Avengers: Infinity War, both in its mistakes and its triumphs, contains three of the greatest lessons in writing timeless villains that you will ever learn. Be warned, however, that unpacking these lessons will reveal major plot points from the film. Read on at your own risk.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe has long had a villain problem. With the exception of our beloved God of Mischief, Loki, and to some extent, Black Panther's Killmonger, the antagonists of the MCU have been, in a word, forgettable.

For example, how often do you think about Malekith? Ronan? Red Skull? Even Cate Blanchett’s Mjolnir-destroying Hela?

If you’re like most viewers, probably not often. These antagonists don’t resonate. They don’t stimulate thought or conversation. At the end of each of their respective films, you feel no lasting connection to them, no depth of understanding of them. And in what is the worst of all literary sins, you’ve learned absolutely nothing from them.

But then came the Mad Titan, Thanos, who changed Marvel’s villain game entirely. Like watching a young writer finally mature into greatness, the MCU has begun to piece together the major parts of the villainous puzzle. Despite a few faults, Thanos is a villain written well, and that’s why he will be remembered for years—perhaps decades—to come.

And now you can do this for your own readers if you but bend the knee, lend an ear, and allow yourself to be enlightened by Thanos’s three commandments for creating a timeless villain.

The Mad Titan offers his wisdom. Accept, and read on.

Give Your Villain a Journey

Infinity War is Thanos’s story. Directors Anthony and Joe Russo take a surprising (and pleasing) detour from the typical summer blockbuster formula, taking their villain through a modified version of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey—a path of character development normally reserved for the good guys. But in Infinity War, it is the Mad Titan who drives the story, rather than one of the many heroes who resist his plans for the universe.

Herein lies Thanos’s first lesson in creating a great villain.

The antagonist is, at the simplest level, the character who wants to keep your protagonist from getting what he or she wants. But inexperienced writers never think beyond this basic level. They focus only on the protagonist, considering the antagonist to be merely a speed bump. These writers will create antagonists who feel disconnected from the rest of the cast, and who remain undeveloped and unchanged as people—human or not.

But Thanos is no speed bump. His presence is felt throughout the entirety of Infinity War. Even when not physically present, his threat looms over every moment of tension, in every haunted look passed between the heroes we’ve grown to know and love. He is always there, and even for the audience, the presence of Thanos seems to have a well-earned weight.

Why? Because the audience gets to spend time with Thanos when he is doing something other than fighting. Infinity War gets it right by allowing the audience to be privy to Thanos’s journey—not just that of the heroes. We get to to know why he is the best equipped and the best positioned character to stand in the way of the good guys. He earns our fear, because we're forced to live with him.

The best writers not only give us the hero’s journey, but the villain’s, as well. An antagonist that doesn't just resist the hero, but who grows and changes throughout the story, who has his own, flawed character arc, feels real. Because the writers and directors of Infinity War know this, Thanos more than earns a lasting place in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Does your villain do the same in yours?

Give Your Villain a Worldview

Everyone thinks they’re the protagonist of their own story—villains included.

The amateur writer might give thought to the flaws, strengths, and overall character development of their heroes, but when it comes to crafting villains, most will simply list a set of “evil” character traits and slap them onto a generic, moustache-twirling bad guy.

This flat antagonist will often be evil for the sake of being evil, with little or no truly interesting thoughts or motivations explaining why they do what they do. They’re merely there to provide the aforementioned speed bumps for the hero to overcome.

But a villain is more than a bad guy. They’re a whole person, with wants, needs, flaws, and an utterly unique way of seeing the world. This way of seeing the world is called a worldview.

This is the most important thing to consider when crafting an antagonist people will talk about for years. In real life, a person’s worldview is the lens through which they interpret life, and is what informs each and every decision they make. It is the collection of beliefs about how the world works, and even more importantly for the sake of your story—how it should work.

To see the difference between a character with a worldview versus a character without, compare Thanos with Hela, the villain of Thor: Ragnarok. Hela just kind of appears, starts killing people, and is killed, leaving viewers with some vague notion that she wanted to rule the universe. Her only purpose in the story is that of the speed bump, giving the audience some stylish violence to look at between the beginning of the film and the end credits.

But violence doesn’t last in the mind when it is unattached to the psychology behind it. Hela, like many other villains of the MCU, lacks a worldview, making her utterly forgettable.

But Infinity War does something different. We become intimately acquainted with why Thanos does what he does. Because his home planet was ravaged by overpopulation, he seeks to eliminate half of all life in the universe in order to prevent this same tragedy from eventually occurring again, but on a cosmic scale.

