Sci-fi Villains Week

We here at Polygon love endless possibilities — so we’re all-in on science fiction. But when we thought about dedicating another issue to the vastness of the genre, we looked back at our exploration of utopias and hopeful visions of the future and wondered… What would the exact opposite of that look like?

With Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania and the full introduction of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s new, multiverse-minded baddie Kang on the horizon, now felt like the right time to dip into the darker side of speculative science fiction. From across the mediums, storytellers have always had a place for the evildoers — whether reflections of mankind’s worst impulses or just big A-holes — in their odysseys. This week, we’ll look at evil aliens, killer artificial intelligence, and heroes that are supposed to be doing the right thing but are very much not. We’ll look at classics and new takes on the Big Bad, and feel torn over how much we love Darth Vader. There even be a few good guys who we’ve only now realized are terrible, terrible people robots.

This is Polygon’s [maniacal laugh] Sci-fi Villains Week.

Sci-fi Villains Week illustration: Oliver Ono for Polygon