I don't get why people hate the prequels either, they are incredibly well done and imo Palpatine becomes if not the best one, one of the best villains ever created in history, by deceiving the protagonist since he first joined the order while also making a perfect plan to not only get rid of the Jedi and become emperor, but to look good in the eyes of the people. Now, in the original trilogy that is completely true. He wasn't a character by himself, just a plot device, you could even say it was an extension of Vader since it was the only thing that made him scared shitless and the reason of him thinking it was too late for him (and why he needed Luke's help to overcome him).

Thank you for giving proper consideration to The Senate.

Yeah in the OT Palpy is basically not even a character. You're given no reason to care about him. But in the Prequels he is having the most fun out of anyone. And I think that very few people's problems with the prequels have to do with him. Rather it's that everyone else, especially the main characters, all made blatantly stupid and illogical decisions that just made Palpy's job trivial. It's hard to have a satisfying villain takeover when your heroes are practically rolling out the red carpet for him. And I know that part of the point of the Prequels was that the jedi are meant to be portrayed as bad, but there's a difference between writing flawed characters, and writing stupid characters.

When it comes to the OT, we don't see Emperor much because hed had people like Vader and Grand Moff Tarkin as a extension of his authority Personally I'm critical towards the prequels but I don't hate them. Some of my favorite scenes are from the prequels, particularly thought opera scene.

to be fair, i understand your tired of people defending palpatine, but palpatine was always depicted as a coward. He attacks when people let their guard down, as well as keeps his distance when in a fight. Palpatine is a schemer not a powerhouse. he attacks his enemies in their weakness and exploits everything he can with that weakness to take down his enemies. Vader has power, and scheming. He was alwasy depicted as someone that wanted to overthrow palpatine and take over his spot, but palpatine, being the schemer he is, always had the upperhand, especially when we learn that vader's suit is weak to palpatine's lightning. He intentionally made vader's suit weak to lightning to keep him in line. Thats why Starkiller existed, he was gonna be vader's ace up his sleeve but then palpatine caught on before vader could do anything and threw his plans out the window.

Also the fact that we later see that belos breaking his mask isn’t even a big deal, he breaks it all the time which honestly just seems like an even bigger flex for me

That’s what I like about luz she’s brutally dedicated to her just cause and will kill people in self defense to keep her and her friends/lover alive which is a tad unexpected given that it’s a Disney show and usually the main characters are like massive pacifists in shows like this cough cough avatar

@@land_and_air1250 avatar was Nickelodeon you fucking idiot.

​@@land_and_air1250 YESS "oh he attacked me but killing is wrong" HE'S AN ACTIVE MASSIVE GENOCIDAL NAZI JUST FINISH HIM WTF

This made me laugh out loud and subscribe. I'm also bisexual, but not furiously though

As an asexual I'm the almost the polar opposite and as such I wonder the feeling

An odd display of hubris, but very well.

I managed the 69th like and it feels nice.

pan but agree

"he's no spiteful "and then u see the new episode of the owlhouse (elsewhere elsewhen)

@@seandias8222 aye, that’s a little out of character honestly, but I think there’s a reason for his hatred of witches, especially seeing as in the same episode, modern Belos seems fine with letting Lilith empty out her desk from her old job, as if she’s being fired for mundane reasons that aren’t high treason. I bet wild witches killed his brother, and that’s why he’s got such a vendetta- but that’s just a theory

@@illegalmemedealer3549 he's probably so close to his goals that nothing phases him anymore. Before he had the stress of getting the collector and trying to establish his plan, along with freaking out with the limited supply of palisman to keep his gliph magic tattoos at bay. Now he's completely in charge and the worst that can happen is Luz or Eda mildly inconvenience him, but he's so close it doesn't matter. Eda is actively showing "wild" magic to be good? Lilith can have her fun in trying to catch her. If she does well better for us. Luz destroys the door? Eh, I can fix it easy I made it Best Bard rebels? Mind erasing tea, no biggie Luz and the gang have seen my face? Eh, Guess I can show the world anyways. I don't need fear anymore everyone adores me anyways He's playing 8D chess and he's got all the pieces lined up and as a result he's calm over what essentially is a sure victory for him

