why i think milo moriarty is a far more compelling and interesting villain than _____ is and will ever be.
cw: long post, rkdd manga spoilers and my opinions
so, let me reiterate. for me, milo is definitively a far more compelling and interesting villain than alice is and will ever be.
"but he shot toto!" AND I SAY GOOD! I AM GLAD HE SHOT TOTO! it gave us some of the most iconic chapters of cruise arc where only toto's voice broke through to ron while ron was experiencing his culprit killing compulsion. that was cinema!
milo made that happen! he went after the person ron cares about the most and actually hurt him. we saw him push ron to the very edge and almost coax ron to become a murderer even at the expense of his own life. THIS DIVA!
on a serious note, though, i think there is more to milo than meets the eye and it is made evident by the end of cruise arc. when he was first introduced, milo almost felt like a cartoon villain to me. even the initial reveal that the 'm' family targeted ron for being half-holmes half-moriarty was something i could not take seriously.
but you know what? the story made me take it seriously as each case leading up to the finale methodically revealed to us just how deep the hatred between the moriarty family and the holmes family goes. and just how much ron has been made to suffer for belonging to both families.
i think rkdd part 1, though it had the overarching goal of solving the mystery behind the bloody field trip incident, was also a journey of rediscovering himself for ron. his sense of who he is had been shattered when he was accused of mass murder and forbidden from detective work. in part 1, ron is learning to live again. he is a self-admitted piece of junk lost to time when toto finds him and with toto's support he dares to resume his work as a detective, the thing that he knows he was born to do.
but then, the auberge fire case happens where ron learns that he himself is a moriarty. the reveal is devastating to him and we see ron have a breakdown after which he tells toto he will give up being a detective.
i believe this is a crucial point where we learn that the notion of moriartys being inherently evil is not a belief limited to the 'm' family. ron believes this as well, so much so that just knowing he has moriarty blood running through his veins is enough to make him think he doesn't deserve to be a detective.
however, by the conclusion of the auberge arc, ron recalls memories of his father telling him to forge his own path. and with toto by his side, ron becomes resolute in who he is all over again! moriarty blood be damned, ron can choose what kind of person he is, just like his father before him. he doesn't need to be defined by either side of his ancestry because it is entirely up to him to decide the path he walks on.
and this is where i really start to contrast between ron and milo.
unlike ron who ultimately learns he can choose the kind of life he leads, milo is someone who is raised to believe that he has one set path that he is destined to walk on. as deep as the hatred between the moriarty family and holmes family goes, so is set in stone the belief that being a moriarty makes one an inherent monster.
from everything we know about the moriarty family in rkdd, it is reasonable to assume that all the moriarty children are indoctrinated with certain "truths" that the 'm' family believes to be absolute.
a moriarty is intrinsically cruel. a moriarty is inherently capable of evil. a moriarty is destined to a life of crime. a moriarty cannot be weak. a moriarty cannot fail. these are unquestioning beliefs all the moriarty siblings share whether it be milo, winter or alice.
but then a certain incident simultaneously challenges and strengthens these moriarty values. i am, of course, talking about milo shooting alice.
this event breeds animosity between milo and winter. and though winter does not explicitly defy the family, they do agonize over why it had to be this way. did their little sister truly deserve to be put to death for not being up to moriarty standards? did milo really need to kill her? whether consciously or not, simply having these questions and being angry with milo for alice's death is a sign that cracks had formed in those moriarty values winter had been fed their whole lives.
meanwhile, killing alice stands to be one of, if not the most ruthless act milo commits that solidifies his nature as a moriarty. he is someone who would not even spare his own defenseless little sister. killing alice strengthened his already unwavering belief that this is simply who he is destined to be.
and yet. as the climax of the cruise arc played out, milo's insistence on making a murderer out of ron starts to feel rather personal. up until that point, milo has consistently acted aloof, making it seem like he toys with ron simply because he can. because he wants to. but, when confronted with ron's resolve (propped up with toto's unwavering support of course) milo grows desperate.
