How to Write a Compelling Villain Ensemble: The Knights of Ren vs The Phantom Troupe

How to Write a Compelling Villain Ensemble: The Knights of Ren vs The Phantom Troupe

    If you’re writing a short story, novel, or screenplay, you probably have a villain. Maybe you even have multiple villains.

    What if you have an entire group of villains, who more or less work together? After all, if your story can have multiple protagonists, or friends and side characters for the main protagonist, why can’t the villain have family and friends, too?

    In this post, I’ll break down some elements that make a great villain ensemble, using two examples. The Phantom Troupe from Hunter X Hunter is an example of a well-written, interesting cast of villains, while the Knights of Ren from the Star Wars sequels serves as an example of what not to do.

1. Individuality

Source:  https://www.cbr.com/hunter-x-hunter-strongest-weakest-phantom-troupe-members/

 
    In a well-written ensemble, both the individuals and the group have their own motivations and personalities. The ensemble is like a character in itself, but that doesn’t mean it overrides the members’ individual characters. The members of the Phantom Troupe all have vastly different designs and abilities. Nobunaga is a swordfighter, Shalnark controls people, and so on. As a group, their goal in the Yorkshin City arc is to steal all the auction items from the mafia, but each member has their own motives as well. After Uvogin dies, Nobunaga only cares about avenging his friend's death. This causes tension, because Nobunaga’s personal desires conflict with the vow they all took, to follow their leader Chrollo's decisions no matter what.

    The infighting in the Phantom Troupe not only makes it clear that its members are individuals, but it also fleshes out the characters’ personal relationships. Hachi is close to Hisoka because she helps him heal after battles. Nobunaga is friends with Uvo, and he gets annoyed with Chrollo.

Source: https://hunterxhunter.fandom.com/wiki/Hisoka_Morow/Image_Gallery?file=Hisoka_With_Nobunaga.png

     Think about a friend group or a group of coworkers or classmates in your life. They have something tying them together as a group – similar interests, a common workplace, the fact that they go to the same school – but within that people have different relationships based on their personalities and experiences. People act differently with people they’ve known for a long time versus people they haven’t known as long, even if they’re all in the same friend group. Having intersecting interpersonal relationships on top of a group bond (we’ll get to that in a bit) will make your cast of villains feel multidimensional.

Source: https://disney.fandom.com/wiki/Knights_of_Ren?file=The-Force-Awakens-61.png

    Contrast this with the Knights of Ren, where the only member we ever know as an individual is Kylo. They have unique designs, but their all-black armor, and helmets that hide their species, make them hard to distinguish. And while they do have names and backstories, none of that makes it into the movies. In The Rise of Skywalker’s defense, it only had so much time to develop the Knights, given that The Last Jedi completely ignored them (Even then, a trilogy of movies has a lot less time to develop characters than a TV show like Hunter). But the result is that the Knights are as indistinguishable as stormtroopers. The only one with any defining characteristics is the one that looks like a monkey and fixes Kylo Ren’s helmet. I can’t imagine anybody debating about their favorite Knight or buying merchandise based on that specific character, like they might do for their favorite Jedi. 

    Their goals are homogenous as well. Kylo is the only one with any motivation. The Knights’ only role in TROS is to be bad guys. As characters, they could easily be replaced by Stormtroopers or Sith Troopers or Death Troopers or whatever Star Wars villain you want to paste in there. Ostensibly, they’re supposed to be a bit stronger than your normal mooks, but that brings us to our next point.

2. Intimidation

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KONBWob_5y0

    Like most good villains, villain ensembles have to feel capable. Your villains will feel scarier if you show how powerful they are. Uvogin is the first Phantom Troupe member that Kurapika (one of Hunter's protagonists, the sole survivor of a clan killed off by the Troupe) battles. Uvo's defining characteristic is his physical strength. Hunter uses a classic storytelling trick to make him seem insanely strong: it throws a bunch of other strong characters at him, and has him defeat them with ease. Even with his body paralyzed from the shoulders down, he defeats the mafia’s best fighters. He looks insurmountable. If he swept these skilled, expert fighters, how can Kurapika possibly win?