@@illegalmemedealer3549 true, i have a feeling his story will be similar to luz's- being out of place in one world but finding a new one -except he wasn't accepted in the new world but luz was , also i think he has something to do with vi and her family being captured

@@seandias8222 If by "Vi" you mean "Vee the Basilisk" then I'm pretty sure he ordered the *creation* of Vee and her family for the purpose of learning about draining magic from stuff

his decision is even more strategic now in hindsight, but i can't really say much without spoiling Season 2b

VERY deliberately strategic

Also, he needs Luz to complete the time loop they're in

@@carlosmedina1281 that is what i was referring to

And luz screams chaotic good. Interesting

@@spaghetti5914 freedom vs order. A common divide between hero’s and villains but one that the Owl house does in a fresh way I think.

This also provides a good demonstration of how Lawful Evil can be no less Evil than Neutral Evil or Chaotic Evil.

...Does it count as Lawful Evil if you ARE the law?

@@thatoneotheridiot3361 Well, you're definitely Lawful, because you are the Law, and you make the Law. As for the Evil portion... Just look no further than Star Was or our own world governments. Corruption can be anywhere. So if he's doing morally wrong things, then yes, it's technically Evil. Hence, Lawful Evil

And now we I now why and now we know why and now we know whyyyyyyyyy

@@animehair05silently88 uhhhh... Why?

@@awildnoviceappears w h y a r e y o u s o a c c e p t i n g o f s p o i l e r s

@@awildnoviceappears either the "tatoo" on his arm or the fact that he snacks on palysmans

@@adampekala5333 yeah, but also he uses artificial magic as well. It's a mixture of him being cursed and that

With him becoming more and more unhinged similar to the title character in the Shakespeare play Macbeth.

​@@zacglover3345Ah. The Scottish Play.

suchhhh a cool villain

Revolver *Shalashashka* Ocelot: They played us like a damn fiddle!

So that explains why he didn't just consumed Owlbert.

It's because he met met them in the past

who TF is Hiddelston?

Technically Palpatine getting the entire skywalker lineage to die in some way with only his granddaughter alive means he won. Him and Vandal savage I guess

@@creed8712 I said Disney villain and yes Palpatine was owned by Disney but technically they didn’t created him. And vandal Savage isn’t part of Disney.

There was a Trope I think, Something Gambit, where every conceivable ending still benefits you somehow. Zanatos Gambit I think, based on the Antagonist in Gargoyles.

@@sanscoolson5125 Xanatos from gargoyles is also a Disney villain alot like Belos if not better in my opinion

Xana from code lyoko felt the same to me. While their plans were foiled in nearly every episode, Xana almost always won in the end. Seasons 2 and 3 actually ended with the bad guy objectively winning, with any success the heroes had feeling less like a win and more like managing something from the situation. While in season 1 it's a draw, the heroes get what they've been fighting for all season, but it's been made nearly pointless by a trick Xana pulls at the last second. And while the heroes ultimately win in the series finale, it's a slightly bitter sweet ending as ultimately the heroes lose something in order to win.

As a fan of the prequels, Sith Lord Jar Jar Binks was a storyline we were robbed of.

@@UnholyBasil Unfortunately

@@UnholyBasil and you havent watched the clone wars either

I was looking for this comment! So Uncivilized has a really good video called why Palpatine is the G.O.A.T.

