| “ | I'm going to kill you, Harry Potter. I'm going to destroy you. After tonight, no one will ever again question my power. After tonight if they speak of you, they'll speak only of how you begged for death. And how I, being a merciful Lord, obliged. Get up! Don't you turn your back on me, Harry Potter! I want you to look at me when I kill you! I want to see the light leave your eyes! | „ |
| ~ Lord Voldemort sadistically threatening Harry Potter. |
| “ | You have been a good and faithful servant, Severus. But only I can live forever. | „ |
| ~ Lord Voldemort's ironic words to Severus Snape, on the same night as his ultimate demise. |
Tom Marvolo Riddle, better known as Lord Voldemort or simply Voldemort, is the main antagonist of the wizarding world franchise.
His Qualities[]
What Makes Him Entertaining?[]
- Even if this is just hindsight, due to the success of the Harry Potter franchise, Lord Voldemort is an incredibly iconic villain in general.
- Ralph Fiennes does an excellent job portraying Voldemort with his terrifying presence whenever he's on the screen.
- He was noted to be very charismatic during his years at Hogwarts, as he was able to sway countless people to his cause. He was even able to keep a good reputation at the school despite his crimes committed under the staff's noses. While he later resorted to fear in lieu of charisma, he is still considered by his followers to be an inspiring and impressive leader.
- Though not the most complex character, he has a surprisingly fleshed-out and realistic backstory. He was born from a witch who used the Imperius Curse to force a Muggle man to have sex with her under magical mind control, both of his parents chose death and eschewal respectively over having anything to do with him, he held naively asinine assumptions about said parents when he was a little older, and he was disillusioned when he was forced to accept his mother could die despite being a witch (and he was far more fortunate without a rapist in a position of authority anyway). It was this upbringing that led to him believing that love and virtue have no value, death is to be avoided at all costs, nihilism is easily the best philosophical principle to live by, everyone is contemptable regardless of blood status, and the Dark Arts solve everything. Additionally, he never cried as a baby which all but confirms he was born emotionally stunted and he never once asked to be. Even still, it is made clear by the narrative that Voldemort is evil by his own choice, and it is made clear through critical thinking that he does not have a real sob story in the first place.
- He is very intelligent. Dumbledore noted that, even as a child, Tom Riddle was perhaps the most brilliant student educated at Hogwarts. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of magic which Dumbledore described as vaster than that of any other wizard alive. A crafty and sly deceiver, Voldemort has devised several impressive schemes:
- As a child, he manipulated Horace Slughorn and used a convincing facade to hide his psychopathy from everyone except for Dumbledore.
- He convinced Quirrell to offer his body as a host despite being at his weakest at the time.
- His Horcrux, despite having the cognitive capacity of a teenager, cunningly left various clues for Harry to discover and targeted Harry's friends in order to manipulate him into coming to the Chamber.
- He tricked Harry into coming to the Ministry of Magic with fake images of Sirius Black being tortured. In the same year, he began systematically killing off members of the Ministry of Magic to silently take it over, and by the time of Bill and Fleur's wedding he successfully had the entire Ministry under his control.
- He set up a Xanatos Gambit that would kill either Draco Malfoy, the son of a man he hated, or Albus Dumbledore, his second-worst enemy by far, with the latter ultimately being the one to be slew.
- Once armed with the Ministry's resources, he left traps for Harry and even had Nagini lay in wait at Godric's Hollow.
- While his fighting prowess is mostly left to the imagination, he is still a powerful wizard who spams Killing Curses and brews potions that even Dumbledore cannot overcome. Because of his unprecedented psychopathy, everyone else is terrified of him, to the point they never said his name nor accepted anyone else doing so.
- While one could argue this is only because of the Taboo being around before Godric's Hollow, this doesn't add up because Dumbledore kept encouraging people to say the Dark Lord's name.
- His ultimate demise, though not played for sympathy, is played for pity. This is underscored where Dumbledore claims to Harry that he is "something beyond neither of our help" in a sad tone of voice and proceeds to wisely advise him to "pity the living, and above all, those who live without love."
What Makes Him Detestable?[]
- He is a wholly evil psychopath who has no redeeming qualities whatsoever (not even any subverted ones) with an entire montage of definitive "Kick the Dog" moments that put his sadism, pettiness, and cruelty on display:
- Even as a little kid, he would use his powers to bully his fellow children, such as killing someone's pet rabbit and terrorizing two kids in a cave.
- He killed Myrtle just for telling him to go away after mistaking him for the girl that made fun of her glasses.
- He killed his entire family after learning his father was a Muggle, even though his mother was a rapist and he was right to leave her.
- He cursed the Defence Against the Dark Arts post at Hogwarts out of spite. Even if Lockhart and Umbridge deserved their fates, Lupin most certainly did not.
- He drowned Barnaby Lee's pet.
- He almost got Kreacher killed in an horrifying way.
- On his way to the Potter house, he almost killed a random kid, and only stopped from doing it because he was busy.
- He made Quirrell murder unicorns, which considered the most innocent of all life forms in the wizarding world.
- One of his Horcruxes subjected an innocent little girl to harrowing exploitation for several months in a row, and would later manage to find a bleeding and severely poisoned little boy to be genuinely funny, cruelly making two back-to-back jokes about it.
- He tortured Bertha Jorkins out of sadism. In the same book, during his battle with Harry, Voldemort also went out of his way to taunt, mock, humiliate, and torment him, citing he specifically wanted to see the light leave his eyes.
