The further somebody has walked down obscure paths in life, the harder it gets to radically change directions. But we’re always compelled by characters who go on deeply difficult journeys. The journey of the villain who, from darkness, decides to aim back up to light is a timeless story. It’s the arc of redemption. Ranging from villains to antiheroes to just tangential but fascinating secondary villains, the characters on this list have all caused evil around them in one way or another. Good storytelling can make us understand what has led them there and help us even love the villains — the bitterness, as well as the difficulty of changing things around. But that only makes it more remarkable when they finally make the right choice, sometimes at great personal cost.
Updated January 25th, 2023: Curious about movie villains who redeemed themselves? Then you’ll be happy to know this article has been updated with additional films and even better quality.
Below, you’ll find some character arcs that are very well-known in movie lore, mixed with a couple of more unusual picks that do something slightly different with the redemption motif. It’s such a compelling storytelling motif that when Wes Anderson pays it a quick and light-hearted homage in Fantastic Mr. Fox, the scene works to great dramatic and comedic effect, because we’re so familiar with it.
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10 Chris McCandless – Into the Wild
Paramount Vantage
To start with someone certainly more on the “flawed protagonist” than “pure villain” end of things, Chris, in Into the Wild, is still a villain in this sense: as soon as anyone gets attached to him, he leaves them behind and goes back on the road. Brought up in a household fraught with tension, bad parenting, and violence, his past has taught him not to put faith in people or society and to look for happiness elsewhere. But he ends up causing the same pain he suffered to others.
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His sister, his companion in their shared hurt, feels betrayed by his disappearance and the fact he never once wrote her. His parents experience a deep loss. In the end, rendered immobile in a van in the middle of nowhere, Chris experiences an epiphany. He sees the errors he and others have made, forgives, and scribbles something others will find after his death which shows a change of heart: he didn’t need to endlessly run away from people.
9 Rick Blaine – Casablanca
Warner Bros. Pictures
Rick runs a café in Casablanca in a way that’s as businesslike and detached as can be. Customers come and go, he won’t ever drink with them and never talks about himself except in witty deflective remarks. He’s cynical. He “sticks his neck out for nobody.” If it’s good for business, he’ll make deals that hurt people who are fighting for good causes.
The key turning point in his character arc is when he learns that what he thought was a past betrayal by the woman he loved was, in fact, a tough situation which she tried to resolve for the best. The film makes us think it’s too late for him to care anymore, but then, in a famous ending, it turns out that Rick’s good side, encouraged by the knowledge that it wasn’t betrayed, does exactly what’s best for everyone.
8 Loki – Avengers: Infinity War
Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
Introduced to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as the main antagonist of both Thor (2011) and The Avengers (2012), Loki, the God of Mischief, has since become one of the MCU’s ultimate villains. However, in Thor: Ragnarök (2017) and especially in Avengers: Infinity War (2018), we see Loki altering his morals and helping his adoptive brother Thor. In the Disney+ series Loki (2021 – present), we have a chance to uncover the God of Mischief’s vulnerable and emotional side.
Tom Hiddleston, who gained international fame portraying Loki, relishes exploring redemptive possibilities for his character. “I understand the audience sees good in Loki – they want him to get past his internal and external obstacles,” Hiddleston told Variety. “They want him to repair that relationship with his brother and step into the hero that he can be.”
7 The Grinch – How The Grinch Stole Christmas
Universal Pictures
In How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), director Ron Howard and actor Jim Carrey take us through the redemption arc of a misanthropic, ill-tempered green creature with a heart “two sizes too small.” The Grinch hates the Christmas season and plans to rob joyful inhabitants of Whoville of the holiday – but an unexpected kindness melts his alienated heart. Director Yarrow Cheney, who adapted the beloved children’s book again in 2018, told MovieGuide that faith and redemption are at the core of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
6 Jules – Pulp Fiction
Miramax Films
Quentin Tarantino’s movies are about violence and our relationship with it. Sometimes it’s handled responsibly, sometimes less so. But he’s made one movie that’s actually moral (and not in any forced or didactic manner), and that is Pulp Fiction.
