Who would’ve thought that a film series
about so-called ‘despicable’ characters would end up being so popular? Since the franchise
began in 2010, “Despicable Me” has taken the world by storm. With two sequels, a
spinoff series, several shorts and a ton of merchandise, the Despicable Me universe has
certainly made a name for itself. But out of all of these heroes and villains, which
are the most noble and which ones are TRULY despicable?
I’m Brad with Wicked Binge, and this is Despicable Me: Good to Evil. As always, we’ll be starting our list with
the most pure characters and working our way down. These characters are the Good. Starting this list, we have the innocent and
absolutely adorable Agnes. As far as little kid characters go, she’s one of the sweetest as
well as one of the most pure. When she first meets Gru, Agnes immediately forms
an attachment to him, trusting him whole-heartedly despite her sisters still
having doubts. She also fully trusts the Minions and treats them well, telling them thank you
after they get her a homemade unicorn toy. Though she doesn’t grow or develop much over
the course of the film series, it could be argued that she doesn’t really need to. While
she is a bit naive about some things, like the existence of unicorns, Agnes can be quite
mature about other things. In the secondmovie, when Gru dressed up as a fairy princess
for her birthday party, she let him know that while she knew it was him, she still
appreciated his efforts. Then, in the third movie, after learning that Gru and Lucy had lost their
jobs, Agnes was willing to sell her beloved unicorn plushie just to help the family
raise money. While she hasn’t done as much in the way of heroic deeds compared to other
characters, we really can’t deny that she has a pure heart and truly deserves
the Gold Medal of Good. In second place, we have Lucy, the super-spy
extraordinaire and eventual wife and mother to Gru and the Girls. Lucy is tough
but quirky. She’s pretty excitable when it comes to her job, but she’s also quite caring
and kind. When she sees that Gru is on an awful date and is about to be humiliated,
she tranquilizes his date. Maybe not the most morally correct response but, hey, Gru
definitely appreciated it. As a member of the Anti-Villain League, she’s naturally very
much on the side of good, even convincing Gru to join AVL with her and fight off other
villains. She also helps Gru open up, being a good listener as well as supportive. Lucy also tries
her best to be a good mother to the girls, and although we see her making mistakes -
like forcing Margo to dance with a boy and accidentally getting her engaged - she always
tries to correct these mistakes and will not hesitate to stand up for her girls and
protect them from danger. As far as the heroes of this series go, we feel there’s
no one more heroic than Lucy. Following her, we have Margo. Out of the
three sisters, Margo was the most skeptical of Gru, and would often be the one to push
him into doing what she and her sisters wanted, being snarky when he tried to tell
her the rules of the house and refusing to do his cookie scheme until he took them to their
dance class. But, after Gru rescued them from Vector and proved that he could be a
good dad, Margo definitely came around. She can be the most mature and level-headed out
of her sisters but, given that she’s still a pre-teen, she has her moments of immaturity.
Even so, she’s protective of her younger sisters, often leading them out of trouble
and caring deeply about them and their parents.
Next, we have the last of the sisters, Edith. Definitely the most mischievous and the
most spunky of the three. In fact, out of all the girls, she’s
the most likely to follow her father’s villainous footsteps. In the first
movie, after Gru destroys the carnival game, Agnes wants him to destroy other games
just for fun, and in the second film, she’s actively training to be a ninja and Gru has
to remind her not to kill anyone. That was proooobably meant as a joke, but still. Like
Margo, she can sometimes be a bit bratty and snarky. She’s seen playing pranks on
Dru’s butler and likes to sometimes tease and scare her sisters, but thankfully it never
gets to the point of her straight-up bullying them. In fact, when Agnes finds a one-horned
goat in the third movie and believes that it's a unicorn, Edith decides to let her believe
that, not wanting to burst her bubble. While her tendency to enjoy violence and her
father’s weapons is a bit concerning, she only ever fights for her family, which
definitely makes her a good guy in our eyes. Finishing up the main family, we have Gru.
Probably the character in the series with the most complicated morality scale, to the
point where depending on which deeds you focus on, so could make a case for him
to be placed in ANY of our categories. He happily starts out as a villain, and has been
a villain since he was 8, after stealing an already stolen crown from Scarlet Overkill.
