I love William but man, he’s not very good at being a villain. He is evil, but he’s not skilled at it. Let me explain.
Functionally, he’s an ever-present background character up until he’s Springtrapping about, so you know he’s up to something, but it’s mostly kept in the dark. But the more I think about it, the less confident I am in his ability to actually like. Be a proper villain. He’s got the guts to murder, but can he follow through on any of his plans?
“Oh, I will put you back together, let’s revive my dead son.” That didn’t exactly work out. I don’t think he’s very good at (intentionally) reviving the dead. As we can see, he did not put that kid back together. At all.
“I’m going to sacrifice children for my evil experiments.” And now your own animatronics are trying to destroy you because you gave them vengeful souls. That didn’t go great.
“Let’s immortalize my family!” They’re all dead. “Let’s immortalize myself!” Congrats! You’ve been consumed by the Mold.
He is a fascinating character and I could unpack him for days, but part of why I like him so much is that despite the harm he causes purposefully, the harm he causes accidentally always seems so much worse.
Yes, he intended to kill Cassidy, that’s a violent deed of his decision. But he didn’t have a good plan for if she turned into a vengeful spirit, because I don’t think he thought that far ahead. He wanted to make himself immortal, but then he conveniently forgot that in order to live forever in this world, first, you must die— and then he died as grossly as he could, and got his soul stuck in the gnarliest immortal state. They don’t go into the details of what he wanted to do to bring his family back, but if the implications say anything, yeah, maybe we don’t want to see William try to put his son back together, literally. That probably got really bloody.
William wants to be an evil mastermind so bad, but every time I picture him realizing the consequences of his actions, I can almost hear him going “oops. You know, I didn’t think we’d get this far.” He is a threat— there’s no ignoring that. But he’s almost incompetent when you realize he’s not very good at taking lives or restoring them. He just shows up, causes carnage, and springlocks himself. And honestly? That’s iconic. He’s one of the most memorable antagonists simply because he screws up so much as quickly as possible, kills everyone, dies, comes back, and does it again. I love him for that.