*Star Wars fan base

"Belos is absolutely NOT objectively evil." Now THIS I Disgress with HEAVILY. Namely, his Hate for 'Wild Magic', which are Lies, and get people killed/turned to stone. The arguement that Belos is not evil, would be like saying a Slaver, whipping slaves and mistreating them, is perfectly normal and not evil, because the Slaves don't know the concept of Freedom, and don't understand that they are Slaves. He has literally Enslaved the entire Island and all the Witches inside of it. He destroyed the concept of Wild Magic, took over at their King, and spread lies about 'The Savage Ages'. It would be as if today we were told that in America's 1700s, the Indians were All Canabals, and thus today, right now, we must hunt down and murder every single native american we can find. And you're claiming that is NOT Evil? What the Fuck?

I'd argue this writing fallacy has been disproven for literal decades

Ozymandias from Watchmen was pretty cool. Years long plan with every angle covered.

What I occasionally find amusing to think about is the fallout of removing the most powerful longstanding authority in the land with no clear replacement. Regardless, of how the protagonists feel about the main antagonist, rarely do they ever have a contingency to deal with the power vacuum after their fall. Oft times, since the removal of authority is so sudden and they've taken no measures to deal with infrastructure maintenance in the running of a country/empire/world, it just leads to seriously miserable results if they don't just slap a Happily Ever After ending on it. Most often a revolution will lead into a power struggle between smaller factions. Maybe not immediately, but inevitably there will be bloodshed unless the new reigning authority can firmly impress upon the people how in control they are. Often they'll be just as bad if not worse than the previous regime. Take all that and throw Wild Magic into the mix. I'd be surprised if the DON'T just ignore all that mess and just go for the generic happy ending.

Fully agree, starter

Luz* Not Luce I don’t normally correct people but this is an exception

@@Frostfern94 Fheck.

That's actually a really sick observation. Been playing D&D for like 8 years and I never thought of that, that's fucking dope

Keep in mind that Belos has undoubtedly abandoned whatever Puritan ideals he once held, considering that he himself is a magic practitioner-a powerful one at that-and he CLEARLY doesn't serve God anymore, if he ever did.

Have you heard the term word spaghetti, because that somewhat describes what you just wrote.

@@fishHater Luce do bad thing at Character!Belos so he disliked her and thus fought her. Luce won so Character!Belos stopped disliking her. Luce did bad thing at Agent!Belos but Agent!Belos doesn't like or dislike anything. Luce doing bad thing at Agent!Belos was at least intellectually stimulating enough for Character!Belos to like her in the absence of any other opinion of her. This was enough to give him a good opinion of her because he's highly isolated; anyone else is either a function of his manipulations or a function of his loss of control and in either case normally irritating and draining like a introvert at a party. Luce managing to avoid being both below his notice or a _task in need of completing/obstacle in need of removing_ means that he's free to have a personal opinion of her which, being a social bring without much socialization, couldn't be anything but positive

@@marcusdaloia2974 please stop.

@@fishHater read it carefully and read each sentence one by one instead of reading it normally, it will make more sense. I'll sum it up though: Belos probably hasn't had anyone challenge his plans the way Luz did. She challenged him in a way that didn't affect him personally, and so he can't exactly feel negative towards her. He's instead left with a sense of respect towards her and, as above, maybe even fondness for Luz being more formidable than he expected without hurting him or his project too much. Everyone else is either an obstacle he can throw away or a tool he can manipulate. Luz isn't exactly either one and for once, he wasn't able to manipulate or throw her away with ease. Is this a better explanation?

@@tobenamed610 yes, thank you.

I love you too, sweetie. Say 'hi' to my girlfriend, everybody.

Hi!

Hi!

and that was cheesy (this is a joke)

Hello

Belos is a character who’s become inclined to just see every action headed his way as an eventuality

I’m interested to see how the new knowledge from elsewhere and elsewhen will play into this analysis since it actually does establish a direct connection to Luz and Belos (though presumably neither of them are even aware of said connection)

You should do king Andreas from amphibia

I was not expecting another video of this theme. Also, I'm from the 90s and my foundational stories were about Free Will and Gnosis from Video Games. I don't care about your persuasion. It's your abilities of analysis that intrigue me. This was pretty good though! And on my actual channel once I know how to edit I should get it sorted out, my own one of these.