The ending sees Jules, a contract killer, grappling with his morality: he goes through possible interpretations of a religious text he’s been obsessed with, first as a cool verse to shout at his victims before he killed them, then with increasingly more depth. It plays surprisingly organically, with a gun pointed at a couple of small-time robbers in a diner. He comes to see that they’re “weak,” he’s “the tyranny of evil men,” but he’s trying very hard to be a “shepherd.” He lets them go.
5 Boromir – The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
New Line Cinema
What to do with the ring (power) has always been the central question of The Lord of the Rings. Boromir is among those who think it’s better to use it for good than entrust it to two Hobbits, taken to the land of the enemy and thrown away. But Hobbits are less likely to be lured by it. Men, stronger than Hobbits, are more likely to think themselves up to the task of wielding it, while in reality falling short. Boromir falls into that trap.
He defies the fellowship, goes against its stated mission, and tries to claim the ring for his people by force. Then, he’s wrecked by doubt and guilt for having betrayed Frodo. His redemption comes in the form of risking his life to save what’s left of the fellowship, and before dying, recognizing Aragorn as the better man, calling him his captain and king.
4 Bob – The Drop
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Nadia (Noomi Rapace) is a broken character defined by men who hurt her, a drugs problem and suicidal tendencies. She can’t have an angel. Bob (played by Tom Hardy) is no angel. He’s a murderer underneath the harmless shell. But he’s looking for redemption. He goes to church every day but never takes communion.
In the end, Nadia decides to trust that this guy is making difficult ethical choices not out of an intent to cause more evil anymore but out of a pragmatic desire to fix things. Her decision to trust that such a guy won’t hurt her constitutes his redemption: someone is willing to believe in the good in him. He wasn’t sure himself if he was good, he didn’t impose himself in any way, and she took him. As The Drop closes, we can believe these two broken characters will be helping each other aim towards the light.
3 Bob Ford – The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
Bob, bullied all his life, escaping in books about the legendary Jesse James, has a thirst for “great things”. The irony of the scene in which he recites the Beatitudes (“Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are them that mourn, blessed are the meek”) is that he’s none of those things. When he murders his idol, he expects to stand in his place. Instead, he goes down as the cowardly villain.
In the unforgettable epilogue, Bob matures. He’s able to smile at his former self (“I was only 20 years old then.”) He feels regret. His recognition that there’s nothing good for him in the cards he reads is a tacit recognition that he played the game of life the wrong way and will pay. By the end of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, he resigns himself to his fate and seems to accept it.
2 Beast – Beauty and the Beast
Buena Vista Pictures Distribution
While he’s not the villain of the movie (although he does essentially kidnap a woman), in the prologue of Beauty and the Beast, we’re told that Beast was someone with a black heart who was cursed, so his outward appearance reflects what he was inside (a monster). Throughout the movie, he’s slowly looking for redemption and transformation from that. He finally earns this transformation once he has earned Belle’s full trust and love.
1 Darth Vader – Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi
20th Century Fox
Anakin Skywalker was prophesied as the one who would bring balance to the Force. But first, he almost destroys it. After all, evil has to run its course, and balance is only achieved in the grand scheme of things. It’s an old idea. In the biblical stories, God tells Abraham that his descendants will have a good land, but only after they’ll be persecuted for four generations. When the sin of the persecutors “reaches its full measure,” then balance will be restored.
Though Obi-Wan Kenobi doesn’t see it as he reluctantly fights his student in Episode III, Anakin’s descent into the Dark Side and into Darth Vader will go much further. This character will fulfill the ultimate act of redemption, striking down the Sith Lord in Return of the Jedi and saving his son’s life, who will give birth to a new Jedi Order.
