The Villains of Valley View is a Disney Channel sitcom from Chris Peterson and Bryan Moore (the creators of Lab Rats) that premiered on June 3, 2022, alongside Ultra Violet & Black Scorpion. It is about a family of supervillains consisting of teenage main protagonist Amy Madden (Havoc), her parents Eva (Surge) and Vic (Kraniac), and her brothers Jake (Chaos) and Colby (Flashform). They were members of a villain group led by the evil Onyx. After Havoc stands up to Onyx when he denies her mother a promotion and insults her family, her entire family of supervillains is forced to move to a small suburban city called Valley View in Texas and live in normalcy. With the help of rambunctious neighbor Hartley, the family must hide their superpowers and curb their villainous sides to avoid being found by either Onyx's minions, the authorities or the superheroes.
Stars Isabella Pappas as Amy, Malachi Barton as Colby, Reed Horstmann (The Expanding Universe of Ashley Garcia) as Jake, Kayden Muller-Janssen as Hartley, James Patrick Stuart (General Hospital) as Vic, and Lucy Davis (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) as Eva.
This show provides examples of:
- Abilene Paradox: The central conflict of "Party People" is that Hartley feels she is too old for Celia's annual tradition of throwing a tea party on her birthday, but is afraid to hurt Celia's feelings by asking to call it off. As it turns out, Celia was just as sick of it as Hartley and only kept the tradition alive because she thought Hartley still liked it.
- Alpha Bitch: Gem is very snobbish and uptight, always standing in Amy and Hartley's way at every turn.
- Ambiguously Bi: Although her only onscreen relationship has been with Declan, Hartley’s behavior when she meets Starling is very much that of a crush.
- Ambiguous Situation: While the haunted jukebox in "Monster Town" is definitely magical, it's not clear whether Monster Town is a legit Alternate Dimension or just a temporary one conjured to teach Amy An Aesop about appreciating her family's presence in her life more based on the wish she made to be without them. It doesn't have counterparts of Amy and Hartley (the two people who went there), they weren't gone for any length of time in the real world, and the other Maddens don't remember seeing them being zapped in front of them.
- And You Were There: In the Halloween Episode "Monster Town", Amy and Hartley are zapped into the titular Monster Town, where the monsters look exactly people they know, i.e. Celia as the Witch, Jake as the Vampire, Colby as the Mummy, Eva as the Swamp Creature, and Vic as the Frankenstein's Monster.
- Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: As Amy admits to Hartley at the end of the first episode, the reason they're on the run from Onyx is that she attacked him after he called her whole family "weak".
- Ascended Extra: Milo from Season 1 to Season 2. Milo originally started out in Season 1 as not much more than a One-Shot Character and a Recurring Extra, but by the time we get to Season 2, he starts becoming a closer friendly acquaintance (albeit, a sometimes annoying one, see "The Friend Nobody Likes" section below) with Amy, Jake, Hartley, and even Colby to some degree, as he starts to becomes quite an important recurring character to the plots of several episodes in Season 2.
- Another example, the Maddens' next door neighbor, Mr. Tennyson started out as just that in Season 1. In Season 2, he actually becomes their school principal at Valley View High, and appears as an important part of the plots of every episode that deals with their school.
- Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad: The attitude of all the Maddens except Jake. Amy especially starts off not caring much about keeping her villainous instincts under wraps, and while her parents and Colby are more subtle they'd also rather not have to pretend to be nice. In particular, Eva and Vic are disappointed rather than proud when Jake is in the running to be Student of the Month.
- Beware the Nice Ones: As Jake lampshades, for someone who doesn't like blackmail, Hartley is surprisingly good at it.
- Blackmail: The second episode involves the Maddens trying to blackmail Hartley into being a good little Secret-Keeper, with Eva and Colby looking for dirt on her while Amy and Vic compete against each other to frame her for something. The only one who doesn't think there's any need is Jake because Hartley is a good person, but Vic gets him to help him by holding his A in science hostage. Ultimately it turns out to be Blackmail Backfire, as Hartley was sincere when she said she had no intention of exposing them, but now she'll use the threat to make them cooperate.
- Celebrity Superhero: Havoc's nemesis Starling. She is part of a reality show with other superheroes, has many online followers and sponsors her own product line. However, she doesn't display the insincerity usually associated with this trope and is a genuinely Nice Girl who sometimes acts Spoiled Sweet at worst. She saved Chaos from falling off a building for no other reason than it being the right thing to do and later breaks up with Jake because she doesn't want to come between him and his family.
