There are many villains that we have come across that are widely misunderstood. With time, we see how not every villain is born but made. But then again, we have villains like Nurse Ratched from ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.’ She is one of those typical villains that you don’t want to mess with.
She is one such character that when she steps into a room, we will see how everybody sits up straight, hides their cigarettes, and rethinks their life choices. The audiences who admire One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest know that she is the infamous head nurse, both in Ken Kesey’s novel and the unforgettable 1975 film.
The Ward’s Cold Queen Meets the One Man She Can’t Break
Over the decades, she has been known to stand for the cold, suffocating grip of institutional power of the Salem State Hospital. We see how she keeps the ward running like a military operation, and honestly, that’s no coincidence. Her whole rough and cold demeanor comes from her years as an army nurse in World War II, which explains why she treats emotional vulnerability the way most of us treat parking violations (no offense, people).
She is always so stiff in uniforms, with a tight bun, sharp heels, and that unsettling baby doll face the novel has described. But there is no mistake that she won’t think twice before wrecking your life.
The audience is aware of how she is on the surface. She claims she is helping the patients for their own good, but we all know how that kind of sentence ends. Her real strength is psychological control, which comes with quiet intimidation, strict schedules, mind-numbing medication, and those infamous group therapy pecking parties, where she gets the men to tear each other down while she harvests the emotional fallout like some kind of bureaucratic supervillain.
And midway, McMurphy shows up and changes everything.
He is the loud wildcard who treats rules like some party decoration. The moment he strolls onto her ward, the whole place wakes up. He cracks jokes, plays odds over cigarettes, takes the guys out fishing, and reminds them they are actual human beings. Naturally, Ratched hates this energy, as if it were her mortal enemy, which, to be honest, is true in her case.
You may also like: 10 Villains Who Were Actually More Interesting Than The Heroes, 25 Villains Who Were Victims First
She Wins the Battle, Loses Her Power, and the Ward Finally Wakes Up
And what follows afterward is one of the most memorable power struggles in film and literature. It’s this battle of control versus freedom. It’s Ratched’s order versus McMurphy’s refusal to be flattened. And as the stakes rise, things get dark. The turning point comes when Billy is caught with Candy during McMurphy’s late-night party. Instead of handling it with compassion, Ratched drops the bombs as she threatens to tell Billy’s mother. The moment destroys him, and he chooses to kill himself. That becomes the emotional explosion McMurphy can’t walk away from.
That’s when he snaps. He lunges at her and nearly strangles her, which was a moment created by years of tension that had been building up. Afterward, she gets her revenge the only way she knows how, by being calm, clinical, and permanent. McMurphy is lobotomized and returned to the ward as an empty shell. But even though she wins, she doesn’t really. Her grip on the men shatters. Her voice is gone, literally and symbolically. And the ward no longer sees her as the unstoppable force she once was.
Louise Fletcher’s film performance sealed Ratched as one of cinema’s greatest villains, who is ranked fifth by the AFI. While Sarah Paulson later took on the character in Netflix’s Ratched, exploring how someone becomes that.
Read more: 10 Most Ruthless Villains in Shonen Jump, Ranked, 10 Movies Where The Villains Weren’t Entirely Wrong
