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"Mature Content Warning!" |
| “ | Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, or it will consume you. | „ |
| ~ The Widow |
Minerva, better known as The Widow, is one of the two deuteragonists (alongside M.K.) of the AMC series Into the Badlands.
She is one of the Barons of the Badlands, being the ruler of the Butterfly Territory. The Widow's goals differ from the other Barons, as she wishes to end the current system of the Badlands and dismantle the Cog slave trade. She goes to extreme methods and is often extremely hypocritical in her means of achieving her goals, but ultimately she does want to protect the innocent.
She was portrayed by Emily Beecham.
Her Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Her Heinous?[]
- Despite her genuinely noble goal of wanting to change the Badlands for the better, her primary method of achieving this is becoming a Baron, which leads her to effectively becoming another tyrant, and she actively murders those who oppose her, making her highly hypocritical since she commonly criticizes Baron Chau for her "no mercy" philosophy.
- She's a total jerk for most of the series, starting off as initially very sexist towards men (although that is more understandable since it's a result of trauma), insulting people for little to no reason, being ungrateful towards those who have helped her in the past such as Bajie, or putting a bounty on Sunny's head out of sheer spite.
- She makes repeated attempts to turn M.K. into a weapon for herself against the other Barons using his powerful Gift, which involves kidnapping and later torturing him in order to try and get his Gift to activate, this all leads to M.K. eventually becoming a villainous character.
- She is so full of herself and her fighting abilities that she will often stake the success of her mission on being able to take down opponents who are simply too strong for her to defeat, such as Baron Quinn and Sunny, who she believes that she can defeat despite having nearly been killed by both of them in battle on separate occasions.
- She sends young adults to fight for her, training young girls to become Butterfly Clippers and making them fight Quinn's Armadillo Clippers despite the Armadillo's being objectively the most dangerous Clipper force in the Badlands, meaning at times the Widow is sending her Butterflies to their deaths.
- When she is injured by Sunny, she has her Butterflies capture his lover Veil and makes her treat the Widow's injuries. Veil later seeks refugee with her infant son Henry in the Butterfly Territory, but the Widow ends up trading Veil and Henry back to Quinn because she wants Quinn's help in taking down the other Barons.
- After trading Veil and Henry, Tilda renounces the Widow for compromising her ideals, and the Widow responds by beating Tilda and imprisoning her. After Tilda escapes and becomes a vigilante known as "The Iron Rabbit" the Widow tries to have her killed for betraying her.
What Makes Her Inconsistent?[]
- She has a tragic backstory, having lost her father when she was a child only to be abducted and brought to the Abbot Monastery due to her having the Gift. She eventually loses her Gift, is separated from her mentor Bajie, and sold into slavery in the Fox Territory, where she is abused by the Chau family. She forms a romantic connection with the son of the family, Gaius Chau, only for them to be separated and for her to end up in the Butterfly Territory, where she marries the territories Baron, who physically abused and possible raped her as well as explicitly raping her adoptive daughter Tilda. All of this results in her extremism and misandry throughout the series.
- She genuinely does love many people, such as her adoptive daughter Tilda, and while she does attempt to have her killed after Tilda betrays her, it's worth noting that Tilda was also trying to kill her, meaning at that point they were fully against one another. She also does care about Bajie despite her anger towards him for abandoning her as a child, and when she is reunited with Gaius Chau as an adult they end up falling in love and she lets go of her misandry. Once she becomes pregnant by Gaius she considers giving up her position and handing it over to her ally Lydia, as she wants to raise her child in safety and believes that Lydia will be a better leader for the Badlands.
- While she can be a huge jerk she is very affable towards her allies, treating the Clippers in her territory vastly better than the other Barons, for example having a new prosthetic hand created for her new Regent Nathaniel Moon after he lost his hand in battle.
- No matter how extreme she can be, her ultimate goal is a noble one, as she wishes to take down the Cog slave trade and let everyone in the Badlands live free. By going to war with Baron Chau and eventually killing her in battle the Widow finally does achieve this goal and brings peace to the Badlands. Similarly, she leads the war against Pilgrim to prevent him from destroying the Badlands in the name of Azra.
- She feels remorse for many of her worst actions by the end of the series, reconciling with Tilda and Bajie, and even trying to apologize to Sunny for trading Veil. While he admits that he can't truly forgive her, the two of them do eventually end their rivalry since they both have children and do no want to be responsible for creating an orphan. While she does end up killing M.K., she does so because he fatally stabs Tilda and was trying to kill her and Gaius, and after he is dead the Widow apologizes to him for everything, and saying that she hopes he finds peace after death.
Trivia[]
- The Widow is the only Into the Badlands character to be both Inconsistently Heinous and Inconsistently Admirable.
- She is also the only Inconsistently Heinous character to also be a heroic character.
External Links[]
- The Widow on the Heroes Wiki
- The Widow on the Villains Wiki
- The Widow on the Into the Badlands Wiki
- The Widow on the Inconsistently Admirable Wiki
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 Inconsistently Heinous
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The Badlands The Outlands | ||