3 Easy Steps to Developing a Villain Redemption Arc

By Grace A. Johnson

I don’t know about you, but I’m one of those writers who has to have a happy ending. I love to see light win out over darkness. Sometimes, I even love to see the villain redeemed. This is my most favorite aspect of writing—creating stories of inspiring redemption and restoration. That’s not to say it’s easy, though. Redemption arcs for your protagonist(s) are definitely difficult enough, but when it comes to writing that powerful conversion for your villain, you’ve got your work cut out for you, trust me.

But don’t despair, fellow writer! I’m here to share three easy steps to developing a redemption arc for your villain that is both convincing and powerful!

Step 1: Deepen Their Backstory

No doubt you’ve all learned to give your villain goals, motives, and a sorrowful backstory to better further their villainous career—but what we often overlook is the significance of a well-developed foundation for their redemption later on in their life or the story.

Meaning, yes, their backstory plays a part.

Depending on whether you’re writing a novel or a nine-book series, the villain’s backstory may even apply to earlier events in the book or series. So when you’re writing a longer project, you need to see every chapter’s events as potential history that contributes to your characters’ growing backstories.

Here are some suggestions for deepening your villain’s backstory:

• Remember what began their villainous career in the first place. This goes for both you and the character. Not only do you need to have a firm grasp on their childhood and past experiences, but connecting your character to his own past (through memories, brief mentions, or even flashbacks) will help readers understand them better. 
• Keep the process slow. Slow is relative, according to how long of a project your story is, but an even, measured pace is as necessary for a novella as it is for a saga. Don’t rush your villain’s arc by having him make great strides early on in the story—take your time in making each chapter count toward his past and future.  

Off the top of my head, some villains with well-developed backstories include:

• Loki from the MCU. We watched—and are continuing to watch—him grow movie by movie, morphing from an antagonist to a villain to an ally to a hero. From his childhood struggles as Odin’s adopted son to his later skirmishes with Thor, every experience, every fake death, and every failed attempt to gain the crown brought him to see what gave him worth - not a throne or hammer, but loyalty to his family and his people. What made his backstory so rich is that each movie became another piece of his past, deepening his motivations for being both a friend and foe until, at the end of the Infinity Saga, we finally saw his true colors. 
• Ebeneezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol. When we first met Scrooge, we knew nothing of him but rumors. However, as we were transported with him into his past, present, and future, we learned more about his past and added to it by encountering what his future could look like. We saw how a childhood of neglect and loss formed him into a bitter man...and how his lack of hope for the future prompted him to make a change. Every point in time he traveled to deepened his backstory and made his redemption that much more powerful and genuine.

Step 2: Let Them Suffer

I know y’all are excited to hear that. We all love making our characters suffer every once in a while, don’t we? There’s something about strong characters becoming weak, confident characters becoming vulnerable, hunters becoming prey. Even better, when our villain gets a taste of his own medicine, not only do we have poetic justice, but we also have the perfect opportunity to open our villain up to a better life and even reconciliation with the hero.

Your villain isn’t going to simply wake up one day and decide to be good—it’s a process, for one, which is where backstory comes in; and it also requires proper motivation. Oftentimes the very best way to motivate your villain to goodness is to make them suffer. Tremendously.

Of course, suffering varies from character to character, but here are some ideas to get you started:

• Physical pain or a near-death experience 
• Losing a family member/friend
• Failing to accomplish their goal (in other words, tasting humiliating defeat)
• Losing their wealth, social status, power, kingdom, etc.  

I’m sure you can think of a lot of great villains and antagonists who suffered and were made better for it, but a few of my favorites include:

• Loki (again). From losing his adopted parents to his birthright to his home, Loki was made to suffer again and again—and from every trial he emerged a better person. 
• Kylo Ren from Star Wars. His suffering was more along the lines of defeat and humiliation (considering it was him who killed his father, after all). Even still, every time he lost to the Resistance, he was humbled until he eventually saw the light. The light side of the force, I mean.
• Darth Vader, also from Star Wars. There’s a lot of debate on whether Vader actually had an arc, so to speak. He was redeemed, but it was more of a sudden thing than a slow process. Or was it? We can easily pick up on his inner turmoil from losing Padmè to finally meeting his son Luke—and there’s no doubt that he suffered greatly within that time.

Step 3: Bring Them to Their Knees

It’s time. Your villain has become so real to your readers that even through their suffering, everyone’s rooting for their redemption. You’ve created a backstory so defined and vivid, and properly motivated your villain to this point of total surrender by beating them down. We’re at the end…

Or are we?

In fact, we’ve only just reached the beginning, perhaps the hardest part of our villain’s unlikely journey on the road to redemption.

Bringing them to their knees.

Of course, I use this phrase loosely, because most of us are fantasy writers and our villain probably won’t be falling at the foot of the cross—but the outcome is still the same, no matter what world you’re in.

There’s a reason why there is a road to redemption—it’s a journey, and every journey requires hard work and perseverance. Just because your villain has had a change of heart doesn’t mean everything’s going to go smoothly for him from now on. In Scrooge’s case, jumping out of bed with a huge grin and throwing money out of the window works—but not for everyone.

They’re going to have to learn humility, forgiveness, and some more heartache before their arc is complete. Some of the best ways to teach your villain love and kindness (and help prove to the protagonist that they’re a changed person) are:

• Lose their wealth, friends, etc. Whatever they stood to gain from being evil; whatever goal they were aspiring to; whatever money, authority, power, or allies they’d accrued during their villainous career needs to disappear when they turn a new leaf. 
• Apologize to those they’ve wronged. From calling up their ex to begging your hero for forgiveness, humble your villain even more by having them admit they were wrong. Trust me, that right there is painful enough!
• Sacrifice their life. This is a serious one, and not best for every story. But just like with Darth Vader, having your villain make the ultimate sacrifice after their change of heart is simply beautiful and truly completes their arc.

Some villains and antagonists who were humbled on their journey to redemption are:

• Edmund Pevensie from The Chronicles of Narnia. Whether you count him an antagonist or not, he still had a redemption arc, and we all know it didn’t end the moment he decided to quit being selfish. He had to deal with the cost of betraying the White Witch, of course, losing his Turkish delights, and humbling himself before his siblings, who didn’t believe him at first. 
• Henry Gowen from When Calls the Heart. This may be an obscure one for some of you, but I suggest you look into Gowen’s redemption arc, which is one of the best I’ve seen on TV. His is a slow journey, and even after turning over a new leaf, he suffered discrimination and ostracism from those he’d wronged in the past. It took a lot of painstaking humility and even some forgiveness for Gowen to be accepted, but it was worth it.

I’d say we have a pretty happy ending now, don’t we? We took our villain to another level by deepening his (or her) backstory; literally beat some sense into them in between robbing them of everything they value; and slowly crippled them under the immense weight of their sins.

Or, in other words, we redeemed them. It’s a slow process, yes, but it’s so worth it in the end to see the villain redeemed and sometimes even reconciled with the hero. The trick is to pay close attention to how every moment pours into their backstory...and to put them through a great deal of suffering.

Which villains have a powerful redemption arc to you? (We can all agree on the Grinch, can’t we?) Which ones don’t? Which villains went through a slow journey of learning humility and sacrifice? How will you develop your villain’s redemption arc? (I know I’m looking forward to ruining my villains’ lives!) Why don’t y’all let me know in the comments below?