Welcome to Day 2 of my NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month) challenge, in which I pick a card from the Star Wars Chat Pack.

This time the card I picked asks, “Who is your favorite Star Wars villain?” A pretty basic Star Wars question, but I do have to think about it a bit.

My first thought would be Kylo Ren. He’s a fascinating character to me, and of course, Adam Driver’s performance is flawless. But is he truly a villain? Well, yes, he does do some evil stuff. But throughout the whole sequel trilogy, he seems to be trying so hard to be a villain. He’s not necessarily embracing the darkness as much as fighting the light inside him. So to me, Kylo’s a bit too complex to be an easy answer to this one.

Recently, Royce Hemlock, the super-creepy doctor from The Bad Batch, has fit that bill. Everything from his weird whispery voice, the way he holds his black-gloved hand, and his sheer coldness and calculation, make him a perfect villain. Frankly, he scares me, and I worry about our boys from Clone Force 99 encountering him (and Crosshair, who’s already at Mt. Tantiss and has suffered at his hands). But he’s new to the villain scene, and I don’t know enough about him to say he’s my favorite one.

Palpatine? Seems the obvious answer; he’s the over-arching villain of the entire franchise. He is evil incarnate. There are no redeeming qualities to this being–the glee he experiences in his depraved acts makes that clear (cue evil cackling). But because of this, he’s not boring, exactly, but not particularly interesting.

So I think my answer has to be Darth Vader. Who else? Here is a man who has fallen from the light and has embraced the darkness, but he takes no real pleasure in that darkness. He is a man in pain who lashes out. His evil is undisputable–from choking the woman he went to the dark side for in the first place, to killing the babies, to murdering pretty much anyone who displeases him, to blindly following the orders of Palpatine–he’s terrifying. But what really punches you in the gut is that he was once a good person. Anakin Skywalker was a hero, an amazing Jedi, a loving husband, a friend and ally to Obi-Wan. He was also impatient, arrogant, and fearful. Terribly flawed. Just like we all are. And so his fall is our fall, and it terrifies us. He’s an extreme example, but he is what we all could be, given the right circumstances. Which makes his eventual redemption that much more satisfying.

There’s a lot of villains to choose from in Star Wars. From those above, to Thrawn, General Grievous, Darth Maul, Jabba the Hutt, Admiral Tarkin, Snoke and any number of Sith Lords and Imperial baddies, villains abound. Which one is your favorite? Let me know in the comments and we’ll talk about it!