Since then, he’s tried to make a name for himself as a villain, stealing landmarks
from Vegas and New York and eventually trying to steal the moon. He also casually does evil
in his day-to-day life, like freezing people just to make things more convenient for
himself when he gets coffee. Although he treats his minions decently, Gru tended to
use people for his own means - like when he was willing to adopt a trio of little girls
just to use as pawns for a scheme. This is all pretty awful, but throughout the series,
we see Gru develop and grow as both a character and a father. Once he starts to care
about his daughters, Gru not only protects them from harm, but does everything a good
father should do - from playing with them and making them personalized breakfasts
to comforting and encouraging them when they’re sad. Gru is even willing to stop being
a villain for his daughter’s sake, and later fully joins the Anti-Villain League. So far,
he’s managed to stop and defeat three villains - not bad for a former baddie. Even so, as
much good as he’s done and as much love he has for his family, Gru can still do some
morally ambiguous things. He can still be a bit of a jerk and pretty rude towards strangers
or people he doesn’t care about. But even so, he refused to return to villainy in the third
movie - not out of any moral reason, but because he didn’t want his family to get
caught up in that dangerous lifestyle. Overall, Gru has changed a ton, and while he
may not be the most pure or heroic guy, he’s still a good dad and husband who is trying
his best not to be so ‘despicable’ these days. Wrapping up the good, next is Silas Ramsbottom.
Silas is the head of the Anti-Villain League, an organization that primarily
focuses on stopping supervillains from causing massive devastation with their schemes. That
in itself is a pretty heroic thing, but how is Silas as a person. Well, while the work
he does is good, Silas is often a bit condescending and somewhat of a pompous
jerk. He makes fun of Gru's jam and jellies business and when he tells Gru that Silas
that Lucy is being reassigned to Australia, he does it in a pretty harsh and cold way.
Granted, Silas probably didn’t know about Gru’s feelings for Lucy yet, but still. What keeps
Silas out of the Grey Area is that he only ever acts this way towards Gru - which, given Gru’s
history, is a bit understandable. However, we never see him act this way towards Lucy
or any of the other AVL agents, and while we may not see him out in the field stopping
villains, running a whole agency is nothing to sneeze at. So, we feel he
does enough to rank in the Good. That does it for the good guys, now it’s time
to delve into the more neutral. This is the Grey Area.
Starting off this section, we have Dru in a spot that we’re sure would disappoint him.
Simply put, Dru is a wannabe villain. Having grown up with their villainous father, all Dru
wants is to be great like his father was. Unfortunately, when it comes to pulling off evil
schemes, he’s a bit too dopey to be a real threat. When he and Gru start to bond, he
tricks Gru into stealing a diamond for evil’s sake instead of returning it, and tries to push
his brother into being evil again despite Gru’s insisting that he doesn’t want to be evil
anymore. This is what causes a brief falling out between them. Thankfully, Dru steps up
when his brother and nieces are in danger, and he even destroys Balthazar Bratt's giant
robot to save Gru. Although he still insists on being a supervillain in the end, he and Gru
are friendly with each other despite now being on opposite sides, viewing the whole
thing as a sort of ‘cat-and-mouse’ game rather than anything serious. Because of his
happy-go-lucky nature and his lack of success when it comes to actual villainy, we’re
tentatively putting him in the grey, and are hopeful that, even as a technical villain, he
can remain a decent guy. Next, we’re ranking all of the Minions.
Now we know that there have been several named Minions, with three of them even taking
a starring role in the spinoff movie. Still, while some may be a bit more innocent while
others are a bit more bratty, they all have similar enough personalities and motives
that we feel we should group them together. The Minions are, well, Minions! All they want
is to serve the most evil person they can find and help them cause destruction.
Unfortunately, they have a bad habit of accidentally killing their masters, with
Scarlet and Gru being the only ones to survive. Funnily enough, Gru has also brought out
their good side. The Minions show kindness and protectiveness towards Gru and the Girls,
and seem to truly want to help them and make them happy. Still, these guys can be
pretty chaotic and destructive, and unlike Gru who has firmly turned his back away from
evil, the Minions sometimes miss doing evil and even briefly leave him because of this desire
in the third movie. Given how child-like the Minions are and how easily they can do
good OR evil depending on their mood or the person they’re trying to save/defeat, we
can’t really call them straight-up villains. As far as we’re concerned, these guys are
practically the definition of chaotic neutral. Keeping in line with Gru’s henchmen, we have
Dr. Nefario. Like the Minions, Dr. Nefario is more focused on evil than Gru is. Unlike
the Minions, however, who soften up to the Girls, Nefario only ever seemed to see
them as nuisances. When he thought that Gru was getting too attached and was better
off without them, he actually called the orphanage to take the girls away. While he
did help Gru get them back in the end and now considers the girls part of the family,
he never apologized for this. In the second movie, he quits working for Gru, again feeling
unsatisfied in his work and frustrated that Gru now cares more about being a father
than a villain. When he teams up with El Macho and agrees to help him take over the
world by creating a serum that makes the Minions go rabid. Thankfully, Nefario once
again realizes his mistake and creates an antidote for the serum, helping the Gru family
save the day. Although it’s clear that he cares about Gru and tries to stand by him and make things right, that doesn’t really
excuse all the wrong that he’s done. We can’t put him in the Bad Tier, since he could
certainly be a lot more heartless, but we feel that he’s still fairly far from being a good guy.
