Your Villain Era is Showing
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Dana Hatch is renowned for employing a variety of coaching methods to assist leaders in overcoming their struggles and achieving the next level of success.
We’re taught early how to identify the villain. They’re the one who disrupts the story. The one who doesn’t play by the rules. The one who wants something they’re not supposed to want and is willing to go against the grain to get it. The message is clear. The villain is selfish, difficult, doesn’t belong, too much.
The hero, on the other hand? Easy to root for. They sacrifice. They accommodate. They do what’s expected of them, even when it costs them something. They’re likable. Digestible. Safe.
We don’t just learn this once. We watch it over and over again. Look at any Disney film you grew up with. The villain is rarely subtle. Ursula is loud, unapologetic, and takes up space. Maleficent doesn’t soften herself to be more palatable. Cruella de Vil is obsessive, intense, and completely uninterested in being liked. They don’t ask for permission. They don’t explain themselves. They don’t make themselves easier to handle. Because of that, they’re framed as the problem.
But look a little closer, and it gets, less clean. Ursula? Yes, dramatic. Yes, chaotic. But she’s also the only one in The Little Mermaid who actually names what’s happening. She warns Ariel, very clearly, that giving up her voice for a man might not end the way she thinks it will. Somehow, that’s the character we’re supposed to question.
Maleficent? Painted as bitter. Vengeful. Dangerous. But in Maleficent, she’s protecting her land and her people, and then gets betrayed in a way that quite literally costs her part of herself. Her reaction? Accountability. Boundaries. A refusal to pretend it didn’t happen. Which, apparently, is grounds for lifelong villain status.
Cruella de Vil? We’ll set aside the whole fur situation for a second, because, ethically, not her strongest moment. But even she wasn’t exactly subtle about her beliefs. Loud. Eccentric. Completely uninterested in being chosen. At one point, she says, “More good women have been lost to marriage than to war, famine, disease and disaster.” Which is a wild thing to say in a children’s movie. Yet, it’s not entirely wrong.
Because underneath the dramatics, the exaggeration, the theatrics, there’s a pattern. But if you strip away the theatrics, the exaggerated evil, the dramatized extremes, what’s actually left? A character who refuses to be ignored, refuses to be dismissed, refuses to shrink to fit the narrative. Someone who steps outside the role they were given and gets punished for it.
Because every story depends on one thing. The villain has to be wrong. Not necessarily because they are, but because if they weren’t, the entire structure of the story would fall apart. That narrative? It doesn’t stay in movies. It follows you. Into conversations. Into relationships. Into the way you learn to show up in the world.
Because somewhere along the way, the message got translated. To be the hero, you must be agreeable, accommodating, and easy to like. Whatever you do, don’t be the villain. Even if that means abandoning parts of yourself to stay in the role.
Because if you look closely, the villain was never created in a vacuum. There’s a reason these characters feel so familiar. There’s a pattern we’ve been watching for a long time, one that quietly teaches us something about people who step outside the role they were given.
“The history of villains is often more compelling than that of heroes because monsters are not born, they are created. Shaped by rejection, by pain, by misunderstanding. A hero is defined by what they do, but a villain is often the result of what was done to them.”
That’s the part we don’t talk about. Because if the villain is shaped by their environment, then the story isn’t just about them. It’s about the system that needed them to be the problem.
The reaction was never about your behavior
It just looks like it is. On the surface, it’s about what you said. How you said it. The tone. The timing. The delivery. But underneath that? It’s about what your behavior interrupts. When you stop over-explaining, you remove people’s ability to negotiate with you. When you hold a boundary, you change the terms of access. When you say what you actually think, you disrupt the illusion that everything is fine.
That creates friction. Not because you did something wrong, but because the dynamic no longer works the way it used to. You didn’t break anything. You just stopped participating in what was never being said out loud. As long as you’re manageable, you’re “good.” The moment you’re not, you’re the villain.
Your “Villain Era” removes their access to your time, your energy, your emotional labor, your ability to smooth things over. When people are used to having that, they notice when it’s gone. Sometimes subtly. Sometimes not. But almost always, they’ll try to make sense of it. The easiest way to do that?
Rewrite you. You’re not setting a boundary. You’re being difficult. You’re not being direct. You’re being cold. You’re not being honest. You’re being harsh. Because if they can make it about your behavior, they don’t have to look at what changed for them.
