The 2025 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents

It’s almost the end of the year, so we are proud to present to you, live from the Multiversal Nexus Ballroom, the 44th Annual Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents.

Let’s have a bit of background: I have been informally awarding the Darth Vader Parenthood Award since sometime in the 1980s with the earliest awards being retroactive. Over the years, the list of winners migrated from a handwritten page to various computer file formats, updated every year. Eventually, I decided to make the winners public on the Internet, because what’s an award without some publicity and a ceremony? The list of previous winners (in PDF format) up to 2017 may be found here, BTW, and the 2018 winner, the 2019 winner, the 2020 winner, the 2021 winner, the 2022 winner, the 2023 winner and the 2024 winner were announced right here on this blog.

The bar is open, the various assembled winners of yesteryear and this year’s hopefuls are plotting with each other, while enjoying delicacies from around the Multiverse, so without further ado, let’s start with the ceremony.

Warning: Spoilers for several things behind the cut!

Before we get to the main event, let’s have some dishonourable mentions first:

Pluribus seemingly came out of nowhere towards the end of the year and promptly became one of the most discussed TV shows of 2025. Family and parenthood aren’t the main focus of Pluribus, but protagonist Carol Sturka has a terrible mother, who sent her to a conversion camp to torture the gayness out of her, which worked about as well as you can imagine. Alas, the elder Mrs. Sturka is already long dead by the time Pluribus is set and there were just several parent figures who were even worse.

In last year’s Jonathan and Martha Kent Fictional Parent of the Year ceremony, an honourable mention went to Jod Na Nawood, the Force-sensitive may-or-may-not-be-Jedi who acted as a reluctant parent figure to the kids of Skeleton Crew. At the time, Skeleton Crew still had to stream its final episodes and in those episodes Jod Na Nawood made a complete turnaround and revealed himself to be a villain and a space pirate. He decapitated this Star Wars‘ spin-off’s loveable droid SM-33 and threatened the kids he had found himself in charge of. He then tried to use the kids to get access to At Attin, secret location of the Republican mint, to raid its vaults and enslave the population. What a guy, right? However, there were parent figures who were even worse who superceded Jod Na Nawood over the course of 2025.

The latest incarnation of Superman was not something I expected to end up on the shortlist for the Darth Vader Parenthood Award, considering our sister award for good fictional parents is named after Superman’s adoptive parents. And indeed, Jonathan and Martha Kent are as lovely and supportive as ever in James Gunn’s take on Superman. However, Clark’s biological parents Jor-El and Lara Lor-Von are quite spectacularly revealed to be evil in this version of the story, when Lex Luthor and Angela Spica a.k.a. The Engineer (who really deserves better) break into the Fortress of Solitude and steal an incomplete message recorded by Jor-El and Lara, restore it and broadcast it to the world. In the message, Jor-El and Lara urge their son to use his superhuman powers to conquer Earth, take many wives to single-handedly (or single-penisly) restore the Kryptonian people and make Krypton great again. This revelation does wonders for Superman’s public image – not.

In the audience, Superman – dressed in his familiar suit and cape – looks rather embarassed and crest-fallen, though I’m sure some of Martha Kent’s famous apple pie will soon soothe those wounds.

Besides, while Jor-El and Lara may be villains in this incarnation of the story – and “Krypton was actually an evil Empire bent on conquest” is not that new a take – they’re not actually bad parents. They clearly love Clark/Kal-El and do everything in their power to save his life, while Krypton dies. So they fall into the grey area of parents who are neither fully good nor fully bad that we have increasingly seen in recent years.

Another ambiguous neither fully good nor fully bad parent figure who emerged in 2025 is Celine from KPop Demon Hunters. In the past, Celine was a demon hunter herself and a member of the girl group The Sunlight Sisters. When Celine’s bandmate and fellow demon hunter Mi-yeong Ryu died, Celine took care of her young daughter Rumi. Celine does care about Rumi and only wants the best for her and she also serves as a mentor to the girl group/demon hunting squad HUNTR/X, which consists of Rumi and her friends Mira and Zoey.

