Who Is the Villain of Naruto? Look at the Ones Who Stop

(Warning: this article reveals the ending of Naruto Shippuden.) It depends on the part. In the first, Naruto, the first major enemy is Zabuza Momochi and the villain in the background is Orochimaru, who brands Sasuke with his curse mark and turns the Sand against the Leaf; Gaara is still an enemy. In Naruto Shippuden the enemy is the Akatsuki, led by Pain, who is really Nagato, with Itachi, Deidara and Hidan in its ranks. Behind it stands Obito Uchiha, the masked Tobi, carrying out the plan of Madara Uchiha; Madara, brought back by Kabuto, takes over the Fourth Great Ninja War, and the final enemy is Kaguya Otsutsuki. Sasuke himself is an antagonist for much of Shippuden. If you need a single name, it is Obito, who drives the plot of Shippuden almost from start to finish. And there is a culprit without a red-clouded cloak: the Hidden Leaf Village, whose leadership, with Danzo at the front, ordered the Uchiha massacre.

But there is a more interesting question. Almost none of the great villains of Naruto ends up in a cell: they end up no longer being villains. Gaara, Nagato, Obito and Sasuke all stop, and each for a different reason.

// The theoryWhy Naruto’s villains stop

In the final stretch of the manga, Kaguya fires her bones at Naruto and Sasuke; Kakashi and Obito throw themselves in the way, and Obito warps away the one meant for Kakashi and takes his own. The man who declared a world war dies thanking Kakashi and Naruto for reminding him who he really was. It has a touch of manga miracle about it, but it raises a question criminology studies with data: not why people start offending, but why they stop. That is the theory of desistance.

It rests on two pillars. In Crime in the Making (1993), Robert Sampson and John Laub reanalyzed the data Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck had gathered on five hundred delinquent boys from Boston, and later followed those men to age 70 (2003). Almost all of them eventually quit, and what set the timing were turning points: a marriage, a steady job, the military, bonds that gave them something to lose. In Making Good (2001), Shadd Maruna added identity. He compared the stories told by people who desisted and people who kept offending, and found two opposite scripts: the condemnation script, in which people feel trapped in who they are with no way out, and the redemption script, in which their real self was always someone else and now they want to give something back.

Read Obito Uchiha’s full case file · Human ecological systems →

// Four exitsGaara, Nagato, Obito and Sasuke: four ways to stop

Gaara stops because of a bond. He grew up as his village’s weapon, feared by everyone and betrayed by the uncle who looked after him. His fight with Naruto does not make him good overnight: it gives him, for the first time, someone who sees him. Then comes what Sampson and Laub considered decisive, a role to care for. When Shippuden opens he is already Kazekage, and during Deidara’s assault he spends his strength protecting the people of the village that once shunned him (chapters 248 to 250).

Nagato stops because of a story. After defeating Pain’s six bodies, Naruto reaches him and, instead of finishing him off, talks. Nagato regains his faith in the ideals of his teacher, Jiraiya, who had written a book about a ninja named Naruto determined to free the world from the cycle of hatred (chapter 416). It is Maruna’s change of script taken to what he calls generativity, giving something back: Nagato gives up his life to revive the people he killed in the Leaf. Jiraiya he does not bring back.

Obito stops because of a mirror. Naruto wins him over during the Fourth War, but his desistance comes in fits and starts: when he tries to bring the fallen back to life, Black Zetsu uses him to revive Madara. His last decision is to step in front of Kaguya. It is the redemption script in its purest form: he discovers that his real self was the boy who wanted to be Hokage, and he no longer has time to be him.

Sasuke stops after relapsing. He disproves the idea that desistance is a switch. The truth about Itachi, which should have stopped him, turns him against the whole village, and he kills Danzo. With Kaguya already sealed, he still announces a revolution that begins with killing the five Kage and Naruto. He stops at the valley where the two had fought before, after a battle in which both lose an arm. Kakashi, now the Sixth Hokage, pardons him, and Sasuke leaves to travel the world and atone for what he did (chapter 699).

The ones who do not stop teach something too. Hidan does not fear death, so no threat restrains him, and Shikamaru ends up burying him alive. Deidara blows himself up rather than accept that his art goes unadmired. And Orochimaru ends the series free and under watch, unpunished.

// The cycle of hatredBreaking the cycle is not settling the account

The series calls the machine that manufactures its villains the cycle of hatred: wars that leave orphans, orphans turned into weapons, weapons that avenge their dead. Naruto breaks it by giving each enemy what the theory asks for: someone who sees Gaara, a different story for Nagato, a mirror for Obito and a place to come back to for Sasuke. But the system that produced them is still standing: the Leaf never publicly answers for the massacre it assigned to Itachi (we covered it in why Itachi killed his clan). The guide to Naruto’s villains reads each one through its theory, and the full gallery gathers their case files.

And two things should not be confused. Desistance looks forward: it explains why someone stops doing harm, not how to settle the harm already done. The dead of Obito’s war stay dead, and Sasuke never stands before a court. The theory itself admits its weak spot: it is unclear whether the redemption script causes the change or decorates it afterward, and it can be a convenient self-deception. Naruto forgives quickly; criminology is in no such hurry. Explaining is not excusing: understanding why these villains stop helps us know what helps real offenders stop, not close their accounts.