- Clark Kenting: Played with; Hartley does think there's something familiar-looking about Amy (as Havoc was a publicly recognized supervillain) even without her costume and mask, although she doesn't make the connection until Amy uses her power to destroy a boulder that was coming towards them. Likewise, Starling doesn't recognize Jake as Chaos until he's begging for help in the ad they're filming the same way that he did when he was hanging off the side of a building months ago.
- Cliffhanger: Season 1 ends with Havoc becoming the supreme leader of all villains after destroying Onyx.
- In Season 2, the Maddens are watching the news and the reporter says that they have obtained evidence of supervillains living in Valley View, meaning their identities are likely exposed.
- Comedic Sociopathy: As to be expected from a show that's not only a sitcom but actually about supervillains. The Maddens frequently mention the crimes they've committed, along with the many ways they've casually endangered each other.
- Consistent Clothing Style: Amy, given that she's secretly a villain, often wears clothes and outfits that are dark and somewhat edgy, while Hartley, given her cheery and optimistic personality, often wears brightly-colored clothes and outfits.
- Cool Old Lady: Landlady Celia can bench-press her granddaughter Hartley.
- The Dissenter Is Always Right: Only Amy is suspicious about Declan's behavior in "Friend or Foe", but she keeps losing her proof which almost results in a Plot-Mandated Friendship Failure with Hartley. By episode's end, Amy is convinced to trust Declan, and not until "No Escape" does she realize too late she was right to be suspicious all along when Declan is revealed to be Onyx's second-in-command Oculan, who turns them in.
- Ditzy Genius: Vic at times. For example, he was proud of making the two-way dimensional transporter an exact external replica of the one-way transporter, until Amy pointed out that made it impossible to tell which was the right one. In the third episode, she says that she had to teach him about passwords after he locked himself out too many times.
- Disintegrator Ray: In the Season 1 finale, Hartley uses Vic's vaporizer ray to vaporize and destroy Oculon/Declan.
- The Dragon: Onyx's top sidekick Oculon, who serves as the Arc Villain of Season 1, who happens to trace Surge's electrical output all the way to Valley View and find out where the Mayhems are, thus he poses as an exchange student named Declan to woo Hartley enough into letting him to the Madden household so he can strike at them when they least expect it.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: The Maddens as a whole are like this with each other, but Amy particularly stands out: The whole reason they're in hiding in the first place is that she attacked the Big Bad, Onyx, in a fit of anger when he denied her mother a promotion and dismissed her family as weak. Outside of her family, she also comes to care about Hartley in spite of her villainous instincts.
- Evil Brit: Eva is a supervillain and has Lucy Davis's British accent, though the rest of the family are American.
- Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: A recurring theme as the Maddens, being supervillains, have a difficult time understanding people who aren't like them. The first big example is how they try to blackmail Hartley into keeping their secret as the idea someone would actually keep quiet out of friendship and honoring their word is a foreign concept to them.
- Evil vs. Evil: The Mayhems vs. Oculan and Onyx in the Season 1 finale, "No Escape".
- Expy: Patricia Belcher as landlady Celia is very similar to her character Mrs Dabney in Good Luck Charlie. Both are stone-faced senior ladies who take no nonsense and invite themselves over at will.
- Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: With Amy as the impulsive and self-centered Foolish Sibling and Jake as the academically and ethically Responsible.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Milo in Season 2. In Season 1, Milo started out as just the annoying, geeky nerd at their school who fights Amy and Hartley when they try to buy off one of Eva's supervillain weapons from him (so Amy can return it to Eva as a gift for Mother's Day), since Milo's dad is an accountant who works for superheroes, and often buys a lot of superhero and supervillain memorabilia from the heroes, and gives it to Milo to keep. By the time we get to Season 2, he becomes a friendly acquaintance with Amy, Hartley, Jake, and Colby, but he still often acts like a jerk-ass towards them, sometimes, because of his tendency to often brag about how much he sees himself as smarter and more intellectual than them, and often belittling them as dumb compared to himself. Nevertheless, he also has some "Jerk with a Heart of Gold" moments towards them where they do appreciate the fact that they can count on him to be a good friend and help to them when they need him to be.
- In the Season 2 episode, "The Promposal", when Milo wants to ask Amy out to the school dance, he creates an elaborate promposal for her, and because she doesn't see him in that way and only sees him as just a cool, friendly acquaintance at best, she struggles to turn him down and say no without making him feel too bad about it, thinking he created the promposal because he has a crush on her. This is then humorously subverted, where when she tells him she doesn't see him that way, he then says "Ewww! You thought I was asking you to the dance because I liked you?! No, I only asked you to the dance because you're my friend and I thought it might be fun. And I didn't wanna go with my Mom again like I did last year." He then also reveals he only created the elaborate promposal because he figured it would make it difficult for her to say no. Amy then says she admires the villainous manipulation of his thinking and then actually agrees to accept it.