I really liked this video and I'm looking forward to watch more of you in the future

After Elsewhere and Elsewhen, I think that when Luz was delivered the message that said the Emperor can't wait to meet her, I think that was present Belos referring to her meeting him in the past. Present Belos would be able to deduce that it was Luz and Lilith and be able to work backwards from there to determine when in their lives they'd go through the pools and meet past him. I think it was a self-indulgent leak of information that Belos knew Luz wouldn't be able to put together. Luz and Lilith's treatment of Phillip in the past is what largely drove him to his hatred of witches, and present Belos is aware of the irony of their interconnectedness. Belos KNEW in the season 1 finale that Luz and Lilith HAVE to escape, and he knew that he was fighting a version of Luz that hadn't met him in the past yet. Fascinating!

fr

So is sociopathy inherently evil? Nope. Unmitigated, uncontrolled it can be though

I don't think Belos is a sociopath or a psychopath. I think we really need to see more from his childhood. But from what we have seen, those few snapshots in the form of paintings you can see Belos was happy, and they he at one time greatly loved his brother. I also noticed in every happy memory, Caleb's eyes are clawed out. Belos doesn't want to remember Caleb positively and he doesn't want to acknowledge that he ever had happy memories. He's been consumed by perceived abandonment and betrayal. I would argue and I certainly could that Belos is BPD coded. And he doesn't have the self awareness to heal nor do I even think he wants to. As Taifuu stated, no personality disorder including sociopathy makes you evil, it's a lack of awareness that can be damaging. But that's what DBT and CBT are for. ;P

Welp his goal was to kill all the isle's people

It aged well because that's what he WANTS people to think he's doing. He completely flipped the script; I don't think anyone saw it coming that he was a witch hunter. It's honestly a testament to his manipulation and cruel, calculating plans that he's gotten this far with even US convinced that he has order in mind and a goal that's only subjectively evil, when in reality man's just downright unfuckinghinged

@@d.v.3314 He doesn’t want people to think he expects loyalty, from what he’s shown, he doesn’t care about that at all. He’s aware of the time travel Lilith and Luz undergo, which aids him in becoming the Belos we know. He makes promises to Lilith, which he never intends to keep, he doesn’t ask her for loyalty, he simply tells her what to do, and if she doesn’t do it, she will be reprimanded, but never outright killed because he needs her to defect, and time travel with Luz, in order to make him get what he has already gotten but can’t get if future him kills Lilith before she does it. Also, this doesn’t age well because it’s PRETTY CLEAR that his motives are not “Establish Order” he does an absolutely horrible job of hiding the fact that he outright HATES the world he is in, while you might not conclude he’s genocidal, you’d conclude he’s definitely not trying to establish order. This video claims that he is afraid of magic, that he is trying to bring order to it out of fear. This is entirely incorrect, as he is instead not afraid of magic, but simply hates it, and all who use it. It also passes over his clear disdain for magic, which shows no signs of fear whatsoever. Saying he is perhaps fearful of magic, while also showing clips of him interacting with magic in ways which completely shatter this idea, is just lack of insight. He’s a good villain, in that he fooled many people, in his own world, and fooled a few people in this world which bothered to look harder at him, and make content about it. The regular viewer who doesn’t dwell on possibilities, but merely consumes the content, is EXPECTED to not see beyond the surface level. However most people who do dig deep, are quick to notice that not only is he clearly lying about his motives, but that he holds such disdain for magic and magical beings it borders on disgust. Every interaction he has displays him as a formidable foe, however nuances in the way he behaves, such as where he chooses to place himself in any given interaction with another character, shows that he isn’t just trying to intimidate them, he’s actively bothered by their very presence, even when they come to give him what should be good news. “Lord Belos sir, I’ve captured my sister Eda” you’d expect him to maintain a bit more of a personal connection during such a conversation, his enemy has been captured, by his minion, he should be expressing joy, not thankfulness, but pleasure in the fact that he has succeeded in one of his goals. However, instead, he doesn’t even menace Lilith, until he has to, instead he stays distant, cold and indifferent. This comes off as him simply being a cold and calculated leader, however we learn that he is the exact opposite of that, he’s closer to a raging madman who has the mental capacity to just barely contain his boiling rage. This gives many scenes a different vibe than they might have had. His animation has always shown him to be moving in a fairly restrictive manner, many people falsely concluded that this was due to his calm demeanour, his almost robotic efficacy, when in reality, that it couldn’t be further from the truth, the reason he moves as he does, reacts as he does, is because he’s holding back violent outbursts, which as he arrives closer to his goals, we see he has had a history of violent, outright sadistic tendencies. We couldn’t have known that when this came out, however his movements, his actions, to some appeared an air of calm, while others were perturbed. If you’ve ever been in a room, with someone quiet, like a public place, with people all about, you may notice someone who doesn’t really interact with their surroundings, attempting to interact with this person would reveal one of several possibilities, they are awkward and shy perhaps. Or, you see the person who chooses to sit alone, and is actively dissuading others from taking seats near them through simple actions like glaring at them enough for them to decide to not sit near them. Some people give off a, “vibe” which is inherently violent, like standing close to a container under pressure which is about to burst. They may appear calm, but they they definitely aren’t. Like my stepfather, he usually seemed fairly slow, sluggish, calm, only for him to suddenly fly into a rage and kick me down the stairs. Belos, gives me that feeling, not the feeling like he’s sizing me up, calculating and cold, but the feeling that he’s going to commit an act of extreme violence at any moment. And I was right to feel that way, as we later learn. I spoke in several circles there but did you eventually understand my point?

