2. The Wicked Witch of the West – The Wizard of Oz (1939)
She’s as iconic as villains come, and with her green skin and the adjective “wicked” in her name, it’s hard to imagine that she’s anything more than pure evil, but actually, the Wicked Witch of the West had a pretty good point.
Yes, the musical Wicked (and several other stories out there) paint her in a far more sympathetic light, but even in the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the West has a pretty good reason for all of her actions.
When a stranger appears from out of nowhere and murders her sister, the green-skinned witch comes running to find out what’s going on. Realizing the murderer is little more than a child, she becomes angry, but not immediately threatening. That is, until she realizes that the murderer has also stolen her sister’s magic shoes and refuses to give them back.
Everything that happens after is effectively the Witch attempting to exact revenge on her sister’s killer. While the audience know that Dorothy didn’t mean to kill anyone, the Wicked Witch of the West doesn’t, and she’s just trying to avenge her fallen sibling. Her resulting actions aren’t exactly justifiable – threatening the dog and using opiates to put Dorothy to sleep are pretty low – but her vendetta stems from familial loyalty, and that’s got to stand for something.