- Milo is also the only other friend and acquaintance of Amy, Jake, and Colby, besides Hartley, who knows about their supervillain secret identities, as of the Season 2 finale.
- Genki Girl: Hartley is a perpetually sunny girl (who's literally in the Sunshine Club) who takes it upon herself to be the villainous Amy's friend and good influence.
- Genius Bruiser: With Super-Strength being his power, you might expect Jake to be Dumb Muscle, but in fact he seems to be almost as smart as his father. His project for science class was a green energy source that powered the school for days.
- Hypocrite: In the episode, "Hidden Hero", Jake gets extremely jealous of Hartley when she saves one of Valley View High School's students from falling off a ladder, when he had been previously going around secretly saving people beforehand. When Hartley starts getting a lot of praise and recognition for doing so, and when Amy explains to Hartley that Jake is jealous of her, Hartley reminds him that he was the one who always told her that "being a hero is not about the recognition you get" and tells him that he has no reason to be jealous of her. He then tells her that that was just a lie and he was only saying that because it's a good thing to say when you're virtue-signalling, because everyone knows that being a hero or a villain is always about the recognition.
- I Owe You My Life: It turns out this is why Jake has been the only one to voluntarily make a Heel–Face Turn; the superheroine Starling saved his life months ago in his supervillain identity when she could easily have let him fall off a building to his doom, and since then he's been trying to follow her example. Jake later goes to ColossaCon with Hartley to get Starling's autograph so he can clandestinely thank her without her recognizing him. After Starling figures out who he is and learns why he's there, she nonetheless feels she has no choice but to alert the other superheroes to the fact the Maddens are hiding out in Valley View, until he returns the favor by saving her from a falling set piece.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Even though she's a Card-Carrying Villain, Amy can't quite help but occasionally care about others. She says she does it to "make the selfishness pop."
- Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: Quite literally, in-universe. Alpha Bitch Gem's mistreatment of Hartley enrages Amy.
- Kryptonite Factor: Starling is weak against a chemical called Chrominite.
- Locked Out of the Loop: Celia is not aware that her tenants are retired villains, and some of the hi-jinks revolve around making sure it stays that way.
- Loony Fan: Hartley acts a bit too excited when she and Jake get to meet Starling at a convention, putting her off. When Starling later gives Jake her number, she makes it clear she's not going to give it to Hartley.
- Mad Scientist: Vic is an evil scientist and inventor whose power is apparently Super-Intelligence.
- Make Some Noise: Amy's power lets her create sonic blasts and booms, and also project imitations of any sound (like the bell ringing early, or the principal's voice calling Jake to his office on the PA).
- Merchandising the Monster: The superhero convention ColossaCon sells villain costumes (Havoc's is the cheapest), and Scarlett has a Havoc doll that looks mass-produced.
- Morphic Resonance: When Colby turns into a sweater, Eva finds that whatever maltreatment it was put through carries over when he changes back. Even a hole leading to a Torso with a View (thankfully painless and temporary).
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Havoc and Chaos's spree in "Unleash the Chaos", specifically bringing down the powerline, allows Onyx to track the Maddens to Valley View and sending in another villain to find them.
- Another example in the episode, "Power Struggle" where when Blue Granite, Vic's superhero brother, throws the glass case he's keeping Vic's old superpower in, up in the air, Colby tries to jump up to catch it, but misses horribly as both he and the glass case crash down on the floor.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Havoc's defeat by Starling sometime not long before the start of the series, with the expression on her face afterwards becoming an Internet meme spread with mocking captions by Jake and Hartley, among others. It's also why Onyx declined to give her mother Surge the promotion.
- Power Incontinence: Colby stays stuck on one form or uncontrollably shifting between forms for the second half of season one, Vic finally addressing and resolving the issue by the end of the season finale.
- Psycho Electro: Eva has the power to generate electric surges and was one of two candidates for a promotion to be field commander of Onyx's evil legions.
- Raised by Grandparents: Hartley is being raised by her grandmother, Celia.
- Sadist Teacher: When Vic becomes substitute science teacher in the second episode, he takes great joy in giving "F's" to everyone, whether they deserve it or not.
