Much ink has been spilled on the connection between queer people and famous villains. On one hand, much of our identification with fictional baddies can be traced to a particular piece of media history: Due to the censorious Hays Code, which governed film production from the mid-1930s to the late 1960s, a lot of LGBTQ+ representation in the 20th century had to be coded rather than overt, with implied queerness explicitly punished in the text. As a result, the characters who seemed most like us in affect, attire, and sensibility were often depicted as nefarious evildoers who get their comeuppance in the end. Traditional values were (theoretically) being promoted, but in the process, entire generations of queer viewers imprinted on everyone from Dorian Gray to Maleficent. Is it any surprise that we’d often find ourselves siding with characters who have been shunned by society but look absolutely sickening anyway?
As much as we can intellectualize this topic, though, the simple truth is that villains have more fun, as any Survivor viewer knows. Upholding truth and justice? OK, Boy Scout! Creating a secret concoction in your cauldron, dipping an apple in it, and then delivering the poisoned fruit to your rival so you can continue being the hottest bitch around for miles? Frankly, that’s just iconic behavior. Which is why I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I’d be like in a horror movie or a Disney cartoon. Would I be a silent machete-wielding killer who lives at a lakeside summer camp? Or would I be an immortal vampire who moonlights as a rock star?
As Them’s resident astrologer, I decided to look to the stars for wisdom, and now it is my duty to share my foul findings with you. Below, you can unleash your inner baddie by finding out which villain you are based on your sign.
Aries: Sauron (Lord of the Rings)
Aries is a competitive sign with a fiery passion for victory — and a taste for fine jewelry! That’s why you are Sauron, the eponymous Lord of the Rings himself, whose ambition serves as the catalyst for J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic fantasy series. Like Sauron, your branding is impeccable and your reach is undeniable. You’ve got an eye all over Middle-earth and your influence extends even to backwater rural idylls like the Shire.
Even after suffering a handful of seemingly devastating defeats over the course of his long history preceding the events of the Peter Jackson films, Sauron was indomitable. Who needs a body when you can manifest yourself as an enormous fiery eyeball and dress up an orc army in your chic logo? Sauron had such a grip on Middle-earth that the only possible nemeses with a fleeting chance of threatening his supremacy had to be weak and unassuming enough to pass unnoticed beneath the beam of his unsleeping gaze. Enter a potato-obsessed Taurus, Samwise Gamgee, his frail but purehearted boyfriend Frodo, and their funky little frenemy Gollum.
The Frodo/Sam/Gollum throuple really did their damndest to make it to Mordor, but Sauron was actually ultimately brought down by his own unparalleled excellence in jewelry-making. If Sauron hadn’t made the One Ring to be so slay as to inspire a covetous squabble between Frodo and Gollum atop a volcano and an unheeding slip into the magma below, the Dark Lord would still be ruling today. Even in defeat, he maintains astonishing name recognition and relevance.
Moral of the story: Aries, remember not to put too much of your power into a single shiny ring, even if it has a sick temperature-dependent inscription in a black metal font.
Taurus: Princess Mombi (Return to Oz)
You’re so fabulous that your opulence induces fear in less elegant onlookers. You’ve got a look for every occasion, though you don’t often care to go out. Taurus is content to luxuriate at home, and why not? You already have everything you need in your magnificent, mirror-walled palace! You are Princess Mombi from the legendarily terrifying 1985 film Return to Oz.
Princess Mombi, a mashup of two antagonists from L. Frank Baum’s Oz novels, has a bad attitude and a ballin’ lifestyle. On top of her incredible gowns, maximalist decor, and sick mandolin-playing skills, Mombi has a collection of 30 heads she can swap out to keep her face feeling fresh. Can you even imagine the convenience?! So much variety at the twist of a neck!
You know Mombi’s 30-head system must make hairstyling a breeze because she can always get a good view of the back. If Mombi gets bored living alone, she can simply put on one of her heads and converse with the others. She can literally take her brain off at night when she goes to sleep!
I mean, sure, it’s a little antisocial to threaten a child with imprisonment with the intention of one day decapitating the kid to take their head for your own use. But Mombi has great taste! As Dorothy, Fairuza Balk was obviously destined to someday serve face! Princess Mombi may have failed in her intention to snatch Dorothy’s dome, but her iconic headless chase scene — set to shrieks of alarm from her collection of craniums — gave life-long nightmares to everyone who saw Return to Oz at a formative age. To a Taurus, lasting intimidation is the mark of true beauty.
Gemini: Team Rocket (Pokémon)
You are always arguing with yourself. You’re not known for consistent results. But your fashion game is always on point, and you are adored by fans the world over. Prepare for trouble… and make it double! You are Jessie and James of Pokémon’s Team Rocket: almost too Gemini to function.
