*Contains spoilers for Invincible Season 1.
To be a great villain, a person has to be cruel, brutal and willing to achieve their goals by any means necessary. We have seen many great villains throughout cinematography – from stealing princesses to feeding their evil agendas via mass manipulation.
When we think of villains, two characters stand out: Omni-Man, a Viltrumite sent to take over Earth from “Invincible,” and Fire Lord Ozai, a warlord from “Avatar: The Last Airbender” who is hell-bent on conquering the four nations and destroying the Avatar.
The question is, who is the greatest villain?
Omni-Man (“Invincible,” season one)
Nolan Grayson seems like your typical family guy. He’s been married to his wife, Debbie, for over 20 years and is the proud father of their 17-year-old son, Mark. On the surface, the Graysons are a picture-perfect family. But there’s a catch – Nolan isn’t just a loving husband and dad. He’s also Omni-Man, Earth’s most powerful and beloved superhero.
Secretly, Omni-Man is from the planet Viltrum. When Mark starts developing superpowers of his own, Nolan is quick to step in as his mentor. Except his idea of training is more like “tough love” and less “let’s throw the ball around in the backyard.” He pushes Mark hard and often with force. From early on, it’s clear that there’s something off about Omni-Man.
Episode one drops a massive bombshell. Without warning or any explanation, Omni-Man slaughters the Guardians of the Globe. It’s brutal, it’s unexpected, and we are left asking why?
Robert Kirkman, the creator of “Invincible,” sets up a brilliant piece of dramatic irony. The audience knows what Nolan did, but the characters in the show don’t. The tension hits the hardest as we watch the characters try to piece everything together. Meanwhile, we already know the horrifying truth.
What makes Omni-Man such a unique villain is that he’s not evil in the cartoonishly obvious way. Despite committing this horrific act, he’s — at least on the outside — an admirable father and husband. It’s easy to want to believe there’s some bigger reason for what he did. Maybe he was brainwashed? Maybe the Guardians attacked first? Even when the evidence says otherwise, the doubt still lingers.
As the season goes on, Nolan starts to crack. He becomes colder, more distant and clearly unstable. In the season finale, “Where I Really Come From,” we finally get the truth — and it’s ugly. Nolan reveals that he’s been lying to his family all along. The Viltrumites aren’t peaceful explorers — they’re conquerors. They wipe out any potential resistance and absorb the rest into their empire.
Even worse, Nolan tells Mark that he never really loved Debbie. He coldly calls her a pet. Nolan believes that Debbie is meaningless in the grand scheme of his long Viltrumite life. And then, just to really hammer the point home, he tries to beat Mark into submission — literally. What follows is a devastating, city-leveling fight where Omni-Man kills thousands in an attempt to break his own son. But he can’t do it. When faced with Mark’s unwavering humanity, Nolan breaks down. Instead of finishing the job, he flees Earth, leaving his family — and the audience — completely shattered.
Debbie’s emotional fallout from all of this carries on into season two. Watching her try to make sense of Nolan’s betrayal, while still raising a son who shares half of his DNA, adds a whole new layer of emotional weight to the series.
What makes Omni-Man the best (or worse) villain ever is that his evil doesn’t come from senseless chaos or destruction. It comes from a deep, calculated betrayal. He spent years building a life, a family and a heroic image — all while hiding a plan to conquer and destroy. His manipulation hits harder because we wanted to believe in him. He’s terrifying not just because of his strength, but because of how convincingly he wore the mask of a loving father and protector.
That emotional gut punch — mixed with his overwhelming power — makes Omni-Man one of the most chilling villains we’ve ever seen on screen
Fire Lord Ozai (“Avatar: The Last Airbender”):
Ozai is a dictator who strikes fear across nations. His rise to power shattered lives alongside his own family. He hungered to show every country that the Fire Nation was the best and control them through his use of force and intimidation.
With his rule, he caused his own son, Zuko, and daughter, Azula, to develop similar tendencies. Both used brute force on civilians and joined Ozai’s destructive path to harm the Avatar and gain their father’s approval. Ozai’s destructive traits and lack of love for his family caused his children to suffer through their youth.
The most prominent example of this can be seen through Zuko’s character. Despite Ozai’s harsh manner, he always had his mother to seek parental love from until she passed, leaving Zuko with only his father.
After refusing to sacrifice soldiers, Zuko was forced to fight his father in an Agni Kai, a duel of honor. When he refused to fight, his father continued to strike him, burning his face permanently. Zuko was then banished and faced a conflicted journey of keeping his morals or impressing his father to one day return to the nation.
Azula, like Zuko, followed in her father’s footsteps to try and impress him. Azula’s harsh demeanor and abuse of power reflect her father’s teachings, and her being trained to be a soldier at a young age only made things worse. Azula had psychopathic tendencies from an early age, being constantly scolded by her mother and dealing with a destructive father. Her continued betrayal of her close friends, Ty Lee and Mai, as well as her violence towards her brother, was solidified through the relationship she shared with her father.
But what caused Ozai to become this evil? Despite his brother Iroh being the rightful heir, Ozai manipulated those around him to gain the throne. His lack of loyalty was clear from early on and continued throughout the series. Born into a cruel environment, he sought power early after witnessing his father’s rule. His mission for power never stopped. Ozai wanted to rule not just the Fire Nation, but the entire world.
Ozai’s dictatorship was harsh; he threatened and hurt his soldiers daily and ruled with a strict hand. Power topped everything for him — he wanted to control everything, even people’s religions and how they lived.
He used fire bending as a weapon to terrorize the nation, hence the Avatar’s purpose to balance the world from tyranny.
So now that you’ve heard both sides — Omni-Man, the deceptive alien father who nearly destroyed his own son, and Fire Lord Ozai, the tyrannical ruler who sought to burn the world into submission — who do you think takes the crown for worst villain? Is it the dad who betrayed everything he pretended to stand for, or the fire-wielding dictator who thrived on fear and domination? Let us know which villain chilled you the most — we’re dying to hear what you think.