Of course, knowing the why behind a villain’s actions isn’t enough. His worldview must be consistent with who he is. In Infinity War, there is the problematic fact that Thanos could simply use the Infinity Gauntlet, that all-powerful, reality-bending collection of Infinity Stones, to simply make more resources rather than eliminating the precious life that consumes those resources.

Thanos, written as a highly intelligent character, rather than an oaf or a simple sadist, should have considered this. When constructing your villain’s worldview, be sure to think through their psychology, history, and beliefs to avoid such glaring issues as your story progresses. Each of your villain’s decisions should be consistent with his worldview—no matter what you, as the writer, might want him to do for the sake of an epic story moment.

The most legendary villains of film and literature are convinced that they are the hero, and they have the best, most convincing reasons for doing what they do. In fact, the most interesting conflicts in fiction arise when audiences begin asking one of the most intriguing questions in fiction.

What if the villain was right?

Give Your Villain What They Want

The final minutes of Avengers: Infinity War contains the film’s most powerful lesson on crafting a timeless villain.

When writing, there are two major moments that can be used to truly reveal character. The first of these is seen commonly throughout all of literature and film: the moment when a character loses everything. How a person reacts when deprived of the thing they most wanted strips away psychological guards, giving the audience an intimate view of what truly drives a character. When there’s nothing left to lose, a character is stripped down to the bare skeleton of who they are.

But the second type of moment—the kind we see in the last minutes of Infinity War—is far less common. It is also, I would argue, far more important.

This is the moment when you give a character exactly what they want.

The greatest purpose of literature is to teach. Voracious readers get to live a thousand different lives by living in the heads of a thousand different protagonists. We learn from their mistakes, their victories, and the gradual development that takes them from flaw to strength—or the opposite. The best stories teach the greatest truths via creative lies.

But these lessons shouldn’t come only from protagonists. The most timeless of villains are those who have taught us the most profound truths. And one of the most profound moral truths you can teach is the cost of winning.

In the end, Thanos gets exactly what he wants. He collects every one of the Infinity Stones, sets them into the gauntlet meant to house their power, and snaps his fingers, destroying half of all life in the universe. And just before the end credits roll on Infinity War, we get a final glimpse of the Mad Titan, finally retired on a paradise world, where he watches the sun set over beautiful, green hills from the shelter of a simple hut. His task is done.

But something is wrong. Thanos does not walk from his hut. He limps. His eyes are empty. His lips creep upward, but never quite reach a smile before the screen fades to black. His body language does not speak of triumph, but of emotional and physical agony because of the terrible things he forced himself to do in service to what, in his mind, is the greater good.

Thanos won, but he is a broken man in a broken world because of how he won. And therein lies one of the truths that Thanos has to teach us all: how we get the things we want is more important than getting them.

Such a statement seems cliché, and in the form of a statement, it is. But in the form of a life, observed, it is powerful. Transformative. And Thanos gets it right, giving us one of the best examples of what winning wrongly looks like. Undoubtedly, we’ll see the psychological consequences of this in Thanos’s life during the sequel to Infinity War, and his regrets may very well be the catalyst to regaining the heroes we lost.

To give your story not only maximum impact, but lasting literary merit—no matter the genre—try going against the grain and allowing your villain to get exactly what he wants. This can happen in a major way, or in microcosm. The consequences he experiences are sure to be remembered by your readers.

The Villain With a Thousand Faces

When you sit down to craft your next great work of fiction, remember Thanos. Your antagonist is more than a bad guy—he is intimately connected with your protagonist in a way that no other character is. He and his story are important.

Remember, also, that he has a history full of experiences and beliefs that create a worldview that informs his every decision. He is convinced that he is right—so much so that the audience may very well be conflicted as to whom they should be supporting.

And finally, use your villain not only for epic battles, but for life lessons. Your hero and your villain may very well want the same thing, but may go about getting that thing in slightly different ways. Explore the ways in which your villain’s method is faulty, why it hurts people, and perhaps most importantly, why it hurts the villain, himself in the end.

Keep Thanos’s three commandments in mind as you write, and you’ll be one step closer to being the master storyteller you’ve always wanted to be. Like any writing advice, though, take these as suggestions and guidelines. Do not take them as law.

But don’t tell Thanos I said that.





Wesley Baines is a Medical Writer, a graduate student at Regent University, and the author of over a thousand articles on Beliefnet.com. He likes beautiful and scary things, and is working on two upcoming books: "Demons: Darkness and Evil in the Age of Reason," a nonfiction, journalistic exploration of the Catholic Ministry of Exorcism, and "The Book of Jon," a horror novel.

You can find him hanging out in cemeteries, universities, and coffee shops across the Hampton Roads area.