Disney’s Villainous compiles the a huge assortment of the company’s infamous villains into one board game, allowing players to work towards completing villainous objectives rather than trying to save the day. This experience has been a lot of fun for many players, but as Disney’s media empire grows, fans want to see more and more representation within the game as well. Recently, the developers of the game, Ravensburger, branched out and created a Marvel’s Villainous box, a standalone expansion with five brand new villains to play all from Marvel comics and MCU movies. This has opened the door for lots of other possibilities as well, and fans want to take the plunge and join the Dark Side.
The Marvel box is very different from the standard Villainous experience, but the core principles remain the same. There are five villains in this box rather than the six that debuted in the base Villainous game, but they are each very unique and enjoyable. What makes this particular expansion notable is that it isn’t compatible with the other Villainous games, meaning it is sort of a self-contained experience. If Star Wars were to get its own Villainous, the same would probably hold true.
Star Wars Villainous - Trilogy Villains
The Star Wars franchise is full of amazing villains, but a lot of them overlap with one another in interesting ways. For example, the two most recognizable Star Wars villains are probably Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine, but both of these terrors were at large at the same time, and Vader is really more like an Ally to Palpatine than his own villain. Because of this overlap, this box may have to include a lot of duplicate cards, perhaps having a both a young and old version of Obi-Wan Kenobi depending on which fate deck he appears in.
The best way to pick 5 Star Wars villains would simply be to pick one major one from each trilogy or side movie. In the case of the prequel trilogy, Palpatine would be the best bet for the villain. His objective would likely revolve around turning Anakin to the Dark Side, but he’d have to deal with heroes from the Jedi council like Mace Windu and Yoda. For the original trilogy, Darth Vader seems like the obvious choice. Though he technically may not be the main villain of those movies, it works much better than having Palpatine twice and he is easily the most iconic character of the Star Wars franchise. Vader’s goal would likely involve either defeating Luke or represent his change of heart at the end of the trilogy.
The sequel trilogy provides a few more options, with Palpatine being among them yet again. In this case, Kylo Ren should be the focus as the main villain despite his redemption arc at the end of Rise of Skywalker. He is featured far more prominently as a villain than either Snoke or Palpatine, and his objective could see him overthrowing the other Sith lords to rise to power.
Other Potential Star Wars Villains
That only provides three villains in a box that would most likely have at least five or six, so the other villains will have to come from other Star Wars stories. One interesting pick would be the villain from The Mandalorian, Moff Gideon. His objective would require him to capture The Child and defeat the titular Mandalorian, and he’d have access to powerful items like the Dark Saber to help him. Another possibility would be Orson Krennic, the main antagonist of Rogue One. His goal would revolve around the Death Star plans, maybe requiring him to vanquish characters from that movie while managing the location of the plans (similar to how Mother Gothel must keep Rapunzel away from Corona).
Things get a bit more complicated when looking for a sixth villain to fill out the expansion. Dryden Vos, the antagonist of Solo, could work but he wasn’t very memorable. There are plenty of other Sith like Count Dooku, General Grievous, and Darth Maul that could be considered, but they were all really minions of Palpatine in the end. Star Wars Legends has a ton of great villains to pull from, but this was all declared as non-canon Star Wars material and is unlikely to show up in Villainous. For this reason, it seems that a five villain box fits best here.
Star Wars Villainous Release
It should be restated that this is all purely speculation, as Ravensburger and Disney have not made any official announcements about plans to include a Star Wars expansion to Villainous. The recent release of Marvel’s Villainous does make it seem possible in the future, but fans shouldn’t get their hopes up to see anything like that any time soon. Looking back at the previous release schedule of Villainous, there’s good reason to expect a bit of a wait.
The original Villainous game released in July of 2018, and over the next two years there were three direct expansions and one standalone Marvel box. Wicked to the Core, Evil Comes Prepared, Perfectly Wretched, and Marvel’s Villainous released March 2019, August 2019, March 2020, and July 2020 respectively. On average, that’s about half a year between each expansion, give or take a few months in certain cases. This is a pretty good turnaround time for board game expansions, but since Marvel’s Villainous practically just came out, there’s likely still several months to wait before anything new comes.
The Future of Villainous
There are also a lot of other routes that Ravensburger could take with its next Villainous expansion. A new Disney box is always a possibility, as there are still plenty of iconic Disney villains not yet represented. There’s also the potential for a Pixar box, featuring villains from Toy Story, The Incredibles, Monster’s Inc, or other classic Pixar movies. It’s difficult to say at this point how much of a priority Star Wars is, but now that a Marvel box has been released, nothing is out of the picture.
Disney’s Villainous is available now.
