In the beginning of the first wicked film, Ariana Grande floats down in her pink bubble and asks the citizens of Munchkinland.

Are people born wicked?

Or do they have wickedness thrust upon them?

Gregory Maguire, who wrote the 1995 novel the musical was based on, said that his original motivation was to explore the question of evil.

even considered writing about Adolf Hitler before deciding that a fantasy villain would give him more creative license.

The problem is, unlike Adolf Hitler, Elphaba isn't really evil.

She's passionate and uncompromising, even to the point of extremism.

But evil?

Not really.

I don't think wicked is about the nature of evil so much as the perception of evil, how society labels certain people as villains out of politics or prejudice.

Elphaba has the perception of wickedness thrust upon her.

The success of the wicked franchise inspired a lucrative trend of reframing classic villains and villain archetypes, asking us to root for characters we use to boo.

But this is hardly a new phenomenon.

Writers have been doing it for hundreds of years, and these stories all seem to have something to say about society's role in defining wickedness.

If stories are an expression of a culture's value system, what do these role reversals say about us?

Let's start by admitting that a good chunk of these villain origin stories are driven by the corporate obsession with IP.

Any intellectual property that is already beloved or even just familiar gets mined for every possible iteration that can keep the franchise going.

There's already been nine live action Batman films.

So how about a Catwoman, a Penguin, two Jokers, one two three Harley Quinns?

After four Avengers movies and five Karate Kids, we get a Loki and a Cobra Kai.

And Disney realized it had a plethora of fabulously evil women in their back catalog, so we got films about Maleficent and Cruella to say nothing of their extensive villains book series, which author Serena Valentino has been cranking out since the 2000s.

Even The Mandalorian has one foot in this.

I know he's not actually Boba Fett, but come on.

The original character's appeal was mostly about the costume.

But lest you think that this is purely a product of late stage capitalism, centralizing famous villains is actually a very old literary tradition.

Elizabethan audiences would have been well familiar with both of Shakespeare's murderous kings, Macbeth and Richard the Third, from the hugely popular history book Holinsheds Chronicles.

And Jewish character Shylock from Merchant of Venice was probably at least partly inspired by Christopher Marlowe's anti-Semitic hit The Jew of Malta.

Shakespeare didn't turn any of these characters into quote unquote good guys, but they were portrayed with more sympathy than audiences would have been accustomed to.

But perhaps the most famous literary example of framing a classic villain in a new light concerns the most classic villain of all time.

Satan.

Yes.

That Satan.

Paradise Lost is an epic poem written in the mid 17th century that retells the biblical story of the fall of man.

You know, Adam and Eve in the garden, eating the apple, all that.

But before any of that happens, we get a whole backstory on how Satan became the Prince of Darkness, and he's kind of likable.

Originally, Satan was an archangel of heaven who stages a failed coup against God and is exiled to hell.

But rather than wallow in defeat, he rallies his fellow fallen angels to his side on the shores of a lake of fire.

Physically, he's not anything like the devil we're familiar with.

No horns or red skin, no cloven hooves or forked tail.

"He above the rest in shape and gesture proudly eminent stood like a tower.

His form had yet not lost all her original brightness.

Nor appeared less than Archangel ruined..." As he looks out at his fellow condemned, we're told he feels guilty for leading them to this fate.

"Care sat on his faded cheek, but under brows of dauntless courage, signs of remorse and passion.

To behold.

The fellows of his crime condemned forever now to have their lot in pain for his revolt."

They discuss what to do next and decide that the best way to get back at God is to try to ruin his newest creation: mankind.

But the journey from hell to earth is long and perilous.

Even an immortal being could be obliterated in the swirling chaos that separates them.

There's a very Council of Elrond moment where everyone's looking at each other, waiting for someone else to volunteer, until Satan speaks up.

"Wherefore do I assume these royalties and not refuse to reign, refusing to accept as great a share of hazard as of honor?"

So in these early chapters, Satan goes from a defeated prisoner of war to an awe-inspiring general, to an intrepid adventurer on a quest to a strange new land.

It definitely feels like a heroic arc, but is that what the author intended?

John Milton was a devout Christian, but also a big fan of epic poems of ancient Greece and Rome, like Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid.

And he thought that Christian mythology deserved the same treatment.

But in this poetic tradition, villains had to be as interesting as heroes, especially considering that God being perfect and all powerful, makes for a pretty boring character.

About a century later, the poet William Blake famously said, "the reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of angels and God, and at liberty, when of devils and hell, is because he was a true poet and of the devil's party without knowing it."

Milton was also aware that although Satan waged open war on heaven, his greatest weapon against mankind was persuasion.

Attractiveness.

Rizz.

He's supposed to be likable.

So we human readers find ourselves seduced by him in the opening pages.

But politics may have also played a role.

During the English Civil Wars, Milton was staunchly anti-monarchist.

He wrote countless letters and poems in defense of democracy, which would even get him put in prison for a time.

It's easy to imagine some of that revolutionary spirit creeping into his depiction of Satan's rebellion.

God is often referred to as a tyrant, and the fallen angels fear becoming his slaves.

"To bow and sue for grace with suppliant knee and deify his power."

"Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven."

You have to remember, this was a very familiar story to pretty much everyone in England at the time.

But it had always been told from the point of view of God or Adam and Eve.

For the first time, readers were being asked to imagine the same sequence of events from Satan's perspective, which perhaps might make them more open to questioning other so-called sacred concepts, like the divine right of the monarchy.

In What and Me Is Dark, Orlando Reade collects lots of examples of Paradise Lost's impact on rebels and revolutionaries.

