Friends from Villains Wiki, I have considered to post this proposal blog a long time ago about distinguising the line between Primary and Main antagonist, since the word "Primary" might be important for a story with several main villains. After going through some disputes, I decide to post this blog to share my point of view. I guess it would avoid some dispute or confusion in the future, especially for the new users in the Villains Wiki.
This is only my personal opinions on the villainy roles, and there's no intentions to offend anyone. Needless roles like "teritary" and "hidden but true main antagonist" are excluded. Starting from Minor to Final (SPOILERS AHEAD):
- Minor Antagonist, or simply Antagonist - For One-Shot villains that only appears in one or two episodes, like some monsters of the week we saw in TV series.
- Major Antagonists are usually recurring villains below secondary antagonist. They usually don't overshadow the roles of Secondary Antagonists, let along Main Antagonists, whether they're independent or not.
- Secondary Antagonists are usually the right-hand of the Big Bad, or acting either with the Big Bad as his partner or independently but is inferior to the story's Big Bad.
- The Main Antagonist - This, with a "the" before "main", only applies when a story has a solo villain (e.g. Tai Lung from Kung Fu Panda) or only one Big Bad above an ensembled villain cast (Lord Shen from Kung Fu Panda 2). For a series with several segments, this is often done with the Big Bad of the entire series (e.g. James Moriarty is the main antagonist in the entire Sherlock Holmes series, since all other criminals only appeared in one story each and are mostly generic villains, while Moriarty has a bigger role than all of them as Holmes' archenemy) or franchise instead of a segment of the story (that often goes with arc villains like stated below), unless there're villains who can rival these Big Bads.
- One of the Main Antagonists - This applies to a story with Big Bad Ensemble (two or more villains sharing the equal role of villainy) or Big Bad Duumirative (two villains working together in a equal role). If there's one villain who overshadows the rest, that villain would be the Primary Villain.
- Arc Villains in a series should be labled as "the main antagonist of XX Arc/Season" instead of one of the main antagonists of the whole story, unless they have bigger roles across the story. Same things goes to One-Shot Villains.
- Examples include:
- Arc Villains: Baron Kelvin is an antagonist in Black Butler and the main antagonist in Circus Arc.
- Seasonal Villains: Dick Roman is the main antagonist in Season 7 of Supernatural.
- One-Shot Villains: Dick Hardly is an One-Shot antagonist of Powerpuff Girls and the main antagonist in the episode "Knock it Off".
- Examples include:
- A Primary Antagonist is an upgrade version of main antagonist. This kind of villain will be the MOST IMPORTANT ONE among the main antagonists. He/she has a plan even bigger than any other main threats to the protagonists, and/or is hiding and manipulating every strings in his/her palm. Usually, this overlaps Bigger Bads.
- Examples:
- Kamen Rider Series are met with this kind of Big Bad Ensembles/Duumiratives more than once.
- Showa Era Riders: The Great Leader of Shocker is the primary antagonist of Showa Kamen Rider since after his first defeat, he still returns in several reincarnations and acts as the main antagonist in most of the following Showa series, while it even influenced some segments in Heisei Era (particularly Decade).
- In Kamen Rider Drive, while Roidmude Excuetive Heart, Freeze, Brain and Medic are main antagonists due to their large and important roles in the story, Tenjuro Banno is the primary antagonist of Drive, since Banno is the one who created Roidmudes and made them evil with his torture and corrupting influence, causing the entire series' bad events from the beginning.
- In Kamen Rider Build, there are five main antagonists. However, while Night Rogue, Juzaburo Namba and the two Prime Ministers are merely main antagonists who has their own agendas after the Sky Wall Disaster, Blood Stalk is the primary antagonist who acts as the cataylst that started the Sky Wall.
- In Persona 4, Tohru Adachi and Izanami are both antagonists, but Izanami is the one who gave Adachi and the Protagonist their Persona power, and thus Izanami is the primary antagonist.
- Same thing in Persona 5, as Yaldabaoth and Masayoshi Shido are both main antagonists in the game, but Yaldabaoth has an even bigger plan that includes Shido's conspiracy, which the Malevolent God used as a part of his "game" to manipulate the Phantom Theives and Shido. Thus, Yaldabaoth should be labeled as primary.
- Kamen Rider Series are met with this kind of Big Bad Ensembles/Duumiratives more than once.
- Examples:
- A Central Antagonist (also known as Overall Main Antagonist and Overarching Antagonist) doesn't have to always appear in every entries of their franchise, but they have influence in almost every segments in the story, either directly or indirectly. Some of them are even beyond primary antagonists and even serve as the hero's arch-nemesis.
- For example, Albert Wesker is the central antagonist in Resident Evil video game series, since he not only caused many bad things in the series when he is still alive, but also showed posthumous effects after his demise in Resident Evil 5. A case in point, his son, Jake Muller, one of the main characters in Resident Evil 6, was captured by Neo-Umbrella because Jake had the identical blood to his father, and Jake was one of the people used by Carla Radames to create Enhanced C-Virus. In Resident Evil 7, there's also implications that Wesker was collaborating with The Connections and was indirectly responsible for Eveline's creation.
- Final Antagonist (if it's not a video game, where the said villain can be labeled as Final Boss) can only be labeled when this villain is either not a Big Bad of the entire story (e.g. Sigma Circular and Sora Takigawa) unless it's a Big Bad Ensemble without any of them taking an overarching role (e.g. Acnologia).
P.S. Sometimes, if there's necessity, you can add "be considered as main/primary antagonist of the XX series" if the main villain's role is vague.