However, Celine also grapples with the fact that Rumi is half demon. She tells Rumi to suppress and hide her demonic side, which is becoming increasingly difficult, because Rumi has glowing markings on her skin. In short, Celine may care about Rumi, but she also wants Rumi to suppress and hide who she really is because according to her own religious and ideological beliefs, Rumi’s half-demonic nature is evil. I’m sure Celine would get along just swimmingly with Carol Sturka’s mother.

From the grey to the black: Season 3 of Foundation served up not one but two terrible parent figures this year.

First of all, there are the parents of the Mule, indentured workers on the planet of Rossem, one of the breadbasket planets which feeds the Foundation’s ever growing empire. Rossem not only has Frank R. Paul style giant wheels harvesting its crops, but also a strict one-child policy, so the population of Rossem does not consume too many of the crops they are forced to cultivate. The Mule’s parents, however, have had an illegal second baby. When a Foundation official discovers this, he orders the parents to get rid of one of their children. He doesn’t care how, but when he returns in one month’s time, they will have only one child. So the parents of The Mule decide to drown their older child (the future Mule) and keep the baby. This goes spectacularly wrong for them, because The Mule uses their nascent telepathic powers to persuade their parents to drown themselves and good riddance to them. The Mule than abandons the baby on the neighbour’s doorstep and embarks on a campaign of universal conquest.

The Mule’s parents would certainly be most worthy winners of the Darth Vader Parenthood Award. So why do they only rate an honourable mention? Well, for starters season 3 of Foundation completely fumbled The Mule reveal, which is only the best twist in the history of science fiction, and also managed to ruin Second Foundation in the process and you don’t get an award, not even an ugly vase, for ruining my all-time favourite book as a teenager. Besides, do we really want the fucking Mule of all people in a room full of supervillains for them to take over?

“We can take this Mule, whoever he is,” 2022 Retro winner Hordak announces confidently. His entire entourage as well as several super villains and villainesses around the room nod in agreement.

“Fool,” Keldor, who has apparently been let out of prison for the night, exclaims, “One does not take the Mule. For the Mule can manipulate everybody. Even you, Hordak, stealer of memories, could still learn a trick or two from the Mule.”

“And what do you know of the Mule, acolyte?” Hordak counters.

“I can read,” Keldor snaps, “It gets boring in the dungeon of Castle Grayskull, so I read. And I read about this Mule and trust me, Hordak, you don’t want to meet him.”

“Get me this Mule,” Hordak whispers to Shadow Weaver, “I don’t care how, just bring him to me.” Well, it’s his funeral.

While The Mule went on a rampage across the galaxy, converting and conquering everything he saw – and The Mule or rather the person everybody thinks is The Mule did wind up adopting Scarlet, the young daughter of the Warlord of Kalgan, and apparently seems to genuinely care about her – back in Trantor, the Empire is facing yet another crisis. The Galactic Empire barely features in the original Foundation stories except as a force to be overcome, but in the TV-show it is ruled by a dynasty of clones of Emperor Cleon and their robot adviser/slave Demerzel/Daneel. There are always three Cleons, Brother Dawn, Brother Day and Brother Dusk. Whenever a new Cleon is decanted, the previous ones move up a rank and the last Brother Dusk is disintegrated to make room for the new arrival.

This system has worked reasonably well or not for centuries. But the latest Brother Dusk is not at all happy about the prospect of being disintegrated. The Cleons are not particularly good people and prone to mental health issues and compared to some of the others, this incarnation of Dusk actually seems quite mellow, though plagued with a Brother Day who is a drug-addicted hippie. However, as the date of his disintegration draws ever nearer, Brother Dusk goes on a spectacular rampage. He uses the super-weapon he had built to blow up several planets that annoyed him, apparently attempting to outdo Darth Vader and Emperor Palpatine in the galactic mass murder sweepstakes, though 2018 Darth Vader Parenthood Award winner Thanos still hold the record of the biggest fictional mass murderer of all time. But Brother Dusk is not content with blowing up planets and murdering ferrets – yes, really, he murders a poor little ferret on camera – he also decides to take out his own clone siblings by blowing up the Imperial clone storage and murdering Brother Day (who turned out to be a better person than expected), the newborn baby who will be Brother Dawn and his mother figure/adviser/lover Demerzel. This amount of villainous energy is certainly admirable and Brother Dusk would have been a most worthy winner, but there is someone else who is even worse.