Thomas Jefferson copied a quote of Satan's into his journal.

"What though the field be lost, all is not lost.

The unconquerable will and study of revenge.

Immortal hate and courage.

Never to submit or yield.

And what is else not to be overcome?"

Thomas Paine's Common Sense, the pamphlet that persuaded many Americans to join the revolution, contains another Satan quote: "Never can true reconcile grow where wounds of deadly hate have pierced so deep."

Paradise Lost has been an influence on a number of abolitionists, anti-colonialist and civil rights leaders as well.

From Haitian revolutionary writer Pompeii Valentine Vastey to Malcolm X. While some identified with Satan's struggle against tyranny, others noted how a rebel could turn into a tyrant himself.

By allowing us inside the mind of this most epic of villains, Milton gave readers new ways to think about power, freedom, and morality for hundreds of years.

Modern villain stories can also be tied to social change.

In the early 70s, with the Vietnam War in full swing, John Gardner published Grendel, a philosophical dive into the mind of Beowulf's mysterious foe.

Grendel is portrayed as part man, part monster, cynical and lonely, searching for purpose in a world where heroism has lost its meaning.

Bram Stoker's Dracula may have trafficked in Victorian anxieties around sexuality, but by the late 70s, readers were liberated enough to accept sexy vampire heroes in Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire series.

Towards the end of second wave feminism, Marion Zimmer Bradley wrote The Myths of Avalon, in which King Arthur's nemesis, the witch Morgan le Fay, is simply trying to protect her female-centered culture from the encroachment of patriarchal Christianity.

In the 1990s, many perceived the original wicked novel to be queer-coded, particularly how society labels people as evil for simply being different.

And Madeline Miller's Circe, published at the height of the MeToo movement, depicts the sorceress' attacks on Odysseus's men as self-defense against sexual predators.

For these authors, remixing famous stories is not just a way to sell books, though it probably can't hurt.

It puts their perspective right up against an older one.

The audience is forced to consider how their acceptance of the previous version of events makes them complicit, and perhaps they will be less likely to accept the official pronouncements of good and evil without question.

But not all villains are rehabilitated so easily.

Controversy alert!

I'm going to talk about Joker.

Before its 2019 release, a lot of critics accused it of pandering to incel culture.

Some even warned it might inspire a mass shooting, like the one that happened during a screening of another Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012.

To be fair, there is some overlap.

It's about a sad guy who lives with his mother... check.

Has no friends or romantic prospects... check.

And copes with society's neglect through nihilism and morbid humor.

Check.

Until he finally makes a name for himself with a shocking act of gun violence.

Check.

And Bruce Wayne is a Chad, if there ever was one.

Fears of a mass shooting turned out to be overblown.

And actual members of the incel community were offended by the comparison, taking it as more proof that mainstream society viewed them as monsters.

Another problematic villain who got a recent makeover is Johnny Lawrence from the original Karate Kid film.

William Zabka was basically the go-to actor for a certain type of bully role in the 1980s: preppy, athletic, and very, very WASPy.

his characters tended to represent privilege and patriarchy, a dynamic which is upended in the 2018 sequel series Cobra Kai.

Johnny is now a middle aged, working class white guy struggling with the loss of his social status.

Daniel LaRusso, who was once a poor newcomer to the city, has surpassed him financially, and Johnny's days are punctuated with humiliations and insults from women and people of color.

Get the hell out of here, loser.

Perhaps this was an effort to inject some nuance into our depictions of morality.

You know, look at bullies not as two dimensional villains, but as sympathetic humans with their own struggles and traumas.

But Cobra Kai also happened to coincide with a rising sentiment among straight white men that they were society's true victims, and that traditionally oppressed groups were the ones actually doing the oppressing.

Eventually, Johnny learns the importance of empathy and self-sacrifice.

But at first, the audience is asked to see the world through his perspective.

To root for him to resurrect the authoritarian cult he belonged to as a young man to regain his sense of superiority.

Maybe Cobra Kai was inspired in part by this video, which went viral in 2015 and currently has over 15 million views on YouTube.

In it, vlogger J. In it, vlogger J. Matthew Turner makes the case that Johnny was the real victim of Karate Kid.

Pow.

A sucker punch right to the mouth.

Johnny defends himself, as is his legal right, Though he was clearly being satirical, A lot of his commenters took the thesis a little too seriously.

He eventually had to make a follow up video, in which he implored them to stop asking him to do Hitler next.

I must at this time decline your request to defend Hitler.

What do you think you're doing?

Standing up to bullies has been a pervasive theme in American cinema since World War 2.

All the way from High Noon to Back to the Future.

But our perception of bullies has become somewhat more complicated since the turn of the century.

From the Sopranos to reality TV to the manosphere, There's a growing admiration for characters who exhibit strength and dominance.

You're fired.

Go.

Who take what they want and make no apologies about I didn't come here to make friends.

Being a bully is presented less as a moral failing and more as a survival mechanism in a world where might makes right.

Who knows?

Maybe next will get a positive spin on Biff Tannen: a sexual-assaulting billionaire casino owner who's actually a champion of the common man.

God bless America.

Can you imagine?

Our shared stories are a reflection of and influence on our collective values.

Who we call hero and who we call villain says a lot about us.

And when those designations start to shift, it can be a sign of social change, like the rejection of monarchy in Milton's England, the gay rights movement of the 1990s, or today's global lean towards authoritarianism.

Stories are how we make sense of the world.

So they can be especially effective at persuading people to rethink old norms, for good or ill.

The best we can do is be engaged, active readers and audiences, weighing characters against our own moral compasses, open to changing our minds, but always thoughtful about who we choose to root for.