In a way hes trying to establish order for the human world. He's a witch hunter.

Thank you for being the only person I've seen in this comment section who actually warns people about spoilers and keeps them buried. Appreciate you

Not quite a perfect comparison. Belos hates wild magic because he was cursed by it. It'd be more akin to a say, a Christian priest/pastor hating druidism because a practitioner carved a pentagram into his back.

@@warbacca1017 Except the the priest/pastor would have carved that into his own back in order to protect himself from the practitioner and now suffers because of the carving.

And after Elsewhere and Elsewhen, it's even more clear

Sooo nobody is gonna point out the fact that paganism is not what the christian church views as evil? It in fact is polytheism, the worship of multiple gods which is only seen as evil in christianity because of the concept of idolatry. But ok

@Tin Watchman ‘most forms’ is inaccurate. All forms of Christianity frown upon the idea of idolatry and therefore attempted (and largely succeeded) to weed out anything that they believed was as such in religious culture worldwide. You clearly don’t know the history you speak of. Also the fact that christian idealists don’t distinguish between idolatry and worshiping multiple separate entities is ridiculous, seeing as idolatry by definition and its usage in Christianity means worshipping something in place of God as they (meaning Christians) believe he is equates to blasphemy, whereas “paganism” or more appropriately, polytheism is the worship of multiple separate entities as Gods which is an entirely different thing altogether. Point is they SHOULD d differentiate the two because idolatry is not equal to worshipping multiple deities.

I think he made the door though and he like Wants to get rid of magic or something to get revenge on witches in general maybe

Damn that was fast, but yeah I'm really gonna miss this series

Love your analysis, but I find it pretty funny that you say he's "so caught up on old societal rules and beliefs" and yet in the very next sentence say he has a god complex. the latter is true, by the way, but I'm pretty sure those "old societal rules and beliefs" had a thing or two to say about mortal men who declared themselves to be God.

@@christopherbravo1813 lmao you're right, it sounds hypocritical but it surprisingly coexists within a lot of people. it's usually people who believe themselves to be perfect or holy that set rules for everyone else and refuse to change their mind even when proven wrong.

@@skyhideaway evidently Belos didn't get the memo about "no man is righteous, not one."