What follows is a short stream of thoughts about Makuta Teridax as a villain.
Teridax is the main antagonist of Bionicle. No other villain has that much influence on the development of the world and the causing of chaos across the world of the Matoran and beyond. But is he a good villain.
The quality of a villain is usually measured by the following: character, motivation, connections to the heroes and the relevance to the world and plot of the story.
Teridax as a character is slowly revealed piece by piece during Bionicles runtime. In the beginning Makuta seems more like a incarnation of the abstract concept of nihilism, the void that will eventually consume all with nobody able to prevent it. The next time we see him, in Mask of Light, he is different. From what we know Bob Thompson intended Makuta to be a tragic misunderstood hero, but we never got to know this character or his motivation. After the first movie we got introduced to the Farshtey version, that at a later point in time eventually became Makuta Teridax.
Teridax is narcissistic, cruel, but also very intelligent. His power and knowledge of the inner workings of the universe allow him to be the superior to his opponents at any time in the story. He fights many heroes, villains and sidekicks. He wins over powerful beings, like Karzahni, Keetongu, TSO, but loses against others, like Vakama, Takanuva and Brutaka. When he loses he usually has either a backup plan or the defeat was just not relevant to his grander schemes. Thus he finds confirmation of his capabilities and reassurement in his narcissism.
Makuta’s main motivation is his untold destiny, the command over the Great Spirit, as this was his main purpose of existence. He had no confirmation for this, but he was sure that his powers and skills were part of something greater. As seen in the 2007 arc destiny has an important impact on any being. The Barraki tried to revolt against their destiny and got their punishment for is in form of the pit. Matoro on the other hand accepted his destiny and died to save his friends even though he knew, that Makuta was close to victory at that point in time. Makuta acts during 2007 as if he knew the place and destiny of the beings around him. He talks down to the Barraki, laughs at Karzahni’s naivety for his dreams of conquest and explains to Matoro the hopelessness of his situation.
However, in achieving his destiny Teridax ignores the virtues of unity and duty, which are als driving forces to the main characters. But not because those virtues failed him. He simply never had use for them. (If you squint really hard you could make some connections to the Shadow Toa of 2001, who all somehow represent that mindset, but that may be a bit more far-fetched)
The one main thing that Teridax lacks is interaction with the heroes. Outside of Matoro and Vakama there is barely anyone that he interacts with beyond the stereotypical villain talk. But in those talks he makes clear that he considers Matoran and Toa as inferior beings that usually are not worth talking to. They do not matter to him. Just as in greek mythology the story of mortals usually is not interesting to the gods, only the story of the heroes. And both Vakama and Matoro are such heroes. Vakama is probably the only being that bested him more than once (LoMN, Time Trap) and Matoro has to perish for Makuta’s sins, what he considers hilarious.
What is problematic is that Makuta barely causes character development. The heroes he meets are usually the same after they have met him, with exception of Vakama, who has to fight his doubts whether he can even beat Makuta, since the apparent prophecy supposedly got it all wrong.
Therefor I once again ask: Is Makuta really a good main antagonist?