Defeating the antagonist early: A lesson from Avatar: The Last Airbender and Spiderverse

There was a few rules I learned while writing my book: Show, don't tell (This one is most important), Have a compelling first sentence, and Don't defeat the antagonist too early. As important as the former two are, today's post is about the latter.

When I began writing my book, I made an unconscious mistake: I let the protagonist defeat her too early. By too early, I mean in her second appearance, which was not a very good idea.

 I realised my mistake while watching Jed Herne's video on: 9 Plot Mistakes Every New Writer Makes. 'Beating the antagonist too early' is the very first mistake he mentions, and with good reason. If the main character beats the bad guy by the third chapter (or in my case the fifth), there will be no tension in your story. The stakes will be much lower because the antagonist is no longer threatening. We know the protagonist has beaten the antagonist once, surely they will be able to do it again.

Once I had realised this, I very quickly changed that point in the plot. And while this has significantly improved my story and my antagonists character, there are some stories that can pull this off. My first example is: Avatar: The Last Airbender.

In ATLA, Zuko is introduced early on as an antagonist. He has a very serious, committed character an clearly has it out for the avatar. While is motivations are only made known later on in the series, in the first episode we are plainly shown that him finding Aang will not be good for the avatar or the world in general. He is a pretty good antagonist, but then Aang defeats him early on in only the second episode. What happens now? Did the writers of Avatar break the rule? Or do they simply know how to use it to advance the story?

In episode three, Zuko redeems himself as a formidable enemy; he faces off  Commander Zhao, who is introduced as a great warrior and master firebender, and Zuko wins. This shows that Zuko is still a great warrior even though he only knows the basics of firebending. This returns Zuko's level of threat. But he still lost to Aang, so he still isn't at the level of threat he needs to be a good antagonist. This issue is fixed in the very same episode.

Commander Zhao, even though he lost to Zuko, presents a new threat - more people know of the avatar, and will try to find him. While this makes us concerned for Aang, it makes Zuko desperate to find him. The stakes have been increased for him, and he will not underestimate the avatar again. He is now completely committed to finding and capturing the avatar, and thus is once more a great threat. 

Now we turn to another movie that defeats the antagonist early: Spiderman: Across the Spiderverse. Early on in the movie, we are introduced to The Spot. He is portrayed as a slightly goofy character with a weird appearance and even weirder abilities. He is awkward, strange, and clearly doesn't know what he's doing. Miles defeats him (though with a few set-backs) and The Spot is labelled just another -blank-. So we get the idea that he isn't a good bad guy and he probably won't show up again - we're even given a bigger conflict that does not even involve The Spot. Just like Spiderman, we forget about him. 

Except; The Spot isn't forgotten. Even though he was defeated, he now has a new motivation: Revenge. That makes him an enormous threat to our hero, along with him discovering his ability to travel to other multi-verses. The just another -blank- has merged with the main conflict and becomes the main bad guy. And even though he's still weird and goofy, he is now a formidable bad guy that threats Miles Morales and all the other spider-people. 

Defeating the antagonist early isn't an impossible trope. When done well, it can make the antagonist even more formidable. From Zuko and Spot, we can find to formula's for defeating an antagonist early: Start strong, end stronger, or in Zuko's case end with a redemption. If you start with a strong antagonist and defeat him early on to make him angry and desperate, you might be able to keep him as a threatening character. For Spot, we have: Start weak, end Strong, which is perhaps the most affective formula. Taking your character from one extreme (weakness) to another (strength) makes him a formidable bad guy. 

If you're planning on using this trope, keep these two formula's in mind, and I'm sure you can pull it off.