A tale as old as time. The person at work who does their job well consistently, without drama. They show up. They perform. They deliver. But they don’t stay late every night. They don’t take on work that isn’t theirs. They don’t say yes to everything just to prove they care.
They push back. Respectfully. Clearly. Without over-explaining. Almost immediately, the language shifts. They’re “not a team player.” “Not bought in.” “Hard to work with.”
Not because they’re underperforming, but because they stopped overextending. The expectations didn’t change. The access did. Instead of questioning the system, the workload, the pressure, and the quiet expectation to give more than what’s reasonable, the label gets placed on the person who refused to play along.
Or in the friend group. There’s always that one dynamic everyone silently accepts. The comment that lands wrong. The behavior that’s just inconsiderate enough to notice, but not “bad enough” to call out.
So no one does. Everyone adjusts. Laughs it off. Moves past it. Keeps the energy light. Until someone doesn’t. Someone finally says, “Hey, that actually doesn’t sit right.”
The room shifts. Not toward the behavior. Toward the person who named it. Now they’re too sensitive. Too serious. Making it a bigger deal than it is. Not because they’re wrong, but because they disrupted something everyone else agreed not to touch. Just like that, the focus moves. Away from the behavior that needed to be addressed and onto the person who made it impossible to ignore.
That’s why the villain narrative works so well. It simplifies everything. It turns a shift in dynamics into a character flaw. It protects the system without questioning it. Because if you’re the problem, everything else gets to stay the same. But here’s the part they don’t tell you. The villain is usually the only one who ends up free.
The villain gets the real happily ever after, and no one talks about it
Not immediately, not without friction. But eventually, they’re the only one not negotiating with themselves in every room they walk into. Because when you stop performing, you stop carrying things that were never yours to hold.
You’re not replaying conversations, wondering if you said too much or not enough. You’re not editing your personality mid-sentence to make it land better. You’re not walking away from interactions trying to piece together which version of you just showed up.
That constant low-grade tension? Gone. Not because everything is perfect, but because everything is honest. Honesty is a different kind of relief.
You say what you mean. You mean what you say. You don’t spend the next six hours managing how it was received. You stop outsourcing your sense of stability to other people’s reactions. That changes everything.
The energy you get back is noticeable, not dramatic. Not in a loud, dramatic way, in the quiet ways that actually matter. You have more capacity, more clarity, more space in your own head because you’re not constantly calculating how to be perceived. You stop overcommitting, stop over-giving, stop over-functioning in places that never required that much of you to begin with. What’s left isn’t less of you. It’s just not diluted.
This is the part people don’t want to admit
The villain isn’t miserable. They’re not isolated, bitter, or spiraling the way the narrative would suggest. They’re selective. Intentional. Unavailable for things that don’t align.
For people who are still performing, that looks like detachment. It looks like not caring. It looks like something must be wrong. Because if nothing is wrong, then it forces a harder question. Why am I still doing all of this?
The villain stops playing a game everyone else is still exhausted by:
constant
smoothing
adjusting
anticipating
managing
Once you see it, you can’t unsee it. You start to notice how many of your interactions aren’t actually honest. How much of connection is maintained through subtle self-abandonment. You realize you don’t want to participate in that anymore. Not because you’re better. Because you’re done.
That’s where the freedom actually is
Not in being liked. Not in being easy. Not in being understood by everyone in the room. In being able to exist without constantly negotiating yourself to maintain it. In not needing to explain why something doesn’t work for you. In not needing permission to opt out of dynamics that require you to be smaller than you are. Yes, that might cost you access.
They’ll call it your villain era. But the villain was just the one who stopped negotiating themselves to be liked and finally got to live.
So tell me, are you still telling yourself someone else’s fairy tale, or are you ready to become the “villain” of your own story?
Read more from Dana Hatch
Dana Hatch, Executive and Neurolinguistics Coach
As a certified executive and neurolinguistics coach with over 15 years of experience in business consulting, I bring a unique blend of psychological insight and practical business acumen to help leaders and organizations achieve transformative results. My approach combines cutting-edge coaching techniques with deep industry knowledge to unlock potential, drive performance, and foster sustainable growth.