at first he wants ron to kill toto. but when ron resists, he settles on himself as ron's target. if it meant making a murderer out of ron kamonohashi, his own life is something milo is willing to give up.
but we all know what happens next. ron chooses to hurt himself rather than become a murderer. even if the one he has to kill is milo moriarty, ron chooses himself and his pride as a detective.
and then we see milo admit to himself that he is a failure and as he jumps off the ship, into his certain death, his last thought is of the little sister whose life he had taken with his own hands.
and can i just say once again how this was ABSOLUTE CINEMA. it's so fucking perfect I LOVE CRUISE ARC SO FUCKING MUCH PELASE GOD BRING THE GOOD TIMES BACK TO ME
now, you can say that this is hindsight but i believe that this "ending" for milo had already left more than enough room to speculate things that are later confirmed in part two i.e. deep down milo has always felt guilty for killing alice. all the murders that he orchestrated on the cruise were such that, between a pair of loved ones, one person had to let the other person die. milo was essentially recreating what had happened with alice, putting others through the same pain that he had been.
and this is what i think is genius whether it was intentional or not. the very thing that was meant to establish milo as a ruthless moriarty monster by nature is actually what ends up revealing his humanity.
because guess what? he was remorseful. he always had been. he regretted killing alice as soon as he had pulled the trigger. we learn this last detail much later in part two but it didn't come as a surprise to me at that point.
i believe when milo is faced with ron's resolve to not become a murderer to the point that ron would rather hurt himself, he is also confronted with the fact that this is a moriarty who can and is refusing to embrace their so-called nature of being a monster. and if a moriarty is capable of defying their nature, then what he had done to his little sister... was it really something he had no choice in?
all this is not to say that milo's outwardly spoken motives aren't true, by the way. ron being half holmes and the 'm' family's hatred of the holmes being why ron is targeted still holds true. milo thinking of himself as a failure for not being able to turn ron to the dark side is also true.
i just feel that taking into consideration how milo views his identity in relation to his ancestry gives us a deeper understanding of him as a character the same way it does for ron.
ron choosing what kind of person he is despite the blood that runs in his veins is a defining moment for him.
similarly, milo being bound by his belief that he is a monster for the mere fact he is a moriarty and then being confronted with the reality that even a moriarty can defy his destiny, it is a defining moment for him.
circling all of this back to why i don't think alice holds a candle to milo. unlike part one which had the overarching mystery of the bloody field trip connecting ron and milo, we don't have a similar thread that connects ron and alice. all we have had is the story constantly telling us instead of showing us that alice stands to rival ron. with milo, he knew more than ron and this fact alone gave him an upper hand and he constantly used this to keep ron on his toes.
compared to this, chapter 161 revealing alice's true intentions has been bizarre to say the least. alice, as a literal baby, comprehending her sick mother's ramblings about ron's father whom she loved, lost and later detested and alice seemingly preparing her whole life to confront ron as vengeance for her mother... it's all so incredibly convoluted that i'm still left speechless thinking about it.
milo was a better villain because he was rooted in reality. i don't believe he was smarter than ron, not from a deductive reasoning perspective at least. yet milo was clever in the way he used intel he knew and ron didn't. what better way to exercise power over a detective than withhold the clues that would lead to a mystery being solved? it's simple but incredibly effective.
even barring that, i feel like all the information we learned about the moriarty family in chapter 161, though it is meant to explore alice's motives, actually ends up making milo more interesting. at least to me.
alice having cognitive abilities as a baby because she is just so special and genius? sure, it's possible. it apparently is the case here. but milo being old enough to realize that their parents' marriage is a sham? very likely! quite a common occurrence in real life, if i may say so.
