Gen Z Cannot Handle a TV Villain

Hi cuties.

It’s no secret that I consider myself a YA genre aficionado. Whether it’s reading Emily Henry books, and watching Carley Fortune book to series adaptions or joining the rest of the internet in obsessing over Sterling Point last week — if there’s something happening in the YA space, I’m locked in.

A few months ago, I went as far as to make a video sharing my theory that Prime Video is the new CW. By now, this is not a hot take. It’s pretty evident that Prime Video has staked it’s claim in the YA space.

That being said, from Prime Video and beyond, there is a new theme showing up in the YA genre that I can’t seem to shake.

One major difference that I’m noticing from Millennial YA culture to Gen Z:

Gen Z can’t seem to handle a villain.

Hear me out, because this observation isn’t coming out of nowhere. If we look back at the last few major YA series and films, there is a common trope acting as a through line:

Love triangle, often two brothers, and that’s it. That’s the conflict.

From The Summer I Turned Pretty, Every Year After, to My Life With The Walter Boys and Sterling Point, we’re being served love triangle after love triangle, instead of expanding outside of the narrative. And what tickles my curiosity even more, is that within these love triangles, our MFC is forced to decide between two sides of the same nice guy coin.

Everyone is a good guy.

And after a few streams, my old ass is out here asking: Where’s the villain? Longing for the MMC that you despise or better yet, root for, in spite of his nasty nature.

We were so lucky as Millennials to have a multitude of tropes to our YA stories: Bad boy from the wrong side of the tracks, rich but evil pretty boy that the girl’s family loves, cutie nerd who’s charm creeps up on you.

And yes, we also had the brother’s love triangle trope — Vampire Diaries you will always be famous! — but even within it, we still had a deeper, unlikeable, complexity to these characters, that I just don’t see anymore.

It’s left me wondering when we lost the desire for these types of characters? And going even deeper, why we lost them?

Where is the Gen Z Chuck Bass? Damon Salvatore? Luke Ward?

Sadly, I don’t have the answers to these questions and that’s a Substack for another day. But at a high leve, I think we’ve entered an era without them because this generation has never been taught that it’s okay to dislike a character or have them be imperfect and yes, even still root for them.

Did we ever need to take it as far as, in my opinion, the most unlikeable character of all time: Oliver Trask? NO but I’m glad we did because we still got to experience an Oliver and recognize that he is not someone we want our MFC to end up with.

We got to see our MFC (Marissa Cooper wly) be unlikeable for a moment, and learn from the mistake of standing up for his insane ass.

And in having these characters be so unlikeable, we doubled down on rooting for our MMC or even better [see: Chuck Bass] allowed these villainous characters to evolve, change and be worthy of the women they were pining after.

Will I always be seated for a love triangle, brothers or otherwise? Absolutely. But am I craving fresh variety, or I guess a return to what I once knew, as it relates to my YA stories? Also yes.

Gen Z deserves a trope shake up. They deserve an iconic YA villain. And I think with a little coaxing they can handle it too.