Ursula (The Little Mermaid) was not wronged or cheated.

I feel like The Little Mermaid (1989) has been getting rather weird, if not dumb criticism in recent years, and most of them give me the impression that the people with these criticisms either haven’t seen the movie at all or haven’t seen it in years, and this one honestly bothers me the most.

I’ve been seeing a lot of people on social media comment on posts (mostly ones along the lines of “Name a villain who was 100% right”) that Ursula was done dirty by Ariel and wasn’t villainous at all. The main excuse I see people make for this is because Ursula is a businesswoman and she was simply following her contract, but that couldn’t be any further from the truth.

The movie makes it clear that Ursula, from her first appearance, has been watching Ariel for some time. Knowing how she’s infatuated with the world above the surface, Ursula could have contacted Ariel at any time about giving her legs and make her human, but she didn’t. She only talks to Ariel and makes the deal after the titular Mermaid is emotionally vulnerable after Triton had destroyed all the human treasures she collected. Coincidence? I think not. Ursula is clearly using this to her advantage as a way to draw Ariel’s attention to her and use her interest with the surface world to begin her plan, as she herself said that Ariel would be “the key to Triton’s undoing”.

She isn’t exactly fair with the rules of her contract either, because she deliberately breaks them and messes things up for Ariel to make her fail, such as making Flotsam and Jetsam bump her and Eric’s boat just when they were about to kiss, disguising herself as Vanessa and using Ariel’s voice to trick Eric, and hypnotizing Eric into almost marrying her.

TLDR: Ursula is indeed evil because she took advantage of Ariel when she was in a vulnerable position, and was not being a businesswoman, but maliciously planning Triton’s downfall by using her as a pawn to exact her revenge.