and with the added context that milo's mother was in love with ron's father, it makes the fact that milo's father had made milo aware of ron from a very young age even more unsettling. dario moriarty wasn't only scrutinizing his younger brother for marrying a holmes, he was watchful of eliot because he knew eliot is the man his wife really loved. and for these reasons, it was important to him that milo was primed to not only become the true moriarty heir but to confront ron someday.
chapter 161 just confirms to me that milo was always doomed to his fate. he stood no chance to turn out any other way given who is parents are and given his upbringing. he is brought up to believe that he is the villain of the story and he played that role like he was born for it because he genuinely believes that, that is his purpose.
does it absolve milo of anything he has done thus far? nope. he is still a criminal and has orchestrated the suffering of many, not just ron. he has done reprehensible things and it was his choice to do those things. that doesn't change even if we were to better understand how he came to be who he is.
at the end of the day, ron is a child born out of love and the defiance to keep and nourish that love while milo is a child born from the absence of love and is a product of coercion (i.e. it is heavily implied his father did something to his mother to get her to comply into marriage which is really dark if you think about it).
even in this way, milo and ron seem to stand face to face but on opposite sides, contrasting each other.
i think when it comes down to it, milo's writing works because part one of rkdd as a whole was better thought out than whatever is happening in part two. even if you ignore all my word vomit about milo and ron being opposites and their view of their own identities with regards to their ancestry being interesting, part one still stands on its own two feet as a detective story first and foremost.
i sincerely cannot say the same about part two, especially since everything to do with alice feels so contrived. it feels like the story is more interested in telling us alice is this or that, than presenting a detective story that makes sense.
ok that's the end of my post. bye! :)
as for milo, my genuine hope is that he is killed off. i am being incredibly serious. i would rather he gets off screened than have him act uncharacteristically the way other characters have been, especially if it is to inflate alice's so-called genius.
would a redemption arc be interesting for milo? sure. but i personally don't think it's necessary nor do i particularly want that. i like this fucked up little guy just the way he is, you see. i see him neck deep in his sins and i am holding my phone to his face, taking multiple photos on burst mode as i tell him, "you go sweetie! you did those crimes so well!" etc etc
When you're such a manga fan that you write a 2.5k word essay on ao3 about why a ship has a right to exist.
Also this is pain in ass trying to explain why I think MiloToto isn't a weird ship, but some-what healthy relationship which simply ended very badly before canon. (Welp and bc of RonToto) My man just can't choose normal people to date.
We legit got a full drawn out family tree for Ron XD
Annd still nothing about Toto’s life at all I’m gonna cry.
But also can we talk about this? There are 3 Moriarty members from Dan’s generation that we haven’t met. Charlie, Adam, John. Are they still in the M Family? What do they do? Are they going to show up, or were they added to pad numbers and make the family seem larger?
And what about Milo, Winter, and Alice’s other siblings? Theo and Eli?? We haven’t met them, and who are they? Are they dead? Do they have no significance to the story? I mean Sophie named her second son after Eliot (I’m assuming). They make such a big deal about being Moriarty’s and the family business being the most important. At least Milo does, and yet he never talks about his other siblings??? Am I forgetting something????
Ahhh I feel crazy. This simple diagram is raising so many questions about their family and what goes on. We only really had Milo’s and Alice’s perspective on their family dynamics. To Milo, being a Moriarty is everything. They have to cut out weakness and eliminate mistakes. Alice wants revenge, she hates the family she was given and wants to destroy it.
What does winter want? We don’t really know their opinion on things other than it was wrong of Milo to “kill” Alice, and being a Moriarty is not the end all be all. Do they like being a Moriarty? They feel bad for almost killing amamiya, enough to apologize, but they still go home and talk with Milo and Alice like everything is normal. I see the conflict and I think it’s really good. Probably similar to what Elliot experienced. The desire to have family but also to distance themself from the evil within the family unit. But I’d love to know what their end goal is.
Two sticker designs that I was thinking of making and selling. Wanna get a backlog of sticker designs so if I open a shop I can have stuff from tons of fandoms and whatnot!
