Alas we are at our final Paddington villain of the series and I’m kinda sad about that as it has been fun looking at these villains. Something I noticed while working on entry for Cabot is how the villains of the third movie in many ways share a lot of similarities to the villains from 1 & 2. Like Phoenix, both Cabot and Reverend Mother are obsessed with treasure. The comparison to Millicent is a bit harder to pinpoint though as we will see her comeuppance is almost a beat for beat carbon copy of Millicent’s comeuppance.
Reverend Mother is an interesting villain in how everything even down to her identity is a farce. This is something that Mrs. Bird even points out as Reverend Mother gets e of the most famous lines about God wrong. Everything about her persona is farcical and we will discuss this more when looking at her personality.
First Appearance
We first see or rather hear Reverend Mother in letter form when she writes to Paddington falsely claiming that Paddington’s Aunt Lucy is feeling lonely and sick missing him. It is a ploy to get Paddington to com to Peru as she needs him in order to find the treasure of El Dorado.
Reverend Mother as we know for the majority of the movie seems to be a comedic relief character who is a bit silly but again this is all just a facade with her even going so far as to team up with Mrs. Bird to find the Browns and Paddington in the Peruvian rainforest. She had been tracking the Browns through a necklace she gave Mrs. Brown of St. Peter. She plays it off as saying she was worried about their wellbeing.
Yet once Reverend Mother and Mrs. Brown find the family, we se her drop the act and the cloth where we learn that she is actually Clarissa Cabot, cousin of Hunter Cabot and much like him, she is also cursed with an obsession for treasure. This is observed as she much like her cousin has the Cabot crest as a tattoo. Once she stops being Reverend Mother and starts being Clarissa again, we see she is cold and ruthless and will do anything to get what she wants and that includes holding poor Gina hostage. That girl is going to need a lot of therapy for what her family has put her through.
Personality
I touched upon this briefly in the previous category but everything about her is a farce, a facade, a charade. For so long the Browns are led to believe she is an ally out to help Paddington. The movie even goes out of its way to make you think her cousin is the main antagonist. There are hints that something is up with her such as Mrs. Bird finding her lair that she had been using to track the Browns. It looks like a typical evil lair really but she laughs it off.
However, once we see see er drop the act we learn that much like the rest of her family, she too is obsessed with finding the treasure yet a difference between her and Hunter Cabot is that the latter let his desire drive him whereas Reverend Mother/Clarissa while having those same desires wasn’t as impulsive, she was more calculated and knew to bide her time. We see this with how manipulative she is considering she caused the disappearance of Aunt Lucy to lure Paddington to Peru because she knew she’d need a bear to lead her to the treasure as a bear’s roar is required to open the gates and oh, Aunt Lucy had a talisman that she found on Paddington as a baby that came from El Dorado. Furthermore, she took a job as a nun at the home for retried bears in order to find the right bear to lead her to the treasure.
Yes, we can all observe how that comical that is but it also speaks to how she was willing to bide her time until the right moment to go looking for the treasure. While she had her impulses much like her cousin, she was able to keep them at bay.
Song
Let’s Prepare for Paddington
Okay seriously, we are three movies in and this is the first time one of these villains has gotten a song? Why? If any villain should’ve had a song, it was Phoenix in 2. Which yeah he did get a number at the end of the movie but not the same thing and even then, this song tells us absolutely nothing about Reverend Mother/Clarissa as a person. It’s just fluff that again is meant to divert us from thinking she is the main villain.
The problem there though is that there are so few breadcrumbs to pick up any hint that she’ll end up being the antagonist. It feels like a last minute bait and switch. What we had with Hunter Cabot as the antagonist was fine and would have been more interesting seeing one of Paddington’s antagonists fully reformed.
Also on another note, it is somewhat of a shame that e didn’t’ get our first real villain song for this franchise until the first movie was adapted to stage. It’s a minor thing really but honestly in the grand scheme of everything, this song could be easily excised from the movie and you would lose nothing.
Grand Desire
Much like her cousin she is also after the gold that she believes sits at El Dorado . There really ins’t much to say about this as it’s a simple desire and unlike her cousin who is fighting his daemons in the form of his ancestors, she is just evil once she drops the act of Reverend Mother.
Most Evil Deed
Her most evilest deed is what sets the movie in motion by getting Paddington to Peru causing his Aunt Lucy to disappear. She is supposed to have a facade of caring about the bears she looks after but in this moment, she lets it disappear and the true sinister version of herself comes out.
Demise
I had to go back and look at the plot to see if anything happens in Peru after she takes Gina hostage at gunpoint but nope she kinda just disappears from the movie until we get an update from Paddington where learn that the judge made her become a real nun and sent to a home for retired polar bears in the Antarctic.
I mentioned how this mirrors Millicent’s comeuppance from the first movie in how Millicent is sent to take care of animals after killing so many of them. We find out Reverend Mother or Clarissa rather actually hated the bears. It’s whatever, it’s a fine takedown after everything she did.
Is Reverend Mother/Clarissa Cabot A Good Villain?
She’s fine if in my opinion unneeded. Hunter served the antagonist role rather well in the movie and while there were hints that she was something other than she appeared but I kinda feel like I would’ve liked it better it if was just a subversion where no she was actually a good person and you could have kept her related to Hunter and Gina but reveal she overcame the curse.
Make no mistake, Paddington in Peru despite not being directed by Paul King is a perfectly fine movie. It just never reaches the highs of Paddington 2 but thats a near impossible task for any third entry after a having two good first movies. The only exception perhaps being Toy Story 3 being as good if not better than the first two Toy Story movies. Paddington in Peru imo is much closer to Back to the Future Pt. III where I and II are some of the greatest movies ever and the third entry is just fine.
Welp, this closes out my look at the villains from the Paddington trilogy. I hope that you’ve enjoyed this series and there will be more Villains Profiles in the future.
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