In what may be an unconventional pick, we’re ranking The Nelsons next. In the Minions
spinoff movie, the Nelsons are the ones who pick the Minions up when they’re trying to
hitchhike to Villain-Con. Being a family of villains themselves, the Nelsons do fun family
activities like robbing banks and getting into car chases with police, even actively
shooting missiles at them! So, as self-proclaimed villains, what keeps them from being
in the Bad Tier? Well, similarly to Gru, though they may do bad things, they’re still an
openly loving family and care about each other, like when Mr. and Mrs. Nelson comfort
their daughter Tina for accidentally tripping the alarm during a robbery instead of
scolding her for it. The Nelsons are also very kind towards the Minions, not only offering
them a ride but also fresh apple slices, and when Scarlet orders the capture of the
Minions, they're the only villains that don't go after them. The dad even tells the Minions
to run for it. We still can’t exactly call them ‘good’ characters given that they actively
commit crimes, but when compared to other villains on this list - ones who are truly
heartless - they’re definitely the best of the bad.
On the very edge of grey, we’re placing Herb Overkill, husband to Scarlet Overkill. While
Scarlet is the one committing the crimes, Herb is the supportive accomplice and
inventor, providing his wife and the Minions with all the gadgets they could ever need.
Herb is a loving and doting husband to Scarlet, never being jealous of her success and
always supporting her and telling her how much he admires her. He’s also friendly with
the Minions, and even when he’s ordered to torture them, he ends up playing around and
having fun with them. Really, while it can be said that he does enable Scarlet’s evil
deeds and the inventions he creates are truly destructive in the wrong hands, Herb is
really too nice of a guy to be labeled as bad, always seen as laid back and chill.
Finally, we’ve come to the truly villainous and the wicked. These characters are the
Bad to Evil. As awful as she can be, we have to put Marlena
(Gru’s Mother) on the lower end of bad. Compared to Gru and Lucy, Marlena was a
pretty awful parent. At best, she was harsh, and at worse, she was emotionally abusive.
Marlena never seemed to support or encourage Gru, always criticizing him and
making Gru feel like he had to impress her. Even when Gru is all grown up, her attitude
towards him never really changes. She’s either criticizing and vaguely insulting
him, or ignoring him to spend time with her various exercise instructors. What’s worse is
for his whole life, she never told him that he had a twin brother. What keeps her from
being put any lower is that, while she wasn’t that great of a parent, she seems to be a
decent grandmother towards the girls in the one scene she shares with them. She also told
Gru at the end of the first movie that he was a good parent, though not as good as
her. It’s not much, but it’s something. Next is Miss Hattie, the head of the orphanage.
