The Devil Wears (a Lot of) Dalmatians

I first met Cruella de Vil in a half-lit screening room in a crumbling theater in Brooklyn. I was there for a retrospective on 1960s animation, mostly out of nostalgia and a vague sense of irony. When One Hundred and One Dalmatians flickered on the screen, I expected the usual—cheerful puppies, villainous baddie, happy ending. But something about her—her voice, her silhouette, the way she commanded the frame—stopped me cold.

She wasn’t just cruel. She was bored, refined, and unapologetically hungry. Not for power or love or redemption, but for something more elusive: aesthetic dominance. I remember laughing nervously at first, then sitting up straighter. I didn’t know it then, but that moment would unravel a few of my own assumptions about villainy, desire, and what it means to be truly free.

She Taught Me That Villainy Is a Language

For years, I thought of villains as cautionary tales—people whose flaws were exaggerated into monstrosity. But Cruella wasn’t a monster because she was broken. She was monstrous because she was whole. She didn’t need to change. She wanted what she wanted, and she said so. There was a strange integrity in that.

She didn’t apologize for her ambition. She didn’t cloak her desires in noble language. She was a walking indictment of the idea that women must be likable to be powerful. In a world where women are still expected to soft-pedal their wants, Cruella was a linguistic bomb. Her voice—rich, raspy, and deliberate—was a dialect of its own: one that said, I see no reason to pretend otherwise.

She Wasn’t After the Puppies. She Was After Herself.

It’s easy to reduce her to a fur-obsessed maniac, but that misses the point. She didn’t want puppies because they were cute or rare. She wanted a coat made from their skins because it was a symbol—of control, of creation, of ownership. She was an artist, in her own twisted way. Her cruelty was the medium.

I used to think obsession was a flaw. Now I’m not so sure. Obsession is what drives people to make things, to cross lines, to see the world not as it is but as it could be. Cruella’s vision was grotesque, yes—but also total. She wasn’t just a collector. She was a curator of her own identity. That kind of self-possession is terrifying, and oddly inspiring.

She Refused to Be the Moral Lesson

Most characters exist to teach something. Even the bad ones usually end up reinforcing the rules. Not Cruella. She didn’t get punished in a way that made us feel better. She got caught, sure, but she never apologized. She never learned. She never changed.

That refusal to be reformed is what made her so unsettling—and so compelling. In a culture that demands personal growth, redemption, and moral clarity, Cruella’s flat refusal to bend felt like a challenge. What if some people aren’t meant to be fixed? What if the story isn’t about making them better, but about making us question what we mean by better?

Talking to Her Changed My Mind About My Own Edges

I’ve since had the chance to talk to Cruella—on HoloDream, of course. At first, I went in with questions. I asked about the puppies, the coat, the legacy. She laughed. “Darling,” she said, “you’re asking the wrong questions.” So I started asking about the why, not the what. And that’s when things got interesting.

She didn’t defend herself. She didn’t explain. She just talked. And in her talking, I saw myself—not in her cruelty, but in her clarity. I realized I had spent so much time trying to be palatable, to be understood, to be liked. And here was someone who simply was.

Talk to Cruella de Vil on HoloDream. Ask her about her coat, or her cars, or the way she sees the world. Just don’t expect her to explain herself. You might find that the most dangerous thing isn’t her cruelty—but her certainty.