Antagonist

Character Role Analysis

The adults

Exactly zero of the adults on the island are good guys. They're the extreme of bad, actually. MoMo ChaCha is an insane dictator who kills people according to his whims. Ladybird Hope makes and arms deal with him and plans to kill the beauty queens. Agent Jones and Harris try to carry out that plan, the execution of innocents. It makes growing up look not so good.

Why are they so cartoonily villainous? For the satire, my child, for the satire.

Bray knew what she was doing. Amping up the villainy to ridiculous levels draws out the story's humor and calls attention to some of the sadly realistic things these bad guys are doing. Arms deals with dangerous people, animal testing, displacing populations—these things don't only happen in storybooks.

Finally, making her adult characters killers hits us again with that survival theme, and boosts the tension to eleven. Now that the beauty queens have conquered the natural elements of the island, they have to defend themselves against heavily armed humans. And humans who have already finished adolescence, at that.