Before we discuss Team Rocket’s most notable mutable air sign qualities, let’s establish Pokémon’s credentials as a horror property. Yes, it’s for children. Sure, it’s colorful and silly, with a catchy theme song and an upbeat tone. But y’all, the primary pastime of human characters in the Pokémon universe is imprisoning sentient beings within Poké Balls and forcing them to battle each other in proxy dominance struggles that attain prestige for the human “trainers.” The ethos of Pokémon is irrefutably twisted! This doesn’t stop me from enjoying Pokémon GO, but let’s all be honest about what’s happening here. Quoth James: “We’re bad, not insensitive!”
Team Rocket’s efforts are often ill-fated, but do their temporary failures ever render them any less amazing? Never! The Team Rocket Trio (Jessie, James, and their Poké-companion Meowth) would probably succeed more often if they could stop bickering and snickering at each other constantly, but unfortunately that can’t be helped. Much like the constant refrain of contradictory dialogue within the mind of any given Gemini, that is simply their dynamic. They have no choice but to operate amid the echoes of that inner conversation.
The Team Rocket Trio is incapable of constant villainy because their compulsion to be contrary occasionally contradicts their goals. They often break the fourth wall whilst ostensibly speaking to each other, because they understand and appreciate the absurdity of existence. They “denounce the evils of truth and love,” but their fans’ adoration for their antics reaches to the stars above. Sounds a lot like Team Gemini to me.
Cancer: Xenomorph Queen (Aliens)
You’re known as the zodiac’s most nurturing sign. You’re empathetic and considerate, and you tend to serve as the “parental” friend in social groups, ensuring that other people’s moods and needs are managed and met. Sometimes, people assume that your caring heart is a sign of weakness, but that’s their mistake! You are the Xenomorph Queen, a mother who is mothering!
From the Xenomorph’s point of view, the plot of Aliens (1986) details a series of vicious murders perpetrated by warrant officer Ellen Louise Ripley, a Capricorn. The Queen has established a place of peace and quiet to nurture her family, and then here comes Ripley with freakin’ flamethrower! Recognizing the fatal threat to her eggs, the Queen orders her drones to back off, negotiating an unspoken agreement to let Ripley leave her chamber without interference.
But when an egg starts to open, Ripley decides the deal is off and she starts torching lil’ incubating Xenomorphs left and right. While the Queen seems pretty chill about shrugging off projectiles aimed at her personally, she cannot abide threats to her babies. Get away from the Xenomorph eggs, you human bitch!
Just like Xenomorph Queens, Cancers who are battling on behalf of defenseless allies are acid-blooded and near-invulnerable in protection of their loved ones. Even the toughest of the other signs should avoid combat with an angry Cancer, unless there’s a nearby airlock handy to vent the vengeful crab into the void of outer space.
Leo: Nancy Downs (The Craft)
You are a trendsetter even as an outcast, influencing the style aspirations of generations of would-be witches. You’re a magnetic personality who rules your small clique of devotees at your whim. You are the weirdos, mister! You are Nancy Downs of The Craft (1996).
Nancy’s charisma level is off the charts. She’s obviously bad news, but it’s hard not to want her approval. She’s sympathetic to a degree. Her desire to change her circumstances is understandable, and her anger at nice-looking but nasty-hearted school jock Chris is likewise relatable. But Nancy actually believes in the power of her convictions. She craves the superhuman power she can attain through worship of the earth god Manon, and once she’s attained it, she’s not shy about using it.
It’s honestly kind of forgivable when she magically flings Chris to his death from a window. He was a creep anyway — and as Jennifer Check, who followed in Nancy’s villainous footsteps later clarified, she was only killing boys. But fighting with her more naturally magically gifted covenmate Sarah led to Nancy’s downfall. The Nancy/Sarah relationship is coded with the classic closeted bi girl dynamic of competing for the same crush in a roundabout attempt to impress each other, eventually sublimating their desires into outright acts of aggression. If they can’t be together, they have to try to destroy each other.
Fairuza Balk just can’t get away from filmic mental institutions, and her misdeeds could not go unpunished by the story’s end. She may have been bound away from her magical power, but Nancy still gets the movie’s last Leo laugh.
Virgo: Maleficent (Sleeping Beauty)
You are a glamorous loner who values your privacy, but even more so, you require a modicum of social respect. When you feel threatened, you turn into a literal dragon. You are Maleficent, the plot-driving villainess of Disney’s 1959 animated classic Sleeping Beauty.
Does Maleficent wish to attend a baby christening? Not particularly. But does she want to be invited to the function? Absolutely! How dare some trifling monarchs invite "all" the fairies to bless their new baby daughter but neglect the most powerful of the lot, Maleficent! In retaliation, she really has no other choice but to make the most memorable party entrance of all time and curse the infant baby to death by spindle before she can attain a driver’s license. Maleficent turns pettiness into high art.
