Terenezza Hopkins from ‘May I Ask For One Final Thing?’

I’ve talked quite a few times about heroes who come from another world.  This is the whole ‘Isekai’ genre where a normal person from our world is either transported or reincarnated into a magical one.  Something I stumbled onto a few months ago was the same thing happening with a villain.  Not always with them being the main character either, but that can happen.

So, the concept is that the protagonist is up against a villain who has been brought over from another world.  Like an Isekai hero, this enemy possesses enhanced powers and special traits, which makes them a challenging threat.  This requires the hero born in the world needs to grow stronger in a way that matches this person who has basically been given cheat codes.  It ends up being done without them either knowing or understanding the full situation until later.  After all, the villain doesn’t typically walk around shouting they are from another world.

The odd thing is that the reader can swiftly notice something is off even if the villain isn’t revealed as being from elsewhere.  It really depends on the author being subtle or not since it can be covered fairly easily.  Yet, I notice it’s more common to have this Isekai’d villain act superior and dismissive to nearly everyone in the world.  While a hero in their position is stronger and tries to be inclusive, the villain seems to use their strength as a reason to be openly egotistical.  This ends up being done even when they are losing and have yet to demonstrate their power.  I guess this shows part of their villain mentality is to think they are automatically better while heroes know they have to learn about their new world.

A villain from another world has a big challenge with the reveal.  You need to make them appear to be from the new world while still having a few hints that there’s something a little weird.  Otherwise, the reveal either feels like a last minute decision or it falls flat due to being obvious.  There’s always the decision to make uncovering where this person came from as part of the story.  I think that would clear things up because you start off knowing they appeared out of nowhere, but not necessarily Earth.  Means you’re preparing people for a reveal without exposing too much.

One thing I like about this concept is that it can allow the villain to be ignorant of the world they are in.  It makes one wonder why they want to conquer or destroy, which can boil down to them simply hating where they are.  This also means their ignorance is entirely by choice.  With heroes, they are lacking in knowledge and go out of their way to learn everything.  A villain is more likely to not care about anything that doesn’t pertain to their goals, which results in an information gap.  Given them being extremely powerful, this is where a weak point can be created.

I don’t know if I’ll ever use this type of villain even though it’s intriguing.  There is a plan to show there is a connection between Earth and Windemere, but I’m still not 100% certain I want to do it.  At least not overtly because I think two future characters still need to have this origin.  Anyway, I don’t really want to try a villain like this because it doesn’t feel right for my world.  This type of antagonist really needs to be handled a certain way and with a world that focuses on them.  Otherwise, they’re going to lose some of their specialness because there are other villains from that world.  Maybe I’m looking at it wrong though.

What do other people think of villains coming from another world?