But before we get to the 2025 winner,  we will award this year’s Retro winner. For in the past few years, we’ve also given out Retro Darth Vader Parenthood for terrible fictional parents who either entered the scene before there was a Darth Vader Award or whom I overlooked at the time.

This year’s Retro winner is both a character who originally appeared before there was a Darth Vader Parenthood Award and one whom I overlooked when I first read the book wherein they appeared in the late 1980s. Though the winners of the respective years (Douglas Channing from Falcon Crest for 1988, Dr. Ludwig Dressler from Lindenstraße and Ser Galen from Brothers in Arms by Lois McMaster Bujold for 1989 and Leland Palmer from Twin Peaks for 1990) were all nasty pieces of work with the possible exception of Dr. Dressler who won mostly because I really, really hated the German soap Lindenstraße, which my parents watched religiousy.

“It’s an outrage,” Dr. Dressler’s fellow Lindenstraße alumnus Hans Beimer*, the 1986 winner, exclaims, “Dr. Dressler is a good man and so am I.”

Next to him, Dr. Ludwig Dressler, clad in a snazzy suit and sitting in his wheelchair, nods empahtically. “My son Frank is a drug addict, my stepson Carsten is a homosexual and my stepdaughter Beate is an all-around disaster. And yet I am the bad one? And besides, I adopted Angelina, so I would not be alone in my old age and she loves me.”

“She just loves your money,” Tyrion Lannister hollers from the bar, where he is once again getting drunk.

“This whole ceremony is a travesty,” Hans Beimer declares, “If Habeck were chancellor…”

“Shut up, Beimer, or my Horde will make you,” 2022 Retro winner Hordak hisses, “And the man with wheels had better shut up as well.” Amazingly, Hans Beimer, who has been on the receiving end of Horde stun beams several times, actually does shut up and also shushes Dr. Dressler.

Well, now we have the obligatory Hans Beimer appearance out of the way (and honestly, why does he keep attending these events, since he only ever complains anyway and then gets zapped), let’s get to this year’s Retro winner. One of the many advantages of being on the staff of Galactic Journey is the chance to reread books I read and enjoyed (or not) a long time ago with adult eyes. One of these books was Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz, which I read and enjoyed a long time ago and revisited for Galactic Journey this year, only to find that not only does it hold up, but that it’s also a much more important and groundbreaking work than I realised. For more, see this post.

Deryni Rising and its sequels are very much about family, both found and biological. The protagonist, fourteen-year-old Prince Kelson Haldane, sees his father murdered by magic in the opening chapter and not only has to ascend the throne well before he is ready, but also has to face the woman who murdered his father and challenges him to a magical duel on his coronation day. Luckily, Kelson doesn’t have to deal with all this alone. He has two supportive parent figures in Alaric Morgan, Duke of Corwyn as well as General and best friend of his late father, and Father Duncan McLain, Alaric’s cousin and Kelson’s personal confessor. Yes, this is a novel (or rather a trilogy or rather two) about two men doing their best to raise a teenager.

Now Kelson’s father is murdered in the opening chapter of Deryni Rising, but what about his mother? Well, Kelson’s mother Queen Jehana is very much alive and she does care about her son – after a fashion – but she is also a bigot and a religious fanatic who hates magic and the Deryni people who are born with the ability to use magic so much that she’d rather see her own son dead than learning to use the magic abilities he was born with to defend himself against the woman who murdered his father.

Before rereading Deryni Rising, I remembered that I disliked Jehana but I didn’t remember how terrible she really is. Therefore, I’m thrilled to announce that the winner of the 2024 Retro Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents is…

Drumroll

Queen Jehana of Gwynned

Introduced in the 1970 fantasy novel Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz and it’s sequels, Jehana not only hates magic, but she also hates Duke Alaric Morgan, the best friend and staunchest supporter of her late husband, because Morgan happens to be half-Deryni and is not at all shy about hiding his abilities. After her husband dies, Jehana tries to get rid of Morgan by accusing him of heresy and treason and having him executed. Note that Morgan was not only her husband’s best friend, but that he’s also a mentor and supportive parent figure to her son Kelson and the only person who can help Kelson unlock his magical potential, so Kelson survives his own coronation. In sort, Jehana is trying to judicially murder an innocent man who is not only the person on whom her son’s life depends, but also who genuinely loved both her husband and her son.