Not that Virgos ever forget anything, but Maleficent can’t really be blamed for wondering what the hell is happening when Prince Phillip enters the picture and starts lusting after Princess Aurora. Her intention to lock Phillip up until he’s an old man is simply morally correct in this instance.
Unfortunately for the mistress of evil, Virgos are allergic to mediocrity, which Phillip possesses in spades. The power of compulsory heterosexuality allows him to stab dragon Maleficent in the heart and end her reign of fabulousness. Lesson learned: blacklist the host for neglecting to invite you if you must, but no Virgo should ever grace such a loser party with their incredible cape and headwear in the first place. Stay home, stay safe!
Libra: Mystique (X-Men)
You are a master of disguise. You could be anyone! You could be some random person on the street. You could be me writing this article. You could be Sherlock Holmes, canonically! You are X-Men’s shapeshifting supervillain Mystique, frequent assassin and founding member of the Brotherhood of Mutants.
Mystique is a blue-skinned, red-haired mutant whose shapeshifting abilities render her unattached to binary notions of gender. Over the course of her long career, she has spent long periods of time living in the guise of a man. She is the mother of non-mutant villain Graydon Creed and father to teleporting blue mutant Nightcrawler. She has a lot of relationships, both romantic and otherwise, over the course of her century-plus period of activity. At one point, she fakes her own death in an attempt to tactfully break up with fellow mutant Sabretooth. Forget ghosting — that’s Libra tact taken to the max!
Mystique’s misdeeds often stem from a desire to enact justice upon those who would seek to oppress mutantkind. In movie depictions, she is an ally to Magneto, who seeks to establish mutant supremacy to ensure their safety. Still, she sometimes behaves in a heroic fashion, demonstrating Libra’s famed aptitude for balance.
In her own blue form, Mystique is a legendary babe, and Rebecca Romijn’s early 2000s movie appearances as the character were formative to my personal Libra Venus identity. Step carefully out there, Libra, and try not to assassinate anybody unless they really deserve it!
Scorpio: Lestat de Lioncourt (Interview with the Vampire)
You are a discerning individual who enjoys solitude but occasionally demands international attention. You love literature, music, and sad handsome men. You are an immortal bisexual icon, and also a vampire. You are Lestat de Lioncourt of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles series and its excellent AMC adaptation, Interview with the Vampire.
In the novels, Lestat de Lioncourt is canonically a Scorpio, born the seventh son of the Marquis d’Auvergne on the seventh day of November, 1760. After some stints rebelling from his family by trying to move into a monastery, joining a traveling troupe of actors and becoming a wolf hunter, Lestat gets turned into a vampire because he’s really, really pretty. His story only becomes more ridiculous from there.
Like most Scorpios, we learn of Lestat by reputation before we see or hear anything from the actual man himself. "I have a capacity for enduring," Lestat explains to Louis and Claudia about his history… or so Louis tells us, via his own reminiscence to interviewer Daniel. From Lestat’s erstwhile husband Louis’ perspective, Lestat is impossibly charming and intolerably cruel. Louis makes a solid point about Lestat’s legendary allure: Who else was ever going to introduce the streaming television era to levitating gay vampire sex?
I am so, so excited for season 3 of Interview with the Vampire, in which we will finally meet Lestat from his own perspective and witness the greatest plot arc ever imagined in the course of human history, in which a vampire grows bored and lonely and thus exposes his true nature to the public as the world’s first internationally famous, openly vampiric rock star. Sam Reid’s riveting portrayal of Lestat will teach us all more about Scorpio messiness than we ever wished to learn, I fear, and I can’t wait to see it.
Sagittarius: Jareth (Labyrinth)
You live in a fantastical, aesthetically beguiling world of your own whimsy, and yet your constant goal is attempting to stave off boredom. You are obsessed with attaining the devotion of others until you actually acquire it, at which point your adorers become uninteresting denizens occupying your vast maze of conquests. You look incredible in leggings and you clearly spend a lot of time practicing contact juggling. You are Jareth the Goblin King, ruler of the Labyrinth (1986).
Jareth turns up when Sarah (Jennifer Connelly) wishes her infant half-brother Toby into his custody in a fit of pique over her babysitting obligations. (Toby, also obviously a Sagittarius, mostly just chillaxes in his striped onesie throughout this unlikely event of his kidnapping. Toby’s just here for the vibe.)
Jareth seems to spend most of his time singing nonsensical pop bangers with his goblin servants. He unfortunately appears to wield near-total power and has access to almost everything he wants. This sort of stagnation is anathema to the average Sagittarius, who needs the perpetual stimulation of challenge to thrive. This explains his infatuation with Sarah, who rejects the temptation of his offerings.
