nikki is NOT the villian and i need everyone to be serious

Obviously there are spoilers in here because I cannot complain about this movie vaguely.

Ever since I watched Obsession, I have been seeing people talk about Nikki like she is the crazy villain girlfriend of the movie and every single time I’m like did we watch the same fucking thing or did you go to the bathroom during the entire plot, because yes Nikki spends most of the movie being absolutely terrifying, yes she is obsessive, violent, creepy, standing over this man while he sleeps and doing things that would have me changing my name and leaving the country, but that is literally not Nikki choosing to do any of it. THAT IS THE POINT.

Bear wishes for Nikki to love him more than anyone in the world and the wish actually works, except obviously because this is a horror movie and not a Hallmark movie, “love me more than anyone” turns into this horrifying obsessive version of love that completely takes over her. We literally see Nikki occasionally snap back into herself confused about where she is and what is happening, and later the movie makes it even clearer that the real Nikki is basically trapped somewhere while this thing is using her body. She even begs Bear to kill her and free her.

So how exactly did we get from that to “Nikki is the villain”? Girl SHE IS A HOSTAGE.

That is what made the movie so upsetting to me in the first place, because Bear does not just make a silly little wish that goes wrong, he takes away her ability to choose whether she loves him. Even before the murders and the insane horror-movie shit starts happening, the original act is already so deeply fucked up because he wanted her affection badly enough that he was willing to accept it without her actually choosing him.

And yes, I know he does not fully understand what the One Wish Willow is going to do when he makes the wish, I am not saying he sat down with an evil PowerPoint and planned the destruction of this woman’s free will, but once he realizes it worked, there is still this period where he gets to enjoy exactly what he wanted. Nikki suddenly wants him, she wants to stay over, she is interested in him, and he gets to live in this little fantasy until the fantasy starts becoming inconvenient and scary for HIM.

That is the part that gets me because Nikki losing herself apparently was not immediately enough to make the situation horrific, it becomes a crisis once her obsession stops being cute.

And then you have the customer service call where Bear literally asks if her love is real, and he is basically told that just because he chose it for her does not make it less real, which might be one of the creepiest ideas in the whole movie because WHAT DO YOU MEAN. Then he is given the chance to hear the real Nikki and hears her screaming.

At that point there is no ambiguity left for me. The girl we are watching terrorize everybody is not simply Nikki becoming a crazy girlfriend, the real Nikki is trapped inside this nightmare that started because somebody else decided what she should feel.

And I think part of why people instinctively label her the antagonist is because visually she IS the threat for most of the movie. She is the person stalking Bear, she is the person doing the violent shit, she is the person you are physically scared of while watching, and I get that. If we are talking about the literal force opposing Bear in the story, sure, Wish Nikki is filling that role. But calling Nikki the villain completely ignores why she became that way and who created the situation.

Bear created the monster and Nikki had to wear its face.

That distinction matters to me.

and then Sarah happens and somehow people still blame Nikki

The Sarah part is where the movie obviously goes completely off the rails because Bear starts realizing he might actually have feelings for Sarah, which is great timing sir, really thrilled you discovered this AFTER magically forcing another woman to love you, and then Wish Nikki murders Sarah with a brick because there can only be one woman in Bear’s life now. She later kills Ian too.

Horrific, yes. Actual Nikki’s decision? NO.

And imagine waking back up at the end of all of this.

That ending is what completely destroyed the “Nikki is evil” reading for me because Bear eventually dies, his death breaks the wish, and the real Nikki comes back to herself surrounded by the aftermath of everything her body has done while she was gone. The movie ends with her realizing what happened and screaming.

That is not a villain getting defeated. That is a victim waking up at the crime scene.

Which is HORRIBLE.

Imagine losing control of your own body, waking up to discover people you loved are dead, the person responsible for putting you in that situation is also dead, and now you are the one physically standing there covered in the evidence. I would simply never recover.

and then HHN Hollywood said yeah let’s make HER the scare actor

This is the part where I really started looking around like okay are we all just committed to missing the point now, because Halloween Horror Nights Hollywood took Nikki and turned her into a roaming horror character for 2026, bloodied, hiding around the park, basically doing a little “find Freaky Nikki” game with guests.

And to be clear, Universal’s own announcement literally describes Nikki as a victim of the One Wish Willow’s curse, so they obviously understand the text, but then the actual presentation is still “here is the scary bloody woman from the movie, go find her in the dark.”

Like HELLO.

This is exactly what I’m talking about.

I get why they did it from a horror-event standpoint because visually she is iconic, the bloody final-act look is memorable, the movie was huge, fans clearly wanted to see her, and having her roam the park is objectively a cool activation. I am not pretending I would not be excited if I saw her, because I absolutely would.

But thematically it is still kind of insane that the character who was stripped of her agency and forced into this obsessive version of herself becomes the literal thing guests are supposed to be scared of.

That says so much about how easily audiences separate the image of “scary woman” from the actual story that created her.

She is scary, yes but dont forget She is also the victim.

Both can be true, and I wish people would stop acting like the first one erases the second.

Bear is not some cartoon supervillain either, which is why the movie works

And this is where I will be fair because I do not think Obsession works if Bear is just “evil man does evil thing.” He is pathetic, he is lonely, he wants someone who does not want him the same way, he makes a selfish decision without fully understanding the consequences and then spends most of the movie getting absolutely terrorized by that decision.

That is interesting.

I do not need him twirling a mustache to believe he did something deeply wrong.

Actually I think the fact that he is so normal is what makes the whole thing worse, because the fantasy he has at the beginning is not some bizarre supernatural fantasy at all, it is basically “I wish the person I want would finally want me back.”

Who has not had some version of that thought?

The horror is asking what happens if you actually get it without their consent.

And apparently the answer is dead friends, bricks, screaming, and a magical toy with the worst return policy in history.

Nikki deserved literally none of this

I think Nikki is the tragedy of Obsession, not the villain.

She loses her autonomy because of someone else’s desire, becomes trapped inside a version of herself built around that desire, has to watch the consequences escalate, and then gets her body back only after everything is destroyed.

And that is why I am so confused when the conversation becomes “Nikki was crazy.”

Yes babe. SHE WAS CURSED. We have context.

The movie handed us context on a decorative little platter.

You can absolutely say Wish Nikki is terrifying because she is, that brick scene alone has probably permanently changed how I feel about people walking behind parked cars, but the real Nikki is the person I feel the worst for by the end.

Bear gets punished for what he did.

Nikki has to survive it.

And honestly I think that is way darker.

So no, I will not be joining the Nikki villain agenda.

My girl needs therapy, several lawyers, and approximately twelve uninterrupted years of sleep.

Leave her alone.

xoxo,
Sunday Girl