Although they’re often morally ambiguous or even amoral, the best antihero characters are not synonymous with villains. In fact, when a story gets retold from a villain’s perspective, the antagonist from the earlier story often becomes an antihero. Take the Wicked Witch of the West, who is the villain and antagonist of The Wizard of Oz. In Wicked by Gregory Maguire, though, she’s named Elphaba and becomes an antihero and protagonist. Then there are characters like Michael Corleone from The Godfather and Juliette Cai from These Violent Delights, neither of whom chose to be born into a crime family. It is, however, still their choice whether they carry on their families’ legacies. While they may sometimes do terrible things, we can understand antiheroes’ motives and find them compelling or tragic. There are countless antiheroes throughout pop culture and they’re everywhere in comics (think of Deadpool and Wolverine). On TV, Saul Goodman was a supporting character in AMC’s Breaking Bad but becomes the antihero in popular show Better Call Saul. Antiheroes are also very popular in YA fiction. The term is subjective, though: one person’s antihero may be another reader’s tragic hero. Warning for spoilers ahead.
