Returning villains

Do you have a favorite villain? One so sick and twisted and full of spite and sickness that, though you despise them, you can't help but love them. You love to hate them, hate to love them, unable to explain it, unwilling to accept or deny it. They are undeniably, inexplicably evil. They are darkness incarnate, so intangibly dark that they infect the very air around them, so that you cannot bear to look at them, and yet you can not bare to look away. You know beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are the very bane of all of existence, and that the only way for anything to continue on, to have a future, is for them to be stopped.

And yet...

And yet without them there, the story would be over. And is that really what you want? What happens next? What conflict can there be when such a threat has already been dealt with? And if they're not there, how can they wow you with their wiles? Is the good guy really so good without that presence of evil acting as a constant backdrop to show how great the hero is by comparison? In fact, without that villain there, would the good guy even be good? Or would the lack of an enemy lead them down a different path?

One-offs don't have to worry about these things. The end of that villain is the end of the story. What comes next? Who cares? It's over. Done. Kaput. The hero wins, probably gets the girl, gets to go back home and build a new life off of the lessons that he's learned.

But a series? Oh no... Once the villain is done, that doesn't mean the series is over. Sometimes, a series is far from over. Sometimes a series is only just beginning. But the bad guy is done. And they were such a good bad guy. So dark and twisted and evil. How can you follow that up?

Sometimes you can't. But the story has to go on. So what if that villain came back? Came back more powerful, more evil, more dark and twisted, more of a threat than ever before.

A lot of my favorite series do this. You can never count on the villain being dead, because they never really are, they just put that guise on so as to escape and recover to come back worse than ever.

And yet this is such a poor choice in so many ways. They've already been beaten. What threat could they really pose? Sure, they've been recovering and training, but who's to say that the heroes weren't doing the same? In fact, the heroes might not have to recover as long as the villain, so they might even be further above the power levels of the returning, supposedly more powerful villain by the time they come back into the picture.

And once they've returned once, why can't they return again? And yet, each time they return from supposed death, they become slightly less interesting. With each repeated recovery, they have less incentive to fight, and less chance for victory. Eventually they might as well just be a footsoldier that no one cares about. They literally become a joke.

So many good series fall victim to this. I understand the desire to have a common evil, a repeating trait that feels familiar to the audience. But eventually it's just not scary when they show up. You stop screaming and you start yawning.

It's not easy to think of new things all the time. I know that pretty damn well by this point. But damn, if it isn't worth it in the long run.