- He tortured Garrick Ollivander, Charity Burbage, and Mykew Gregorovitch and carelessly murdered the latters. He also used the Cruciatus Curse on Harry's "dead body" out of spite.
- He sent Draco Malfoy on a suicide mission just to psychologically torment Malfoy's father and mother all to spitefully punish the former for sheer hard luck at the Department of Mysteries.
- His Horcrux tortured Ron Weasley mentally and made him see a vision of his crush Hermione Granger making out with his best friend Harry in a twistedly erotic manner.
- He robbed Dumbledore's tomb.
- He had Nagini kill Snape even though he was (from Voldemort's perspective at least) his most beloved confidante.
- He pushed Bellatrix Lestrange to the grass unprovoked (while one could argue she deserved it, she was trying to be uncharacteristically kind at the time).
- He hugged Draco Malfoy without his consent.
- Sometime before The Deathly Hallows, he slept with Bellatrix, who was a married woman, to conceive an heir for himself.
- He was never given a tragedy in any shape or form, considering he was obviously treated well in the orphanage, he was definitely better off without his extremely problematic mother being in his life, and the Fantastic Beasts trilogy confirms he's not the only baby ever conceived through magically enhanced rape.
- He has three villainous breakdowns in the books:
- He was terrified and enraged at unexpectedly being in Priori Incantatem with Harry, which allowed Harry to mentally overpower him.
- He killed several of his followers in a fit of rage after learning that Harry stole Hufflepuff's Cup and thus knew about the Horcruxes.
- He refused to believe that the Elder Wand belonged to Harry, and then furiously tried to kill Harry with said want, only for it to (expectedly) backfire and kill Voldemort instead.
- Even without his reckless suicide, Voldemort still took several measures to become his own worst enemy.
- Convinced that he's the greatest wizard who ever lived, Voldemort thinks magical talent is all that he needs to succeed, and is virtually incapable of understanding why things like love or friendship might be beneficial since the very concept of righteousness confuses him and makes him nauseous.
- He specifically chose Horcruxes that were famous artifacts out of his narcissism, which made them easy to find.
- He broke his promise to Snape to use Petrificus Totalus on Lily instead of killing her, resulting in her Sacrificial Protection.
- If his Horcrux just kept its thoughts to itself, Harry never would have thought to stab the diary with the Basilisk fang at all.
- Then he made a potion with Harry's blood to regenerate himself, making it impossible to kill him.
- He let Harry duel him despite having the exact same wand core (a feather from Fawkes), humiliating him in front of all his followers. The kid had a fourth-year education in the magical arts and he was so insecure that he wanted to show off his ability to best vulnerable children in combat.
- He spent an entire year having a bizarre obsession with Trelawney's prophecy when he could've spent that time sneakily infiltrating the Ministry of Magic.
- He expected a teenage boy to be stronger than him and get the better of Dumbledore immediately after he himself tried to do just that and failed miserably.
- He got played by Severus Snape on many occasions, especially considering he is known to struggle with "people skills" since he was a preteen.
- He is insistent upon killing Harry in person, just to prove that "the Boy Who Lived" isn't stronger than him and so he can absorb his Horcrux.
- He killed Gregorovitch when he could just buy a wand from him and solve the ever tedious issue of having twin cores with his nemesis.
- He thought explicitly of Ravenclaw's Diadem, alerting Harry to its existence. If he was as smart as he thought, he would have Nagini looked after by an Imperiused Canadian zookeeper until he could deal with Harry; if he hadn't kept her so close all the time, Dumbledore would've never assumed she was a Horcrux in the first place.
- He had Narcissa Malfoy confirm Harry's death when he could have easily done it himself.
- He accidentally killed himself while trying to kill Harry with the Elder Wand, even though Harry had just explained to him how using the Elder Wand would backfire, since he wanted to prove Harry wrong. And in the film, he choked him by Transfiguring his cloak into octopus arms but then released him so he could kick and punch him, which was an extremely awkward and informal way to duel him.
- To summarize, for all of Lord Voldemort's superficial charm and underhanded cunning, he ultimately is an emotionally stunted manchild who apparently believes with sincerity that we were all put on this earth with the sole purpose of engaging in murderous activity, is trying way too hard to compensate for his own thanatophobia, insanity, misanthropy, and nihilism, and practically never learns from his own mistakes, apparently doesn't understand love, friendship, or virtue at all, and keeps unwittingly giving Harry the information he needs to defeat him.
- Even if Voldemort is not a Hate Sink, that doesn't stop him from being an idyllic epitome of detestability since J.K. Rowling's writing still frames him as pitiful, contemptable, and overall far from "magnificent." The narrative emphasizes how Voldemort's megalomania, desire for power, and disregard for the idea of love ultimately led to an ignoble and pathetic existence. His narcissism, bigotry, desire for power, pettiness, and (most of all) lack of love is frequently highlighted.
- All in all, he gives off far more of a hateable and punchable vibe than an "Evil is Cool" one.
External Links[]
- Lord Voldemort on the Villains Wiki
- Lord Voldemort on the Pure Evil Wiki
- Lord Voldemort on the Harry Potter Wiki
- Lord Voldemort on the Shonen Villains Wiki
[]
 Entertainingly Detestable
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Both Continuities: Lord Voldemort | Lucius Malfoy Book Only: Mundungus Fletcher Film Only: Argus Filch | Mrs. Norris | Barty Crouch Jr. | Bellatrix Lestrange Other: Merula Snyde | Ismelda Murk | ||