NOTE: This proposal is only about Charmcaster's canon version (also known as Prime version), since neither her version of "Time Heals"'s timeline neither the reboot version was considered Inconsistently Heinous.
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... *sigh* Let's... try... again...
What's the work?
The "Ben 10" franchise is about a boy who uses an extraterrestrial device in the shape of a wristwatch, which is renewed or changed in each series. It is called the Omnitrix, which allows him to transform into various alien creatures.
Who's the candidate?
| “ | You don't know anything! You're not even a real sorceress. You're an... an idiot servant! | „ |
| ~ Charmcaster to Gwen after discover that this one have her charms book. |
Hope, better known as Charmcaster, is one of the major antagonists in the franchise. She is a powerful human sorceress from Legerdomain, and the niece and former apprentice of Hex, as well Gwen Tennyson's archenemy.
Her evil ranking
What makes her heinous?
Ben 10
Well, for starters, in her first appearance, in the episode "Tough Luck", she attacked many prison guards to free her uncle Hex from his cell. She helped him try to steal the Key of Bezel to recreate the Amulets of Bezel, knowing that he intended to use them to take over the world. She also tricked the Tennyson family into believing she was good to take the key from them and betrayed them to deliver the item to Hex. It was enough to make Gwen resent her greatly. As if that wasn't enough, when Hex was succeeding in recreating the amulets, she betrays him to keep their power all to herself, even though he is her family! And the only one left. Fortunately, both were defeated at the end of the episode.
When she reappears in "A Change of Face", she attempts to switch bodies with Ben to gain access to the Omnitrix, terrorizing the city with explosions and fires to attract him, which leaves several people in danger. When she accidentally switches bodies with Gwen, Charmcaster accuses her of being... Charmcaster... and has Gwen - a 10-year-old girl, sent to jail. She deceives Max and Ben for the rest of the episode, and when Gwen escapes and returns, she tries again to switch bodies with Ben, and fortunately fails.
Charmcaster's final appearance in the Original Series was in two-parts episode "Ben 10 vs. the Negative 10" as part of the Negative 10, villains reunited with only proposite of kill Ben and his family. Unlike her teammates, however, Charmcaster was solely focused on defeating Gwen (unlike Ben, as everyone else was). She was also shown to have a small rivalry with fellow Negative 10, Rojo. Eventually, she and the rest of her team were beaten and arrested.
Ben 10: Alien Force
She returns only in the (bad) third season, on the episode "In Cham's Way", when she sends her stone golems to kill Ben, Gwen, and Kevin. When she realizes that Gwen and Kevin are in a relationship dispute, she disguises herself as a girl whose name I don't care enough to remember, dates with Kevin, and brainwashes him through a kiss, almost like Poison Ivy. Then she ordered him to take Gwen to the planetarium before midnight, where she could drain Gwen's magical and Anodite powers, which she manages to do through a painful process for poor Gwen. After being tricked by Kevin into thinking that Gwen still has her powers, she returns to kill her, using a spell to bring a Mr. Smoothy sign to life, as well as controlling a parked van to kill Kevin and Ben, while her Rock Monsters tried to annihilate Gwen. Gwen challenged her to a hand-to-hand fight, which Charmcaster indifferently refused, opting to kill Gwen with a mana bolt instead. However, Gwen turned the tables on Charmcaster by reciting one of her spells and reabsorbing her stolen Anodite powers from Charmcaster, much to Charmcaster's horror. Powerless, Charmcaster received aid from her Rock Monsters to make a last stand against Gwen. Charmcaster was finally defeated after Gwen summoned a dimensional vortex that sucked her and her Rock Monsters away.
Ben 10: Ultimate Alien
She returns in "Hit 'Em Where They Live", joining Vulkanus and Zombozo to simply KIDNAPP Ben's mom! Happily, she was defeated by Kevin, who almost caused a rollercoaster to crash on her (Charmcaster escaped before getting hit).
