Is HIM Really a Villain?

HIM

HIM is the name of one of the Powerpuff Girl's most interesting and powerful villains. HIM is thought to be so evil that they don't even say his name they call him HIM. Considering he's a cross-dressing demon with a powerful, haunting, echoing falsetto voice that seems to be Satan, it makes sense that they don't utter his name. Similar to Goldust in the 90s era WWF, His evil background and conflicting performance of gender norms make HIM a captivating character that stands the test of time. But Is HIM truly a villain?

Let's look at the tape.

HIM has made many appearances in the Powerpuff Girls series, but as you watch them, you notice similar patterns in his plots that lead you to question his true motives. Does he truly want to destroy the Powerpuff Girls?

Protection

The Birthday Bash

In this episode, the villains take turns trying to defeat the Powerpuff Girls at their birthday party by sending them evil gifts meant to destroy them. However, HIM protects the Powerpuff Girls. After Mojo Jojo and Princess fail to get the Job done, HIM sends them a pinata that turns into a giant raging bull. The girls defeat the bull, smashing it to bits, and they get candy out of the bull. The villains think HIM's plan was lame and that he failed, but he says this was his plan all along and rhetorically asks why destroy them when you can terrorize them with tooth decay.

Nobody buys HIM's excuse, and I don't, either. The girls thought the villains ruined everything, but after the pinata, the people of Townsville say that this was the coolest party ever. HIM is the last villain to make an attempt at the girls as well, effectively ending any attacks on the girls and setting up a party game for them that rewards them with candy, which HIM even admits was his plan all along.

Telephonies

In this episode, The Gang Green gang makes prank calls pretending to be the mayor and sending the Powerpuff Girls to beat up unsuspecting villains who weren't actually doing anything. When the girls burst into HIM'S evil domain, he's in 80s workout clothes, doing a women's workout with a TV fitness trainer. After the Girls leave because HIM isn't doing anything evil, all the villains get on the phone. Logically, you would think they would take out their anger on the Powerpuff Girls, who brutalized them for nothing, but HIM convinces them that they should go complain to the mayor who sends the girls on these calls. When he calls the mayor to complain, he finds out it was all the Gang Green Gang, and the villains go to the mayor's office and beat them up, and the Powerpuff Girls don't have to face their wrath thanks to HIM.

The Beat Alls

HIM, Princess, Mojo Jojo, and Fuzzy Lumpkins form a super group parodying the Beatles called The Beat Alls. They all go to attack the Powerpuff Girls, accidentally teaming up and defeating them. However, what if HIM isn't attacking them at all but protecting them? The group's signature attack is a blast from Mojo, then HIM, then Princess, and then Fuzzy throws a giant rock on top of them. This attack has the potential to kill them, but it doesn't, and HIM is always the second attack in the group. Could his beam protect the girls, and is he again teaming up with other villains to mitigate the damage done to the Powerpuff girls as he did with their birthday party?

Lessons

Tough Love

HIM doesn't just protect the girls he also teaches them lessons. In this episode, HIM makes everyone in town hate the Powerpuff Girls. The episode starts with the Girls flying around doing everything for everyone, getting cats out of trees, walking ladies across the street, and opening the mayor's pickle jar, all while going to school themselves. Everyone seems to love them for it. However, that is until HIM actually casts a sinister spell over the town that makes everyone hate their help and want to destroy the Powerpuff Girls. As the girls are backed into a corner, HIM says offhandedly that the girls will lose because they would never attack those they love most. However, then Blossom reasons that the people they love most would never try to hurt them, so these aren't those people, so they beat them all down.

However, HIM doesn't seem upset by this. He seems delighted. He uses the opportunity to get the girls to attack everyone with reverse psychology, leaving on his merry way without even fighting the girls. The Powerpuff Girls hospitalize the town, but they forgive them. It seems more like HIM punishes the townspeople for their mundane uses of the Powerpuff Girls' talents by forcing them to beat the townspeople up in the ungrateful, angry forms HIM sees them in. This lesson would prove prophetic as later on, the PowerPuff Girls would go on strike because the city stopped doing anything for themselves and just expected the PowerPuff Girls to do everything for them, even grabbing the remote. HIM saw that coming.

Moral Decay

Buttercup goes villain mode in this episode, knocking teeth out for money. After accidentally knocking out her sister's tooth and seeing Bubbles get money from the tooth fairy, Buttercup decides she will knock out the villain's teeth and put them under her pillow. It works, and she makes a bank. It stops becoming about justice for her and becomes about money to the point where she seeks out people to beat up, not even waiting for the call anymore, all because she wants money. Well, once again, all the villains gang up on her, including HIM, and they get their revenge. Her sisters and the Professor allow her to get her karma, and then she has to spend all the dirty money she made on her dental bill. After that, she gets back on the straight and narrow.

Speed Demon

Speed Demon is one of the most telling episodes about HIM and the Powerpuff Girls. He doesn't want to destroy the girls and agrees that Townsville needs the Powerpuff Girls. In Speed Demon, the girls are so excited to leave the needy people of Townsville behind and enjoy a vacation that they race home, accidentally racing 50 years in the future.

In the future, they find HIM, who shows them what a world without them looks like. It's a hellscape that he controls, and everyone in Townsville has lost their mind and blames the Powerpuff Girls. The Girls attack HIM, but he takes his full goat satanic form and reveals their attacks don't actually really affect him at all. The Girls are so distraught that they run away crying to space and fall back to earth, but that fall sends them back 50 years to the present. After what HIM showed them, the girls tell the Professor that they can't go on vacation because the city needs them, and unlike at the beginning of the episode, they are now happy to fulfill their role as the city saviors.

