaar is another thing that makes him such a despicable villain in the best way possible. He is terrible to Benthomaar, that much I don’t need to explain, everyone knows that. Bentho’s character arc from wanting nothing but the love of his adopted brother, and then learning that Kalmaar killed their father, learning just how terrible of a person Kalmaar truly is, and deciding to side against him is such a great arc. Benthomaar is probably one of the best written side characters in Ninjago because of it, and I don’t think a lot of people are gonna argue with me on that. We love Bentho in this house. I feel like it’s fair to say that Kalmaar is more of Benthomaar’s villain than he is Nya’s, or at the very least Kalmaar is both a Nya and Benthomaar villain. But yeah, I feel like the fact that it’s Benthomaar who ultimately defeats Kalmaar really shows how important their relationship was to the plot of Seabound. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe that Bentho is the only side character who defeats the main villain of the season without much help from the ninja.

Speaking of that final battle, let’s talk more about Kalmaar and Pythor’s plans. As mentioned before, they have pretty much the same exact plan just with different coats of paint. But the way they go about said plan is the main glaring point as to why I think Kalmaar is better than Pythor. See, when Pythor succeeded in reawakening the Great Devourer, he immediately got eaten by it. And yes, it was because Wu literally held him captive so he couldn’t escape, but that doesn’t change the fact that his plan backfired greatly. Meanwhile you have Kalmaar, who actually made sure that he would be able to control the giant snake before he started sicking it on the city. And yes, he did end up getting defeated the same way Pythor did, by getting eaten by the giant snake they tried to control, but Pythor’s downfall was immediate. Kalmaar had control over Wojira for quite a while until Benthomaar destroyed his trident and Wojira regained control. So even if you enjoy Pythor more than Kalmaar, you cannot argue with me that Pythor in season 1 was smarter than Kalmaar in Seabound. Maybe you could make the argument for Pythor in season 3, but right now we’re only focusing on season 1. Season 1 Pythor’s plan was just much more flawed than Kalmaar’s plan in Seabound.

So yeah, those were a lot of the main reasons why I think Kalmaar is an amazing villain and why I think he’s better than Pythor. When I first watched Seabound, I had said that Kalmaar was my new favorite villain, dethroning Pythor who had been my favorite for a long time. But part of me thought that I was probably just overhyping him in my head because it was a new season for me so it was exciting. It happens all the time where you experience something new and then immediately claim that it’s your new favorite thing only for time to pass and you realize it’s not as great as you initially thought. But given the amount of time passing, I don’t think my opinions have changed all too much. Maybe I still like Pythor more because I’m just very attached to Pythor, but then again Pythor had A LOT more screen time in the show compared to Kalmaar. Maybe if Kalmaar appeared in more than one season he’d surpass Pythor with a lot more ease, but for now I’d say they’re extremely close and my favorite changes between the two depending on how I’m feeling. Point is, I still see Kalmaar as one of my favorite Ninjago villains of all time. I guess it makes sense that the only one to give Pythor competition would be Pythor again except now he’s a squid.