(1) BIBLICAL – VILLAIN: SATAN

 

“Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven.”

 

“Please allow me to introduce myself

I’m a man of wealth and taste.”

 

Who else? Was there ever any doubt as to mythology’s most villainous villain but the Devil himself – “the single most evil being in existence”, ur-villain and uber-villain who “seduces humans into sin and falsehood” with “power over the fallen world and a host of demons”.

As the Big Bad of the Bible, Satan is cast as the villain in the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, particularly the latter two as the largest religions in the world.

Interestingly, he didn’t start that way. He didn’t even start as a proper noun. His origin was as a satan, meaning adversary or opponent, although a figure emerged with the definite article, known as “the satan” who “first appears in the Hebrew Bible as a heavenly prosecutor, subordinate to Yahweh (God)”.

Over time, this figure “developed into a malevolent entity with abhorrent qualities in dualistic opposition to God, possibly due to Persian influence “from the Zoroastrian figure of Angra Mainyu” (or Ahriman).

By the New Testament, a least “the later texts”, Satan emerged as close to an anti-God figure – “an incredibly powerful and absolutely malevolent cosmic entity far beyond human ability to fathom”, indeed styled as lord of this world or even god of this world. “Fortunately for humanity, he lacks the absolute omnipotence and omniscience of the one true God, which is why the final victory of good over evil is still assured, in spite of his cosmic near-supremacy”.

The Book of Revelations gave him his backstory as fallen angel, albeit drawing on other Biblical bits and pieces, depicted as the Great Red Dragon waging war in Heaven against God and dragging down a third of all angels with him to Hell when he lost.

As he arose or rather fell from Heaven as this figure of cosmic evil in the New Testament, he absorbed those “autonomous and unambiguously evil spirit powers” that do appear in the Old Testament – gods such as Baal of rival nations, the morning star or shining one (light-bringer) of Isaiah that lent itself to that leitmotif of the fallen angel, and the monstrous Leviathan or cosmic dragon figure.

 

ELDRITCH ABOMINATION RANKING

Perhaps not originally as “the most beautiful angel”, a guise or mask he can still wear, but usually as his default ‘true form’.

 

FANTASY DARK LORD RANKING

The archetypal fantasy dark lord – so much so that TV Tropes has a trope named for it as Satanic Archetype – with many of the dark lords of cinematic or literary fantasy being explicitly modelled on him.

 

RATING: 5 STARS***** (OR SHOULD THAT BE 6 STARS – OR 666 STARS?)

S-TIER (DEVIL TIER – OF COURSE!)