In "Where the Magic Happens", when Gwen finds her, she immediately starts trying to kill her, even though Gwene was assuring her that she just wanted to talk, and only stopped when she mentioned Ledgerdomain.
In "Enemy of My Frenemy", Charmcaster become corrupted with power during her time fighting for Legerdomain and relapsed into her evil ways when the denizens she had fought to free from Addwaitya turned on her and fought a massive civil war to decide who would become the new ruler; a war which Charmcaster won. Building a device that drains the souls out of living things, she enacted a plan to drain the life force of her world in order to perform a ritual that would bring her father Spellbinder back to life. Ben, Gwen, and Kevin attempted to stop her, but their souls were sucked out as well. When Spellbinder was resurrected, he revealed that Charmcaster's real name is Hope. Horrified at the lengths his daughter had gone to in order to bring him back, he said he couldn't stay at the cost of so many souls. Telling his daughter that he loved her, he faded away, making the ritual null and void and returning all souls back to where they belonged. Charmcaster broke down crying, not knowing what to do with her life now. Out of pity, Ben, Gwen, and Kevin agreed not to arrest the heartbroken Charmcaster and departed from Legerdomain.
In "Couples Retreat", she again tried to kill Gwen out of love for Darkstar (although she gave up in the end when she realized he was using her).
Ben 10: Omniverse
In "Charmed, I'm Sure", she asks Be, Rook and Hobbie for help in retrieving the Alpha Rune, which was with Zs'Skayr, who returned it willingly, as he had already used up most of its power and thought it was useless. Upon retrieving the Alpha Rune, she almost immediately betrays the trio and begins attacking them, though she is thankfully defeated. In Charm School, Charmcaster attended Friedkin University at Hex's word, hoping that the two of them could be closer. However, Charmcaster only came to Friedkin University to obtain a powerful artifact known as the Staff of Ages. Charmcaster's first attempt that getting the Staff of Ages was a failure due to Hex being powerful in his library. However, Charmcaster managed to turn Hex into a totem after impersonating Professor Xagliv. Charmcaster obtained the Staff of Ages from a book in Hex's library but it was soon taken away by Gwen. Charmcaster managed to take back the Staff of Ages and completely overwhelm Gwen due to Charmcaster possessing Hex while in his library. Charmcaster continued to fight Gwen until Ben as Ghostfreak joined in the fight along with Kevin, Rook, and Zed. Charmcaster summoned some rock bats and had them go after Kevin, Rook, and Zed while Charmcaster went after Gwen and Ghostfreak. Charmcaster easily defeated Ghostfreak and sent him flying into the library. However, Charmcaster was then outmatched by Gwen who took back the Hex totem and was more powerful in the library. Charmcaster lost the Staff of Ages and was sent back to Legerdomain.
In Third Time's a Charm, Charmcaster lured Gwen to Legerdomain and turned her into a totem. When she returned to the library at Friedkin University, she learned of Bezel's presence there and tried to take his power. She succeeded when she turned him into a totem, and then attempted to destroy Ben, Rook and Kevin, even transforming into a dragon. Ben and Gwen tricked her into getting turned into a totem and sealed into her own bag, which she declared a temporary setback and vowed revenge. Gwen kept Charmcaster, still inside the bag, in her headquarters and was hopeful that under these circumstances the two of them can finally be friends.
Charmcaster appeared, no longer a totem, as one of the many female contestants vying to marry Ben in The Most Dangerous Game Show. She lost in the third round when she flew across a lava pit only to crashland on a floating rock when a lava bubble burst dangerously close to her. She was then transported to the Null Void along with the other losers, until Ben arrived to set them free. Charmcaster, along with the other girls, helped to save Ben from the Way Bads before returning to Earth to help him face Charles Zenith.