- Secret Chaser: Gem becomes this to Amy as of the ending of "Overnight Success", having overheard she secretly used her sonic hypnosis on the video and becomes suspicious of her behavior, becoming a threat to her identity as Havoc. Subverted when it turns out that Gem just thought the hypnosis was a parlor trick Amy's been using to get her way and that that was Amy's secret, not realizing the Maddens are supervillains.
- Secret Identity: The Maddens must keep their identities as the Mayhems a secret to avoid being spotted and sent into custody.
- Secret-Identity Identity: In Amy's own words, she considers herself to be Amy on the outside, but Havoc on the inside. This is also showcased at the end of "The Villain Experience": her mood is visibly improved when she gets to wear her Havoc costume again and she becomes annoyed when told that she needs to revert to her civilian identity.
- Secret-Keeper:
- Hartley learns the Maddens' secret during the first episode. The second episode revolves around their unnecessary attempts to blackmail her into keeping it.
- Later, Hartley is the only other person who knows Jake is seeing Starling behind his family's backs, until Amy finds out (and gets really mad with both Jake and Hartley about it). Their parents and Colby still haven't been told.
- Starling also learns that the Maddens are undercover in Valley View after figuring out that Jake is Chaos, but decides not to tell other superheroes about it.
- Servile Snarker: Gem has a butler named Wallace who is one:Gem: Have you seen my laptop? It was in my room, but now it's not. How am I supposed to ruin someone's life without my laptop?
Wallace: Well, if it makes you feel better, you're ruining mine right now. - Shout-Out:
- Vic's villain name Kraniac evokes Brainiac.
- Eva literally urges Amy repeatedly to Pet the Dog, as in the name of the villain trope, when the former returns home with a dog on a leash (apparently having bought a Team Pet, but it turns into Colby - he's just gotten his power and they've been playing tricks on people all day).
- The show that Colby and Celia watch, Idiot Circus, where people perform dangerously stupid stunts, is a nod to Jackass.
- Star-Crossed Lovers: After Jake comes clean to Starling, they start dating unbeknownst to anyone else but Hartley, which makes Amy furious when she finds out. Starling decides to call it off because as a hero she's not in the business of breaking up families.
- Supervillain Lair: Vic creates one in the basement of the Maddens' new home (incidentally, creating a basement). He and Eva don't tell the kids at first, hoping to have a place to get away from them, but Amy and Colby find it on their own. Then they all hope to have a place to get away from Jake, but he finds it on his own.
- Title-Only Opening: An unusual example for a Disney Channel show, the series only has a short theme snippet set to ten seconds of the title appearing.
- Tsundere: Hartley. Hartley is the deredere kind of Tsundere; she's a generally very sweet girl who's always cheerful and sunny about helping others and being a good person, but she also has an easily annoyed side that if the circumstances or characters push her buttons enough, she can go berserk and lash out pretty harshly (although she tries her best to keep it under wraps). Given that Amy is a villain, Hartley's easily annoyed and angry side is also one of the things that makes Amy like her as a friend, and she often tries to do things to make Hartley embrace the easily annoyed and angry side of her personality.
- Unwitting Pawn: Hartley is this to Oculon aka Declan, who uses her friendship with Amy to lure him to the Maddens and strike them down.
- Villainous Virtues: One of the themes of the series is an exploration of these. The family finds ways to use their villainous strengths to help their friends and each other, and Hartley's character development centers on her learning from Amy's virtues to become more assertive, brave and ambitious, without also adopting her villainous vices (much). The episode "A Little Havoc" discusses the trope when Hartley tries to mentor a girl who idolizes Havoc, and they conclude that some of Havoc's traits (assertiveness and not caring what others think of her) are worth emulating, but others aren't.
- Villain Protagonist: The series focuses on a family of villains, with the daughter as the protagonist.
- Voice Changeling: One usage of Amy's powers is that she can imitate any sound she wants, including voices.
- Wham Line: The last lines of season one, directed at Amy.Imager: You destroyed Onyx. By villain creed, the new ruler of all villains…is you.
- White Sheep: Amy's older brother Jake is the only member of the family who adjusts well to ordinary life and repeatedly insists that he's made a Heel–Face Turn and is a good person now. He quickly gets the approval of all his teachers and becomes Student of the Month after less than a month at school, while cautioning the rest of his family not to expose themselves by using their powers or engaging in mischief. They fast come to see him as a drag. It turns out this is because the superheroine Starling saved his life not long before the series started and it inspired him to want to be a better person.
- You Are Number 6: Before the family moved to Valley View, Colby was referred to only as "Number Three" (as in, the thirdborn kid) because he hadn't manifested his Voluntary Shapeshifting power yet.