Luckily, Kelson is a clever kid and finds a way to use legal details to thwart his mother’s attempts to have his mentor executed. But Jehana is not done yet. She publicly disowns her own son on the morning of his coronation, when she realises that he his magical abilties are partly active. Eventually Morgan and Father Duncan figure out just why Jehana hates Deryni and magic so much – namely because she is Deryni herself and has suppressed her abilities. On the pain of revealing her secret to everybody, Jehana is coerced into attending her son’s coronation. She does discover her buried maternal instincts, when the villainous Carissa, who murdered her husband, shows up at the coronation to challenge Kelson to a magical duel and uses her long buried abilities to attack Carissa. However, since Jehana has zero training, she causes more trouble than good.

After Carissa has been defeated, Jehana leaves her son – who may be king now, but who’s also still a fourteen-year-old kid – alone and retreats to a convent to atone for the sin of having attempted to use magic. She reappears a couple of books later to once again meddle with Kelson’s life by trying to make sure that he doesn’t marry a Deryni woman, but then everybody tries to meddle with Kelson’s choice of a bride.

This sort of villainy deserves an award and therefore I am pleased to name Queen Jehana of Gwynned the winner of the 2025 Retro Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents.

Applause

Applause erupts around the auditorium. Only Hans Beimer boos, but then he always does. Dr. Dressler briefly looks as if he is about to join in, but then decides that he is too cultivated for this.

Queen Jehana ascends the stage, clad in a stunning black velvet gown studded with pearl of jet. Her auburn her is braided and half hidden by a black veil and her head sits a golden crown and everybody in the auditorium noticed that she is a very attractive woman indeed.

Queen Jehana graciously accepts the ugly vase and cradles it like a baby, while she delivers the following speech.

Thank you. I loved my husband and I love my son. I loved them in spite of the taint of evil they both carries and no one can say otherwise.

I may be queen, but I am also a mother. Is it so condemnable that I wanted to save my only son from eternal damnation in the fires of hell. For that shall be his eternal punishment for using those vile and evil abilities he inherited from his father and – to my eternal shame – from me.

I just wanted my son to be pure and untainted by magic. Is that so wrong? For magic is wrong. Magic is evil. Magic is of the devil and so are the Deryni….

In the front row, Hordak applauds and exclaims, “Damn right, my lady. Magic is a cheat, a shortcut, to be used if necessary, but never to be relied upon.”

Keldor rolls his eyes and so does Shadow Weaver under her hood.

Meanwhile, Jehana scans the auditorium for the source of the comment and spots Hordak. Worse, she realises that he is not human and that neither is half of the audience. Her eyes widen in terror, as she points at Hordak.

Monster! Demon! Deryni! You are evil. You are all evil. I am in hell. I have been condemned to hell for all my sins. Oh blessed Lord, forgive me! Save me!

Clutching the ugly vase to her breast, Jehana retreats into a corner of the stage, falls to her knees and begins to pray frantically. Her untrained magical abilities flare up, but luckily Luke Skywalker uses his Jedi abilities to shield the audience, mumbling something about how dangerous untrained Force users can be.

Well, it seems as if we won’t get Jehana out of here, until the Multiversal Nexus Ballroom shuts down for the night. So I guess we just leave her to her mental breakdown and come to the main event, the winner of the 2025 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents.

