Hero And Villain Match-Ups

The hero and the villain of a story are the two most important characters. It’s their relative position to each other and their powers which define what is going to happen - and often also why. There are two basic ways to match a hero and a villain for an interesting story: equals or opposites.

‘Equals’ can be found in pairings like Sherlock Holmes and Professor Moriarty. Both highly intelligent, both capable of understanding crime, using their talents in opposite ways - one a consulting detective, the other a consulting criminal. They are the same, they could exchange places, but they are pitted against each other. Equals are defined by having the same skill sets or power levels (if we’re talking about superheroes or mages). The same goes for the story where Secret Agent X faces off against Fantomas - both of them are masters of disguise and don’t even shy away from pretending to be each other in disguise.

‘Equals’ also work for the ‘evil twin’ trope, which might be as old as storytelling. The story of the Doppelgänger, the ghostly double which will curse you if you see it, surely is old as dust. The evil twin trope is also in Fantomas - during the long run of the original novels, it came to light that Inspecteur Juve and Fantomas are twins, so the man who hunts the criminal mastermind and the mastermind once shared a womb.

Making the hero and the villain equals has many advantages. It’s easy to explain why the villain can outthink the hero, but also gives the hero a chance to outsmart the villain. It can explain why they’re both after the same goal - an easy conflict to set up for your plot, since it means they will have to cross paths and swords every now and then. It can explain why they are working against each other - why the hero seeks to find the villain or the villain seeks to destroy the hero. It’s a very useful tool for writers, setting up the hero and the villain as equals of some kind.

It also has its problems, of course. Usually, it’s much easier to make a hero heroic if the villain is much more powerful than them, one way or other. The old ‘evil twin’ trope has been done so often by now that people almost automatically expect something like that. And if it’s not the evil twin, it might be another relative (“I am your father,” anyone?). It can also be difficult to set up two people with very similar skill sets, but make them different enough to work as hero and villain. The easiest might be some kind of soldier - a soldier ‘going bad’ isn’t hard to explain and will make hero and villain both similar and different at the same time.

On the other side, we have ‘opposites.’ That goes for all cases where the hero and the villain are very different in their skills and backgrounds. Superman and Lex Luthor or Batman and the Joker from the DC comics are two easy examples. Superman vs. Lex Luthor is physical strength vs. mental strength. Batman vs. the Joker is order vs. chaos. Other ways to construct a pair of opposites can be seen in Fu Manchu vs. Nayland Smith - an evil mastermind who has his minions for everything vs. a hands-on officer of the law.

Opposites can also be used easily to create conflict. Opposition in world views and morals is a constant source of conflict between two people or two groups. It also allows for setting up a difference in power. As mentioned already, Fu Manchu has his minions. He has money, reserves, manpower. Nayland Smith is on a government wage, has some influence, but has to do most things by himself. Fu Manchu has more power at his disposal, which makes his defeat a much more heroic feat than if it were the other way around. It’s easy for someone much more powerful to smite the less powerful one. It’s heroic for someone with less power to defeat a more powerful foe.

Opposites set up two different goals for hero and villain while making it impossible for both of them to reach their goals at the same time. The Joker wants to throw the world into chaos, whereas Batman wants to restore order to Gotham and lead it out of the chaos produced by criminals and a corrupt legal system. The Joker at his best is not interested in wealth or power or even control of the underworld. He’s interested in destroying any semblance of order, in creating anarchy and chaos. That’s what makes him tick. And that’s what sets him at odds with Batman, because Batman takes great pains to recreate order. The Joker is not shown without the facial makeup and it seems - at least sometimes - as if even he himself has forgotten his civilian identity. There’s no regular human behind a mask, as with Batman and his civilian identity as Bruce Wayne. The Joker is chaos 24/7 and that is how he wants it.

The problem with opposites is that it can come across as unrealistic. Take Superman and Lex Luthor: they work as a hero/villain team, because Lex has a lot of social power in addition to his mental skills. If he weren’t a rich man with a smooth tongue and the ability to influence and manipulate, he wouldn’t be able to hold himself against Superman. If Lex lost his social power without gaining something else in return, he would no longer be able to function as a villain against Superman. If your villain is highly powerful, has wealth, a lot of henchmen, and also holds a high position in society, it might be hard to pit your simple, hard-working stranger against them. Opposites can be too big and then the story will no longer work out well. It’s no coincidence that heroes who go up against masterminds (who have wealth, power, and henchmen) usually have some sort of backing, be it government (for example James Bond or Nayland Smith) or by some other power (like the K-9 organisation when it comes to Secret Agent X). They need a certain power to draw from themselves and they need at least some influence. Opposites like Batman/the Joker work without that, because there’s more of a balance to their powers.

The hero and the villain of a story are the two most important characters and it pays to think about how they are connected and why they are at odds when you set your story up. They can be equals, they can be opposites, or something in-between. But there always has to be a good reason for them to face off against each other.