I was thinking earlier today (always a dangerous thing), because the Dark Phoenix Saga had come up, and I saw reference to Marvel having wanted, at the time, to take a longtime hero character and make them a villain permanently.

They tried it with Jean Grey and they tried it...

…with Yellowjacket, and all that really did in the long run was to damage two characters (Hank Pym and Scott Summers).

And it struck me todsay why this concept doesn’t work, or at least doesn’t work in broad strokes; I expect someone could manage it.

A villain becoming a hero is a redemption story. Audiences like redemption stories. They’re cool.

A hero becoming a villain isn’t simply the flip side of that. A hero becoming a villain is a tragedy, and tragedies generally have two components: They end in death, and they're...

…set up to be tragedies from the first beat of the story.

You don’t spend years on Hamlet’s happy-go-lucky dating life and _then_ turn him into a tragedy. It won’t work, because the audience doesn’t want to see that. If they like the hero, they want them to stay a hero.

That means there’s a really strong urge for tragedy to turn into redemption.

Chris and John tried doing that with Jean Grey — her heroic side pulled through at the end and she also died, but she died a hero.

And then some punk came along with a way to have her not dead after...

…all, because hey, we spent years on this particular Hamlet’s heroic life and romance, and there was a wellspring of creators (at least) who wanted her back.

Yellowjacket’s arc, too, ended in redemption but not death, but the character had been so damaged by the fall...

…that there was no long term acceptance of the redemption. The villainizing didn’t take, because he’d been too long a hero, and the redemption didn’t take because the villainizing was too strong — he didn’t just commit genocide on Broccoli Planet, he gave his wife a black eye.

Redemptions work, because they’re heroic.

Villainizing a hero doesn’t, I think, because unless you plan for it from the start (see: Terra), it feels less like a real tragedy than it does like a mistake, and so the urge to do a redemption term is strong.

And if you go whole hog and end the arc with death (which still doesn’t give you a permanent villain), someone will come along and pull a resurrection, because of the goodwill fostered before you decided to villainize the character.

Because it’s not just one creator’s vision.

But the attempt ends up sullying the character — it’s probably significant that Jean didn’t end up sullied because of the magic “that wasn’t her” story some jerk came up with. But Hank bears the stain to this day, and even if someone tries to redeem him, someone else will...

…dig up the stain.

And that’s a matter of shifting perception — those people introduced to the character while they’re stained won’t buy the redemption, while those who felt the stain was wrong don’t buy the heel turn.

It ends up in a mess, because “villain to hero” and “hero to villain” are not equivalent stories. They play differently from beginning to end.