A popular trope for Christmassy villains is to take Santa and ask what if he wasn’t so jolly? Plenty of horror movies have taken this angle with an evil Santa. The second season of The Santa Clauses took this approach with their villain. This was interesting take as here we have a Santa obsessed with power and out for revenge against those that have wronged him.
Actor
Eric Stonestreet
Eric Stonestreet took on the role of the Mad Santa in this second season and I must he was rather good and quite unrecognizable under all the make up and even with the voice performance I wouldn’t have been able to tell it was him as this character seems to contrast with the type of characters he’s known for.
First Appearance
Okay season two is heavy on flashbacks and seeing as it just finished airing recently, I won’t have pictures for everything. We first see Magnus Antas being usurped by the elves as power had gotten to his head and he planned on turning all of the children around the world into nutcrackers as he he believed them to be ungrateful. Instead the elves stood up to Le Bafana the Christmas Witch gave up her status as a legendary figure and turned him into a nutcracker and he remained that way for 700 years. He should’ve been kept at The North Pole but Gary, only, E.L.F member sold off the nutcracker to pay off his gambling debt. He ended up at a Santa theme park run by character played by Gabriel Iglesias. And once he comes into contact with Santa magic, he is freed from his nutcracker prison.
This is an interesting setup as it gives you an idea of what kind of character he is and what he wants.
Personality
While he is obsessed with power and wanting to take the throne of Santa, there is a jolly person underneath. As the Disney Wiki highlights, he’s willing to put aside his grudge after seeing what the twenty-first century has to offer but it isn’t until he’s disrespected by a kid while going about in the Santa theme park, and believes people of today are just as selfish and uncaring as they were when he was Santa. Something else to note is that for the longest time he was considered one of the best Santa’s but the bleakness of the world drove him mad and made him believe the world was ungrateful.
He’s not exactly wrong but it’s clear that he is going about it in the wrong way and this shows why he was unfit to be Santa as Santa should be able to see the best in people but the negativity of the world filled him with anger and drove his madness.
Grand Desire
His greatest desire is to reinstate himself as the one true Santa as he believes he is the only one worthy of being Santa and views Santa Scott as a failure and soft, going too easy on the children of today. This is where we also see that due to him being trapped as a nutcracker, his magic is weak but once he gets ahold of a vest that Scott was using to train his son, Cal to be the next Santa, his magic rises. We also learn that he is after his amulet and if he uses that, he’ll be back to full power. His amulet turned out to be the cup that Scott drank coca from in the first movie.
I found that to be a bit of an odd reveal but I think it works for the most part. This isn’t as bad as revealing the suit is sentient like they did in season one.
Lackey
Olga
A big thing that is revealed about the Mad Santa is he was the one to introduce giving coal to naughty children and he did this through hiring gnomes who mined for the coal and also kept the elves in line. The head of the gnomes were Olga, she is twice as angry as Magnus Antas and views him as a doofus. She has very little patience for him and being fair, after being trapped with for 700 years, I kinda get it. As she says in the finale, they bring out the worst in each other and she’s not wrong as she has an even shorter fuse then Mad Santa. Especially if you call her an elf, that’ll really set her off.
Most Evil Deed
His evilest deed ties into what he wanted to do all those years ago as Scott’s son using the sleigh sneaks off to the Santa theme park to try and stop Mad Santa as he believes it is his fault that Magnus Antas has all this power after he threw the training vest out of the sleigh in a fit of rage when his girlfriend broke up with him. He tries to confront the Mad Santa and even though he has North Pole magic, he’s no match and is turned into a nutcracker. This here again speaks to how he’s unfit for the role of Santa as instead of trying to talk things out, he’d rather just blast at the problem. This in many ways reminds of Sabrina and how she’d constantly use magic to get out of a jam even as her aunts warned her, Magic can’t solve everything and can actually make some things worse.
Demise
Magnus Antas thanks to hijacking the sleigh and having his Santa magic back heads to The North Pole to face Scott and take over. There’s an interesting moment where Mad Santa reads Scott as Scott was so insistent on his son being the next Santa that he never stopped to think if that is what Cal wanted. His defeat is a bit cheesy but that comes with the territory of a Christmas show as Scott’s daughter who might be a Christmas witch herself taps into holiday magic as she asks everyone to think of something good and that depowers the Mad Santa. He realizes he’d gone too far and puts himself in the E.L.F. Prison. Gabriel Iglesias’s character Kris is there too and says he enjoyed having Magnus Antas at his park and asks him to return and he agrees as that brought him joy as well. We get an epilogue of the two performing Santa Claus Is Coming to Town on Christmas Eve and this is the first time he genuinely seems happy. These final Mike Mrs show he’s willing to repent and reflect on how he was not the right man for the job.
Is Magnus Antas A Good Villain?
Honestly yes, he’s the best villain this franchise has had. He’s a better look at what happens when someone not fit to be Santa has that power than Frost or Simon were. It also makes him more interesting that he was already a Santa and the elves knew he was a bad Santa and were afraid of Scott finding out because they rebelled against the Mad Santa. This speaks to how instead of instilling joy, he instilled fear in people and that is the worst thing a Santa could do. If elves can’t find good in a Santa, how can they trust him to do the job? I honestly enjoyed looking at him so much as he is such a fascinating character.
About Author
I have to agree that Magnus Antas is much better than most of these franchise’s antagonists. His motivations are understandable and believable, and so is his softer side.
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I thought it interesting how he and Olga brought out the worst in each other (as Olga states toward the end), but when they’re separated, both of them show their kinder, gentler, and more reasonable sides. While at times Magnus Antas lives up to the ‘Mad Santa’ name in both the ‘mentally unstable’ and the ‘angry’ senses of the word, he shows signs of the jolly person he used to be before he went crazy when he chats with Kris without Olga, and his redeeming moment at the end feels all the more earned. Olga also shows her softer side when the fight with Betty ends with them in the workshop and they’re able to just talk it out and show off crafting skills.
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In any case, I have to agree that Magnus Antas is certainly a far more interesting take on the idea of a Santa gone wrong than Jack Frost or the Toy Santa were.
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All in all, I think the writing in the ‘Santa Clauses’ series was far more clever than the previous two movie sequels, and actually improved the franchise.
Much agreed, the series does more interesting things with its antagonists than either of the sequels.