This year’s winner was briefly mentioned in last year’s honour roll, but at the time – though definitely villainous – he had not yet reached his full potential. This year he did. Therefore, I am pleased to announce that the winner of of the 2025 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fictional Parents is…

Drumroll

Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs a.k.a.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

As introduced in the 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank L. Baum and portrayed by Jeff Goldblum in Wicked and Wicked for Good, Frank Morgan in The Wizard of Oz, Richard Pryor in The Wiz, Vincent D’Onofrio in Emerald City and James Franco in Oz the Great and Powerful, Oscar is a circus performer and con man from Omaha, Nebraska at the turn of the twentieth century. One day he takes off in a hot air balloon and lands in the fantastic land of Oz, which he promptly proceeds to take over and installs himself as a all-wise and powerful Wizard in Emerald City. Note that Oscar is not actually a wizard and has zero magical abilities. He’s just a fraud and a con man, the literal “man behind the curtain”, until young Dorothy Gale rips the curtain away and reveals him.

Dorothy, however, is the least of Oscar’s problems. For the main challenger to his dominance over Emerald City and Oz is Elphaba Thropp a.k.a. the Wicked Witch of the West. For decades, everybody assumed that Elphaba was wicked, because that’s how witches are. However, the 1995 novel Wicked by Gregory Maguire, its 2003 stage adaptation and the 2024 film adaptation Wicked and its sequel Wicked for Good revealed the full ugly truth about the Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

For Elphaba is not the villainess of this tale – the Wizard is. The Wizard is very much a dictator, who has his own secret police of flying monkeys and other animals he enslaved to spy on the citizens of Emerald City. Elphaba, meanwhile, is just the convenient scapegoat for everything that goes wrong, the bogeyman or rather bogeywoman who is behind everything.

But this is not all. For when the Emerald City guard fails to apprehend Elphaba – quite possibly because guard captain Fiyero is secretly in love with Elphaba – the Wizard decides to lure her out by having his associate Madame Morrible – who unlike him actually has magical powers – create a tornado and pick up a house in Kansas and throw it onto Elphaba’s half-sister Nessarose, who happens to be disabled, crushing her to death.

Unfortunately, the house was not empty and so the Wizard sics its inhabitant, young Dorothy Gale and her companions onto Elphaba. Against all odds, Dorothy succeeds in defeating Elphaba and is sent back to Kansas.

However, there is more. For it is revealed that the Wizard himself is Elphaba’s biological father. When he first came to Oz and resumed his career as a travelling salesman of potions of questionable effectiveness, he had an affair with the wife of the governor of Munchkinland. This affair resulted in the birth of Elphaba, marked as different by her green skin colour and abused from childhood on, first by her stepfather and then by her biological father.

This sort of depravity deserves an award and therefore I name  Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmannuel Ambroise Diggs a.k.a. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz the winner of the 2025 Darth Vader Parenthood Award for Outstandingly Horrible Fiction Parents.

Applause

Applause erupts around the auditorium. Only Hans Beimer boos heartily, but then he always does.

The Wizard ascends to the stage clad in an emerald green suit with golden embellishments and a gorgeous swooshing emerald green velvet coat with golden buttons. He accepts the ugly vase, eyes it dubiously and delivered the following speech.

Thank you. Thank you very much for finally recognising my genius and my hard work to turn that benighted land of Oz – named after myself, by the way, since those idiots did not even have a name for their land before I came – into an efficient modern state.

The Wizard notices Queen Jehana, who still frantically praying in the corner and wrinkles his nose.

“Can someone please remove this… this lunatic? She is disrupting my speech.”

Hans Beimer of all people ascends to the stage, remarkably nimble for a man his age, and bends down to Jehana.

“Come, you poor thing. Let me take you away from this terrible place and these terrible people.”

The 1994 winner Mystique elbows her way through the crowd and jumps onto the stage to pull Hans Beimer away from Jehana.

“Oh no, you don’t. I know you, Beimer, and I know what you’re planning. You find poor, innocent women in distress and seduce them. That’s been your modus operandi for forty years now.”

Hans Beimer glares at her. “You have no right to lecture me, since you had sex with everyone in this room.”

Mystique smiles sweetly. “Not everyone. I never had sex with you, Beimer, because not even on my worst day could I ever sink so low. And now get lost.”

She pushes Hans Beimer away and crouches down next to Jehana.

“Come on, my dear. I know this is a scary place, but you’re safe now. Just come with me.”