When not even a masquerade ball and a ballad in an M.C. Escher-inspired room of disorienting staircases can persuade Sarah to abandon her brother, Jareth admits defeat and turns into an owl to watch her celebrate her victory. It’s for the best this way, honestly. Sarah and Toby would have just become boring old goblin subjects of Jareth’s labyrinth had she surrendered, and ultimately Jareth was rewarded with the attention he really craved when his cropped vest and leggings inspired strangely enticing feelings for millions of impressionable viewers.
Capricorn: Jason Voorhees (Friday the 13th)
You maintain strong personal boundaries and you’re protective of your space. You are unstoppably persistent: Not even death can stop you from pursuing your passions! You are Jason Voorhees, the masked slasher at the heart of the Friday the 13th franchise.
There are twelve Friday the 13th films to date, because Jason is a hard worker. Was 1984’s Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter the end of Jason? Obviously not! He returned to theaters less than a year later in 1985 with Friday the 13th: A New Beginning. Truly, he is an inspiration. Jason has been killed by machete, boat propeller, toxic waste, and incineration upon reentering the atmosphere after a tumble from outer space, but he never lets challenges slow him down. Along the way, Jason manages to gain superhuman powers, possess people with his heart, go to Hell, even travel to a far-future space station and become a cyborg. Once, he even visited Manhattan!
But mostly, Jason just wants to be left alone at Crystal Lake. If people would just stop camping there, Jason could set his hockey mask aside and search for new purpose. Perhaps that’s what he’s been up to in the 15 years since the most recent Jason movie was released, and if so, good for him! In typical Capricorn fashion, Jason slashed so many sex-having summer camp counselors during his heyday that he still remains a contender in the highest filmic kill count competition despite well over a decade of inactivity. I’m sure his machete skills will still be sharp when someone sullies the sanctitude of Crystal Lake again in the future.
Y’all are well known to be overachievers, so you get another bonus Capricorn villain: the Grinch, who was entirely justified in his behavior. Every year, the holiday season steals the spotlight from your birthday. Just once, you’re entitled to steal it back!
Aquarius: Hannibal Lecter (Hannibal)
You are a curious, intellectual individual with an appreciation for fine dining. You are fascinated by the human mind, and you have a tendency to observe other people as specimens. Your calm, controlled demeanor occasionally fools other people into believing you are emotionless, but you are certainly capable of yearning. You also have a dry sense of humor. You are Dr. Hannibal Lecter, cannibal psychiatrist, as portrayed by Mads Mikkelsen in the 2013-2015 TV series Hannibal.
Hannibal initially begins a relationship with criminal profiler Will Graham in an attempt to work the FBI from the inside, disguising his own activities as a serial killer via manipulation and misdirection. But he quickly becomes fascinated by the younger man’s psyche, and the crackling sexual tension between the two characters probably still burns hot in Tumblr gifsets a decade later. (Out of curiosity, I just searched “Hannibal” on Archive of Our Own and found 28,991 fanfics under the Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter tag. That’s a hell of a legacy for a three-season show!)
Hannibal presents unthinkably gruesome acts of violence as a sumptuous sort of art. In the series finale, when Hannibal and Will conspire to murder a rival killer in a mesmerizing ballet of blood, the duo’s connection ascends to a level of ecstatic understanding they could not hope to attain with anyone else. That’s what intimacy is like with an Aquarius — well, hopefully not the murder part, not in real life — but the exquisite individuality of the relationship. Aquarians find the Will Grahams of the world even more interesting than three-star Michelin human delicacies.
Pisces: Roy Batty (Blade Runner)
You are a sensitive soul with intense emotions. You have a head full of idealism and a heart full of rage for injustice. You want to soak up every drop of experience you’re allotted in life, and you want to forge your own path in the world even if you have to do some questionable things to make that happen. You are Roy Batty, the frightening but sympathetic antagonist of Blade Runner (1982).
Activated into a world that doesn’t allow him much time, replicant Roy Batty wants more life. Unfortunately, his request to extend his preprogrammed four-year lifespan is impossible, and his “retirement” draws near.
Batty is a synthetic man of big feelings, broadly considered by viewers to be more human than many organic people who can pass the Voight-Kampff test. He weeps openly when he loses his companions, and he engages replicant creator Eldon Tyrell in a moving philosophical discussion about the possibility of life extension. When Tyrell cannot reverse Batty’s deadline of doom, Batty kisses him gently on the mouth, then crushes the man’s skull with his bare hands.
Batty’s most Piscean moment occurs near the movie’s end, when he defeats and then rescues replicant-hunting “blade runner” Rick Deckard. Presumably he wanted some company in the moment of his passing, or maybe he just needed an audience for his iconic monologue. Sometimes there’s no substitute for a witness to mark a moment. Like every Pisces, Batty knows that even the most extreme and astonishing experiences are fleeting. As he so memorably puts it, “All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”
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