Like with Marlena, it’s not any good side that keeps Miss Hattie from the top, but
rather everyone else on this list is somehow much worse. Miss Hattie rules her
orphanage with an iron fist. She’s cruel, condescending, bossy and is constantly
reminding the girls that she doesn’t even LIKE children, only seeing the orphans she takes
care of as a means to sell her cookies. When they don’t sell enough cookies, she
sticks them in a “Box of Shame”. She also seems to taunt the girls hoping for an
adopted family. When Agnes asks if anyone’s come in to adopt them, Miss Hattie tells
her no in the harshest way possible. This woman doesn’t have any nice sides, and what
truly makes her frustrating is that she never even gets punished for being such an
awful person. But, while we wish we could put her higher up, we must acknowledge
that although Miss Hattie isn’t winning any humanitarian awards anytime, at least she’s
never tried to kill people or take over the world. We’re ranking El Macho next. Thought to be
dead after going out in the most manly way possible, El Macho has both brains and
brawns and has been called a “complete powerhouse of a man”. He faked his death
and went undercover as a restaurant owner just so he could plan his biggest scheme
yet, trying to take over the world with rabid Minions, and was even smart enough to
frame another person in the mall when he suspected the Anti-Villain League was on
his tail. In his youth, he’d frequently rob armored trucks, being strong enough to
easily lift them up, and focused on being as manly and ‘macho’ as possible. Despite all
this, El Macho is actually a fairly decent guy. As a civilian, he’s friendly towards Gru
and his daughters, consoled Gru when he was sad about Lucy leaving, and even seems like
a pretty alright father to his own son, supporting his and Margo’s relationship with
each other. He also loves his pet chicken. Unfortunately, most of this good will goes
straight out the window when he sics his rabid Minions on Gru after Gru refuses his
offer to help him take over the world and ties Lucy to a rocket that’s set to go into a volcano. It just goes to show that even a nice
villain is still a villain at heart. Up next is the villainous Vector. He’s nerdy
and immature, priding himself on being a so-called ‘modern’ villain thanks to his
extraordinary tech. He absolutely LOVES to show-off, and seems to do things like steal
the Pyramid of Giza just to brag about it. He’s also not afraid to steal ideas from other
villains like Gru, making him seem all the more petty. This extends to strangers, given
that he was willing to vaporize the girls for trespassing when all they were trying to do
was sell cookies. What makes him cross the line from annoying antagonist to a true threat
is when he kidnaps the girls in exchange for the shrunken moon. He then refuses to
return the girls, and nearly causes Margo to fall to her death. Unlike El Macho, he
doesn’t seem to have any good sides. However, given how dumb and oblivious he can
sometimes be and how threatening our next two entries are, we have to put him at number three.
In second place, we have Balthazar Bratt. Balthazar started out as a former child star.
He played a child villain in a very popular 80s show called "Evil Bratt." But, when he hit
puberty and was no longer cute and charming, he became a has-been at 15. So, as a
means to get revenge on the world and fans that turned against him, Bratt became a
real supervillain. Surprisingly, Balthazar was actually pretty good at being a villain,
becoming the AVL’s Most Wanted. Using his 80s themed gadgets, we see him take out
all the security on a yacht, outsmart and humiliate Gru, and steal an extremely valuable
diamond - with the implication that this is about on par with all of his other schemes
and grand escapes. Despite his goofy appearance, Balthazar rivals nearly every other
villain in the franchise in terms of danger and threat levels. Later on, after Gru and Dru
steal his diamond, Balthazar tops himself by not only kidnapping the girls, but
unleashing a giant robot to terrorize Hollywood before lifting it up into space. Yeah, this
guy is pretty nuts. He also nearly kills Gru and Dru, and is only defeated when one of his
weapons is used against him. Balthazar easily could have been named our Most Evil
character. However, despite all his success, we feel that his bratty personality and petty
motivations make him just a tiny-bit less evil and impressive than our number one pick.
And speaking of whichWe’re giving Scarlet Overkill our Gold Metal of Evil. One
of the greats, Scarlet was nearly the Queen of Villainy, if not for the Minions
and later a young Gru taking her out once and for all. Being known as the world’s number
1 villain, her talent for evil is obvious, with her having started an entire criminal
empire by the time she turned 13. Though she can put on a nice and sweet facade, Scarlet
is extremely ambitious and will do whatever it takes to reach her goals. This includes
stealing, taking hostages, and attempted murder. She also hates to be shown up.
Although the Minions technically did what she asked of them, stealing the Queen’s Crown,
the fact that Bob was made ruler and ultimately stole her glory was enough to
infuriate her and make her want to see the trio of Minions tortured and killed. Even before
this, she heavily implied that her kindness towards the Minions was conditional, and
if they did anything wrong or stupid, she would “blow them off the face of the Earth”.
Like El Macho, Scarlet does have one good quality in that she has someone she cares
unconditionally about, her husband Herb. But even with this small hint of goodness, after
looking at all the success Scarlet has had as a villain, how much destruction she caused
in her life, and all the danger she put the Minions through in an attempt to kill
them once and for all, we just have to rank Scarlet Overkill as the Most Evil
character in the Despicable Me franchise. But who do you think the most Good and
Evil characters are? Let us know in the comment section below. Be sure to hit that
notification bell and binge our Good to Evil playlist. Where we break down the morality
of the characters in your favorite cartoons, shows and movies. But most
importantly, stay wicked!
