The following contains major spoilers for Seasons 1 and 2 of Centaurworld available now on Netflix.
The Nowhere King, the villain of the animated series Centaurworld, is a character that is as equally chilling as he is compelling. His interesting backstory resulted in a much more heartbreaking end than one would've expected and is what makes him the best kind of villain.
Centaurworld is a series that follows a warhorse, named Horse, who finds herself in another world far different from her own. Here every living creature is a centaur, and the world itself is a colorful and magical place, which is much different from her war-torn world. Horse makes a few new friends who end up joining her on a quest to find her way back home to her Rider. During this time, they slowly learn of an entity named the Nowhere King, as he takes on the role of the show's main villain.
Centaurworld is a story of love and hate
In the series finale, the dark history of the Nowhere King is revealed. Audiences learn that he was first an Elktaur (an elk centaur) called Elk. At this point, the human world and Centaurworld are still connected by the rift. Elk was a rift worker who ensured that the portal between the worlds was working. During one of his repair jobs, he met the princess of the human world and quickly developed feelings for her. A party was held in his honor after the princess told her father about his efforts to get her safely home.
They get to know each other pretty well, even exchanging some flirty banter. However, Elk always had this feeling that he would never be good enough for her because she was a human and he was a centaur. Even though their two worlds are connected, humans always saw the centaurs as inferior. Elk seemed to internalize this and even started hating himself for being an Elktaur.
These kinds of feelings make him a relatable character, while also making his story all the more tragic. Elk could've taken a different route in his life if he had not given in to these emotions. Instead of believing the princess when she said that she liked him the way he was, he let his feelings of self-loathing get the better of him. This put him on the path to self-destruction as he soon began experimenting with the rift.
How did he become the Nowhere King?
After experimenting with the key to the rift, he was eventually able to separate himself, but at a great cost. The rift was able to separate his human half from his elk half. However, he was the one that was stuck being the elk. His human half, who later becomes the General, betrays him and goes off to marry the human princess. The story from there gets even more brutal: he asks to be fused back together, unable to go on as an elk. The two of them fight, with the human half even trying to drown the elk so he could get rid of him.
However, the General finds out that if he kills the elk, he kills himself. Instead, he locks the elk away in a cell with no light or space to even move. He is trapped there for ten long and painful years until the princess breaks him out. After he escapes, the elk finds that he doesn't belong anywhere as he is not a centaur or a human. In a desperate attempt at creating a family to end his loneliness, he uses the key to the rift to create Minotaurs. This slowly corrupts him, inside and out, and he soon turns into the Nowhere King.
The war that had engulfed Horse's world was all the result of one entity at war with itself. The human unable to kill the elk and vice-versa created a war that could never end. This resulted in a continual cycle of suffering, where neither of them could ever have peace. In the end, when the princess pushes the General off a cliff, and when he and the Nowhere King are dying, she fuses them back together. She sings how she would've loved Elk the way he was and kills him, releasing them from their pain and suffering.
At this point, the love that they had originally felt for the princess as an elktaur had mutated and turned toxic. Both the Nowhere King and the General were willing to do anything to be with the princess, even start a war that killed hundreds. The show is then able to make a point about how love shouldn't be only about achieving your own desires. As a villain, this adds many dimensions to the characters and gives an understanding as to what motivated their actions -- he isn't just evil for the sake of it.