One thing I really appreciate about the writing of Nick Goode is that they didn’t make him a sadist. It would’ve been so easy to go down that route for his character, but they didn’t. Nick doesn’t take any pleasure from seeing Shadyside and its residents suffer. He freaks out and throws up when he sees the bodies of the dead campers, and every time he’s confronted by the suffering of the shadysiders, he tenses up and looks visibly unsettled. I really don’t think it’s an act — he genuinely feels sympathy for them. He doesn’t keep up the family legacy because he hates the shadysiders and thinks they deserve all this. He just views it as a necessary evil for him to live the life he deserves. This doesn’t make him any less evil (more human, but not less evil). In fact, I think it makes him even more evil. He knows it’s wrong, and he doesn’t like it, but he does it anyway.
And it’s really cool how Nick mirrors Solomon in this. Solomon cared for Sarah. He did his best to comfort her and save her from the town until he didn’t have a way out except for framing her. He doesn’t take any pleasure in seeing her hanged. He wished things could be different, but he views it as another necessary evil.