See Me Feel ME Gnomey

HIM Is about Balance

This leads us to a banned episode, See Me Feel ME Gnomey. HIM and other villains team up to defeat the Powerpuff Girls, and in a musical episode, they give away their powers to a gnome who promises peace. When they do, the gnome blasts away all the villains, getting rid of evil, and in return, everyone in town worships them until the Professor tells the girls that the gnome is now the evil one who has taken away everyone's free will and because of that he has broken his promise for peace allowing the girls to get their powers back and defeat him. At the end of the episode, HIM can be seen singing Can't we all get along with other villains and humans.

This episode puts forth the idea that there can not be good without evil and that people must have free will to choose good or bad; for good to exist, there must be an alternative. This describes HIM's role in the show. He is just playing his role, creating a ying to the yang of the Powerpuff Girls. He is the Devil, so why does he spend so much time with the Powerpuff Girls, and why doesn't he destroy them? Because he doesn't seek to kill them but to balance them out. Three superpowered girls in a town of regular people may be the most significant imbalance in his earth dimension, so he spends his time there balancing out the Powerpuff Girls. He doesn't want to destroy the girls. He wants to cultivate them and help them live in balance with the world. For the girls to be good, he must be evil. He stops the girls from being destroyed or giving up on their heroism and prevents them from getting too powerful or existing unopposed in the universe.

Team Building

Power-noia

Several times in the series, we see HIM come in and help the girls grow or save them from emotional turmoil. In this episode, the girls are fighting because they have all caught each other being scared, but they are also trying to deny that they are scared. He puts them in a nightmare realm in their dreams that forces them to band together, face their fears, and defeat them. It may seem like an evil plot foiled on the surface, but really, he just helped them face their fears and become stronger.

Octi Evil

In his first-ever appearance, he saves them once again. Blossom and Buttercup are fighting, and Bubbles is in turmoil over her sister's fighting. The Powerpuff Girls are coming apart at the seams, but then comes HIM to save the day. He starts speaking to Bubbles through her stuffed animal, giving her suggestions to help her situation that actually exacerbates tensions until they reach a boiling point between Buttercup and Blossom, leading to an attack from one of HIM's surrogate monsters.

HIM's attack forces Buttercup and Blossom to see how much damage their bickering has done to Bubbles and their group and band together to face and defeat HIM. This conflict resolution brought on by HIM reconciles the girls, and HIM disappears. If he wanted their destruction, he could have let them implode, but his intervention saved them.

All Chalked Up

In All Chalked Up, Buttercup is picking on Bubbles and destroying her chalk art cause she is tired of her taking space in recess when she could do art inside. This also causes conflict with Blossom and Buttercup. Bubbles is distraught and runs off, where HIM once again comes to her rescue. He comes disguised as a butterfly, first having her use her imagination to draw happy things that he brings to life. Then, he has her express her emotions by drawing angry things that express her frustration with her sisters. He then weaponizes her drawings, bringing them to life as monsters that go and attack her sisters. Bubbles doesn't help them at first, and they disregard her, thinking they can beat these monsters on their own anyway, but once they prove indestructible, the girls must reunite and work together.

Bubbles realizes that it's okay to be angry, and she can express her anger in a positive way. She starts erasing her angry monsters and modifying them to be pretty and harmless. The Girls worked everything out, and once again, HIM appeared when they needed it most to put them through an exercise that helped them grow individually and as a group.

The Story of Jobe

Him Diddle Riddle

This episode, HIM Diddle Riddle, illustrates the connection between the Devil as we know him in the bible and the character HIM. In this episode, HIM kidnaps the Professor and gives the girls a series of tasks they must complete quickly, or he promises the Professor will pay. The girls complete the task but end up just a little short on time in the last one and burst in just in time to see that the Professor wasn't kidnapped at all. He was eating at HIM's restaurant, and they made a wager that if the Girls could complete the task, Professor wouldn't have to pay for his meal. The girls are dumbfounded at this revelation after everything they went through.

This story has a striking similarity to the story of Job. God and the Devil make a bet that Job will always remain loyal to God. The Devil thinks that Job will forsake God if he loses all the blessings he has given him, so God allows the Devil to kill Job's family and bankrupt him to make Job forsake God for his misfortune, and still Job does not forsake him. God wins the bet and gives Job a new family and prosperity, but when Job asks why God would do that to him, he just tells him he couldn't possibly understand.

Here in Powerpuff Girls, we see the creator, the Professor, who literally created the Powerpuff Girls in a lab, making a bet with the Devil character HIM, putting the girls through trials and tribulations to settle a dispute between the two of them. This speaks to HIM's role in the universe. He works alongside the creator as God works with the Devil over the lives of humans. We see HIM emerge in his first episode, whispering in Bubble's ear like the Devil did to Eve with the snake in the beginning. Both were pushed to mess up so that, ultimately, good things could happen.

If Eve had never broken the rules of God, they wouldn't have been cast out of the Garden of Eden, introducing sin and having Jesus then die on the cross for those sins and establish Christianity. Just like the girls wouldn't have banded together if HIM hadn't whispered in Bubble's ear and sent them to their breaking point so they could reach a resolution and grow stronger. The Devil serves a role in the order of things, which is why God allows him to exist. There must be evil for there to be good. Someone must run hell for there to be heaven. It is the natural order or God's will. As the show states in its See Me Feel Me Gnomey episode, there must be good for there to be bad, there must be options for free will, there must be balance, and HIM has been protecting, teaching, and opposing the Powerpuff Girls all this time, purposefully maintaining that balance. So, is HIM truly a villain?