    Most stories fall into the error of conveniently making the villain less capable when the story needs them to lose. But Hunter manages to give a logical reason why Kurapika can best Uvo, even though Uvo’s Nen aura abilities are maxed out. Kurapika imposes restrictions on his own aura. He can only use his ability against members of the Troupe, or he'll die. By limiting its use, he in turn makes it more powerful. Kurapika’s self-imposed restrictions make sense as a way to give him extra power, and it fits his vengeful character. Still, even though Kurapika won, the battle against that one opponent was so difficult that we wonder how he can go up against the other twelve of them.

Source: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Knights_of_Ren?file=KyloFacesTheKnightsOfRen.png

    We first see the Knights of Ren in combat after Ben Solo already turned to the light side. He takes them all on with little difficulty. It makes sense in-universe if we consider that Ben is logically the strongest out of all of them, but it never makes them feel like the elite villains they’re supposed to be. Again, TROS could have replaced them with a bunch of Stormtroopers and the scene would have played out the same way. They never feel like intimidating opponents. They feel expendable. Interestingly, Season 2 of The Mandalorian did this right. On Moff Gideon’s ship, Mando struggles to take out a single Dark Trooper. The result is that the Dark Troopers feel stronger and scarier than the Knights of Ren, even if the Knights are technically stronger in-universe. (And of course, this shows how powerful Luke is when he slices through all the troopers at the end).

3. Bond

Source: https://soundcloud.com/christian-nikkuz/hunter-x-hunter-2011-hunting-for-your-dream

    If you’re going to write an ensemble of villains, you want to think about why they’re working together. Is it necessity – are they stronger in numbers? Or maybe they enjoy each other’s company. Maybe they’re united by their common goal. They can have more than one reason. The Phantom Troupe is like family to each other. As orphans left in the giant junkyard known as Meteor City, they had no other family. This bond they have contrasts their actions, as they gladly murder and wreak havoc on innocent people without remorse. It also resonates thematically with the friendship the protagonists have, and with Kurapika’s connection to his clan.

Source: https://movieweb.com/knights-of-ren-backstory-rise-of-skywalker-comic/

    I don’t have much to say about the Knights of Ren’s bond because we simply don’t see a whole lot of them. Again, this is mostly a limitation of the fact that they only physically appear in one movie. We can kind of infer that they’re an order similar to the Sith – but we still don’t know if they’re like a religious thing, or a more bureaucratic organization like the Separatists. But if they are just like the Sith, what’s the point in making them a different thing? What’s unique about them that the Sith don’t have?

    Kylo is the only one whose reason for joining we can kind of tell. It seems he was manipulated by Snoke into turning to them. They probably also give him a feeling of belonging. He’s a very vulnerable character, which is why he agrees to work for Palpatine even after saying he’d “let the past die” in the previous movie. We don’t know why any of the other members joined the Knights of Ren, and Kylo’s relationship with them is entirely absent. Even though he’s supposed to be one of them, and they apparently have a close bond, they might as well be strangers. He doesn’t say their names, he doesn’t treat any of them differently during their final fight, and he doesn’t bring up any memories he might have of them. It doesn’t feel like they’ve worked closely together. As the one member we actually know anything about, Kylo doesn’t even feel like a part of the team. 

 How to Create Your Own Villain Ensemble


    Now that we’ve analyzed two examples of villain ensembles, let’s go over how you can use what we learned in your writing.

1. Make the characters stand out. If the character isn’t interesting on their own, then they probably won’t be more interesting thrown together with similarly bland characters. Unless, of course, they’re supposed to not have individuality, like Stormtroopers or the Cybermen in Doctor Who.

2. Make them scary. The harder it is for your heroes to win, the better. If your group of villains feels less threatening than a single villain does, why write a villain ensemble in the first place? (Unless you’re purposefully writing humorously incompetent antagonists, or have another reason to make your ensemble weaker. The first rule of writing is that any rule of writing can be broken).

3. Give them a reason to be together. This doesn’t have to mean they like each other, and their bond doesn’t even have to be advantageous for them. Maybe circumstances force them to work as a team, or their common purpose unites them, even though they hate and work against each other in other situations.



    This should give you some ideas to strengthen your villain ensembles. Thanks for reading, and make sure to drop your questions and ideas in the comments. I’m sure you’ll bring up more points besides the three I listed above.