Jehana looks up doubtfully, notices that Mystique is blue and promptly begins to pray again.

Mystique sighs. “Okay, this won’t work. Can someone who is telepathic show me a form to which she will respond better?”

In response, Luke Skywalker stands up and transmits an image of Jehana’s late husband King Brion Haldane into Mystique’s mind, who promptly transforms into a handsome man with black hair, gray eyes, clad in a scarlet doublet with a golden crown on his head.

Mystique lays a hand on Jehana’s shoulder. “Come, my dear.”

Jehana looks up, sees her husband and relaxes. “Brion?! They told me you were dead, murdered by magic.”

“Hush, my love. I’m here now and you’re safe. No one can hurt you. I won’t let them. And now let me take you away from this place.”

Mystique leads Jehana away towards the elevators at the back of the ballroom, while the crows parts before her. Once more, thhe auditorium erupts in applause – everyone except for Hans Beimer.

“You know she is going to sleep with that poor woman who thinks she’s her husband,” Hans Beimer says accusingly to Luke Skywalker.

Luke smiles. “Yes, she will. And you have no idea what you’re missing, Beimer.”

On the stage, the Wizard straightens his coat.

Well, now we have the theatrics out of the way, where was I? Ah yes, the animals. Those animals I supposedly enslaved – well, they are animals. And animals are not supposed to talk or think or reason. I only returned them to their natural state and also used them to keep my beloved citizens in line. For while the people of Oz may be sweet and innocent souls, they also need a strict hand at times.

Also, I protest that I am being accused of murdering Nessarose Thropp a.k.a. the Wicked Witch of the East by throwing a house on her. That was entirely the idea of my secretary Madame Morrible, who as I understand it, is currently in prison for that depraved act. What is more, I even directed Madame Morrible to take a house from Kansas, since most of Kansas is empty anyway. How was I supposed to know that this particular house was inhabited. And besides, I did send that little girl and her dog back home – or rather Glinda did.

Also, no one except maybe Elphaba is shedding a single tear for Nessarose Thropp. That woman was a dictator who harassed and abused the Munchkins and transformed her lover Boq into a Tin Man to prevent him from leaving her. Because yes, it was Nessarose who turned Boq into a Tin Man, not me. Just as it was Elphaba who turned that useless idiot Fiyero into a Scarecrow. I even did my best to restore them both. Besides, there is a reason that the Munchkins promptly erupted into song and dance, once Nessarose was gone.

As for Elphaba, who is apparently my daughter, though I have to admit that I barely remember sleeping with that lady from Munchkinland, because there were so many women, well, there would have been a place for Elphaba at my court. Elphaba was the one who decided to defy me, who decided to free the animals, who disrupted my ceremonies and tried to depose me. Did it have to end this way? No. But am I sorry she’s dead**? No. because Elphaba was a disruptive menace.

As for Glinda, dear Glinda who would be nothing without me, let it be known that I shall return to Oz and retake my rightful place as ruler of the Emerald City. Elphaba challenged me and lost and you, dear Glinda, are no Elphaba.

The Wizards struts down the stage, carrying his ugly vase as if it were a genuine trophy.

And that’s it for the 2025 Darth Vader Parenthood Award and we say good night to all of you from the Multiversal Nexus Ballroom. The companion prize, the Jonathan and Martha Kent Award for the Fictional Parent of the Year will be handed out tomorrow, so be sure to tune in again.

Who will win next year? You’ll find out in this space.

***

Disclaimer: I don’t own any of these characters, I just gave them an award and wrote an acceptance speech for them. All characters and properties are copyright and trademark their respective owners.

*Hans Beimer, a character from the German soap opera Lindenstraße, showing up at the ceremony to boo and get blasted by various villains is something of a running gag by now, but then I really, really hated Hans Beimer and the sort of person (“Green petit bourgeois Spießer”) he represents. I probably hate him more than many of the supervillains, because unlike them, he was not supposed to be a villain. Plus, my parents watching Lindenstraße for its entire thirty-five year run gave me plenty of reason to hate that guy.

**Spoiler alert: Elphaba is not actually dead, but living her best life with Fiyero who is no longer a scarescrow.