Top 30 Final Fantasy Villains - #19



#19 - Exdeath
(Final Fantasy V)

Yeah, yeah, I know, Exdeath is a tree. Go ahead, make your jokes. But much like Aquaman, his silly concept betrays just what a force to be reckoned with the guy truly is.

Long before the events of Final Fantasy V, the necromancer Enuo sealed thousands of demonic evil spirits within the Great Tree of Moore. He was eventually defeated, but his creation eventually gained sentience and, now calling itself Exdeath, set out with only one goal: opening the Void between dimensions and allowing it to consume everything that is. He is sealed away by the Warriors of Dawn by the power of the crystals, which split the world into 2 different ones, but even while sealed, all that’s on Exdeath’s mind is freeing himself and opening the Void.

On the surface this origin seems a bit cliche. And yeah, in terms of motivation and subtlety, there’s really none to be found. But despite all the jokes about him being a tree, he is one of the most scarily competent villains the series has ever had. He effortlessly tricks, controls, and manipulates everyone into destroying the crystals and this the seal over him, and once the worlds are fused back together, he manages to obtain the power he so desperately sought, showing off his new power by pulling various chunks of the planet into the Void, going out of his way to target the main characters’ hometowns, in a horrifying display of petty spite that few villains can match.

Another memorable aspect to his character is his hamminess. The dialogue in the original SNES version is fairly stock and unimpressive, but in the GBA remake, the script was thrown out in favor of a more lighthearted, comedic, borderline parody of the fantasy genre, and Exdeath is endearing in just how hammy he is, and he even gets a few funny lines here and there (“YOU WILL FIND NO SUCH TASTY DIVERSIONS IN THE AFTERLIFE!”), and Dissidia cranks it up to 11. Every other line out of his mouth is about the Void, how great the Void is, how nothing compares to the Void, would you like to take a moment to hear about our lord and savior the Void?

The best part about him, however, is the scene halfway through the game where he kills Galuf. Character death in Final Fantasy is nothing new. This is one of the few times in the series where the main villain actually personally kills a main character. Even Kefka never managed that, and he’s considered by many to be the best villain in the series! (Will he be #1 on this list? We’ll see…) It helps that the scene itself is one of the most epic moments in the entire series, or at least among the SNES games.

The awesome boss battles against him are the icing on the cake. His armored warlock form is challenging, his tree form is just as tough, and his final form is chaos incarnate. And his true nature as a nest of demons is pretty horrifying if you think about it. Honestly, Exdeath is one of the biggest, baddest, most underrated villains of this series.