Neil From 'The Santa Clause' Is an All-Time Christmas Movie Villain

People love to pile on Charlie's mom Laura, but it's Neil who is the true monster in this '90s holiday classic.

Obviously, Scott Calvin’s ex-wife Laura and her new husband Neil are the antagonists of The Santa Clause.

The internet especially loves to pile on Laura for the fact that she called the cops on Santa Claus and miiiight just be overreacting a bit when she hurriedly grabs Charlie from his soccer game because she sees Scott has begun to fully embrace his Santa mystique and freaks out. And her face of concern when she sees Charlie using his imagination in his room, pretending to command Santa’s sleigh, is parental hand-wringing at his cringiest.

What exactly is the problem with Charlie being so fixated on the idea that he went to the North Pole with his dad? By all accounts, it would seem this is the first time in a while Charlie had anything nice to say about Scott, and Laura’s first inclination is to snuff that out as quick as possible. We only truly know what we’re given on screen in regards to this relationship, but I think it’s pretty obvious Scott Calvin has been a pretty terrible father to this point. As an audience, we can begin to understand to some extent Laura’s first reaction being one of concern, afraid that Scott is manipulating their son in some way (sounds like it wouldn’t be the first time, either).

Still, though, you can always see at least some conflict in Laura’s decisions, whereas Neil - on multiple occasions - simply suggests that the solution is for Laura to completely cut off Scott from ever seeing Charlie again. Remember, this is all to make Scott pay for the sin of finding a way to actually connect with Charlie for what appears to be the first time.

But even that pales in comparison to the fact that at the beginning of the movie, we learn Neil is actively trying to dismantle Charlie’s belief in Santa Claus. Charlie is right on the cusp of no longer believing, and Neil - Laura’s not innocent here, either - is filling Charlie’s head with doubt about the whole endeavor.

Scott, for all his faults - and it would appear that he has many in the unseen life before this movie starts - knows enough to help Charlie believe in the magic of the holiday, even if it’s just for one more year. He was never even consulted about this move to introduce Charlie to the real world.

By the end of The Santa Clause, though, and into the next two movies, Neil has been disarmed and fully embraces the magic of his wife’s ex-husband being Santa. In the third movie, he even runs around the North Pole like a maniac, happily prancing around with the elves. Santa wields immense magical power, and Neil is lucky Scott doesn’t use it to crush him back. It seems like Bernard the head elf would have no qualms about making Neil disappear.

But some of us out there will never forget what Neil tried to do to Scott and Charlie in the first film. This was a bitter feud that nearly destroyed a family, and it was obvious from the start that Neil was working behind the scenes to ice Scott out completely from Charlie’s life. For that, he has cemented his place as an all-time Christmas movie villain.