Heinous Standards
Yeah, I know Ben 10 has very high standards and is full of world destroyers, galactic conquerors and blah, blah, blah, but I have reasons why Charmcaster can easily surpass these standards. Let's list her MEHs:
- She's a traitor who, in her first appearance, not only tricked the Tennysons into getting the Bezel Key, but also betrayed her own uncle to get the amulets. This easily makes her over the baseline, but given that betrayal is common in Ben 10, I'll offer more arguments.
- She stealed Gwen's body ( even that accidentally) and tried to do the same with Ben. She also made Gwen be send to jail.
- Brainwashed Kevin to manipulate Gwen. Even if you argue that her brainwashing doesn't seem painful, let's remember that in the same episode, she stole Gwen's magic, and from her screams and weakness, that was clearly a torturous process, but for Charmcaster, it was music to her ears.
- Refused to fight with Gwen in a fair way to kill her with a mana's bolt.
- She simply STOLE THE SOULS of her entire world to revive her father, and did the same to the Alien Force Team. This was basically mass genocide! And before you say that Vilgax did worse, let's remember that Vilgax is a galactic conqueror with combat proficiency, high technological knowledge, robot minions, cybernetic implants and stole artifacts from several worlds. While Charmcaster only has herself and her magic, which she is completely defenseless without. And even comparing her to all the Pure Evils in Ben 10, mass genocide in an entire dimension, plus the death of the three main heroes, would be more than enough for her to pass the Heinous Standards. She is more heinous even that her own uncle, Hex.
- Turned every magic user she encountered into totems. Considering that her bag is a pocket dimension that they cannot leave, she would be condemning them to a fate worse than death, as they would not be able to do anything there.
Even though the competition in Ben 10 is tough, with guys like Vilgax, Zs'Skayr, Driscoll, the Highbreeds, Albedo, Ragnarok, Agreggor, Dagon, Eon, Malware and Maltruant, it still manages to stand out for mass genocide and for trapping magic users in what would be an eternal prison.
What makes her inconsistent?
A lot of things.
The most obvious reason is that she is very tragic. She lost her parents and her dimension to Addwaitya, was forced to run away from her home with her uncle, and grew up in a Juvenile Prison, where she was bullied every day. This made her obsessed with the idea of becoming a great sorceress, not to mention being raised by Hex, who also developed a thirst for power, with him even admitting in Omniverse that she needed a better role model to follow while growing up.
What keeps her from being a Fake Tragic is the fact that she is still very affected by the loss of her father. Her aforementioned mass genocide was done with the intention of bringing him back, and she broke down in tears when he refused to stay alive at the cost of other lives.
She also has a lot of consideration for people.
- According to Derrick J. Wayt, the late art director of Omniverse, although she and Hex have a complicated relationship, to say the least, they still care for each other.
- She also loves her father very much, as previously mentioned.
- She genuinely loved Darkstar when they first fell in love, and only subverted that when she realized he never cared about her.
- Although she hates Gwen, she seems to respect her to some extent. She admits in "Where the Magic Happens" that she was impressed by her natural talent for magic and envied her for it, and from the way the two interacted in the episode, it seemed that deep down she enjoyed the non-hostile time she and Gwen had.
She also seems to have moral agency issues, as in Ultimate Alien, she was mostly corrupted by the Alpha Rune's power, and the same thing happened when she regained it in Omniverse, even though she was genuinely affable towards Ben, Rook, and Hobbie in the episode. In Omniverse, she was also manipulated by Addwaitya, even that she was swearing that was she the one in command.
But ultimately, the main reason Charmcaster can't be Near Pure Evil is because the narrative shows sympathy for her. Ben, Gwen, and Kevin all show feelings of sympathy for her in the Ledgerdomain episodes of Ultimate Alien, and Hex himself expresses sadness for what she's become. Even Gwen, who is her arch-nemesis, expresses sadness for her when she defeats her in Omniverse, rather than celebrating her victory, and expresses a wish that one day they could be friends.
Final veredit?
A easy yes, but what about you? Honestly, I was surprised when I saw she wasn't on this wiki.