Animation’s Most Terrifying Villain Comes From Its Cutest TV Show

No medium gives artists as much runway creatively as animation. Sure, projects focusing on real people can be aided by things like inventive storytelling and special effects, but no movie or show has the ability to portray truly whatever the creators have in mind as much as an animated one. This art form has led to many iconic projects, with animators using their skills to create some of the most beautiful stories imaginable — or, in the case of Centaurworld, the most monstrous. Audiences who’ve only seen the trailers for Megan Nicole Dong‘s Netflix series may be confused by that statement; focusing on a war horse transported into a world filled with different kinds of centaurs, the series’ slapstick comedy and sickeningly sweet hues seem the complete opposite of scary.

Yet that’s where the plot’s true genius lies — it is a cute, hilarious series about brightly colored centaurs getting into shenanigans, but it is also the tale of an insidious being intent on using the world’s powers as his own. A creature who is not only unnerving in design but, by the end of the series, racks up one of the largest body counts of any animated villain ever. Centaurworld is an adorable series, but when it comes to the Nowhere King (Brian Stokes Mitchell), it shows that even the heartfelt can be horrifying.

‘Centaurworld’ Is Cute — and Really, Really Creepy

Audience members who come to Centaurworld for its terrifying villain will have to wait quite a while into the series’ runtime — but they’ll love every patient second of it. The story focuses on Horse (Kimiko Glenn), a steed who, with her best friend Rider (Jessie Mueller), searches for a magic artifact meant to end a war that has seen hordes of demons conquer the Earth, killing most of its inhabitants. This artifact separates them and sends Horse into the titular “Centaurworld,” where she meets quirky characters like the compassionate Alpacataur (an alpaca centaur), Wammawink (Megan Hilty), who join her on her quest to re-discover the magical artifact, escape this candy-colored world, and hopefully save the one she was torn away from.

Amidst the musical comedy, the program implies something darker may be going on; there are multiple hints that the terrible thing that separated these worlds may still exist, its presence only discussed in the hushed whispers and scary stories of Centaurworld’s inhabitants. But it’s never directly addressed and, by the season finale, most fans have forgotten about it when they watch in joy as Horse and Rider reunite in a strange purgatory space between the two worlds. But then some black tar falls from the ceiling. More and more starts to fall until, as the characters and audience can only watch in horror, it begins to coalesce into a gargantuan beast with countless legs and a skeletal head that can only mean one thing: the Nowhere King has arrived.

Superficially, the Nowhere King is haunting, with the animators putting extra effort into making every aspect of this twisted creature unsettling to watch. Whether it’s the many hooves that protrude from his gelatinous mass of darkness, the yawning Elk skull that serves as his face, or the raspy voice that echoes from his jumbles of bone, he is as unnerving as the rest of the series is lovable. But it becomes even scarier once the King’s backstory is revealed; long ago, when the Earth and Centaurworld were connected, a self-hating Elktaur fell in love with a human princess but felt she could never love his hybrid self, so he cut himself into two halves — one human and one animal.

The Elk half of the being grew jealous and not only turned itself into a monster but created the hordes of abominations that ruined Rider’s world and killed thousands, if not millions, of people, which the series confirms multiple times. The Earth viewers see is a barren wasteland littered with orphans and human remains, creating a much more complex image of evil than your usual animated villain by not only offering a spine-chilling visage but emphasizing the utter annihilation this monster inflicted upon humanity. All of this bloodshed is due solely to one being’s selfishness and self-hatred, meaning that not only is the Nowhere King unsettling to look at, but his actions are some of the most realistically gruesome of any animated villain ever.

Hush, Now: The Nowhere King Is Here

Despite the eeriness of Centaurworld’s main villain, it’s questionable to label him as animation’s scariest antagonist. Mad God is rife with gut-churning scares, and even Disney has created scary monsters that have plagued children’s dreams for generations. Yet it’s how this hilarious show not only subverts its own expectations but combines different levels of horror that allow it to create animation’s most jaw-dropping antagonists. It defiles the beautiful animation of the rest of the series by using that same intricacy to draw a disturbing creature, but it doesn’t stop there, furthering the terror by stressing how the Nowhere King’s appearance is actually the least scary thing about him. It utilizes distressingly real fears like the apocalypse and the disastrous effects of narcissism to introduce an overwhelmingly mature villain into a setting that prides itself on being immature. Integrating this kind of adult fear into the series stresses the perversion of the Nowhere King even more, and by using its own standards to truly shock audiences, Centaurworld manages to create a terrifying animated villain like no other.

Centaurworld is available to stream on Netflix in the U.S.

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