I have a couple unpopular reboot opinions, but I think my biggest one is that, yes, Bowie was a villain lol. I’m actually kinda surprised that this is the unpopular take tbh, especially considering Bowie himself acknowledges he’s a villain in the series. Maybe it isn’t and I just so happen to only come across people with this take by chance, but whether it’s a hot take or not, the point is I disagree.

The big reason I see people say Bowie isn’t a villain is because “everything he does is just gameplay,” and this does have some merit to it. Things like double crossing Julia at the final four and getting Caleb voted off first are strategic maneuvers that on their own aren’t villainous. He just assesses the situation and determines that those are his best moves in those respective rounds.

HOWEVER, these also aren’t the only “moves” Bowie makes this season. There’s an obvious elephant in the room that I haven’t mentioned yet. Perhaps the most infamous move Bowie makes in the season: The notebook incident. I’m going to break down every “evil” thing Bowie does here because people tend to boil it down to “just one thing that he did.”

1. Steals an already once stolen phone knowing that there is sensitive game information on it.

2. Watches (presumably all) of the other players’ confessionals that were on the phone. Both a major invasion of privacy and legit cheating.

3. Uses this private, stolen information to enter into Millie’s room and steal her notebook from a hidden location.

4. (Presumably) reads through the entire private notebook, given that he knew the last page was sentimental and could have undermined his plan…speaking of

5. Deliberately tampers with the notebook to make Millie look even worse so that her friendship with Priya is thoroughly irreparable.

6. Gifts the notebook to Priya, not because he genuinely cares or thinks she has a right to know or anything like that, but because he knows it’s going to emotionally wreck her and throw both her and Millie off of their games.

7. When Priya and Millie’s deteriorated relationship causes a series of events that leads to Priya almost getting burned alive in lava, she jumps to his raft, only for him to try and LITERALLY KNOCK HER OFF OF IT (again, surrounded by lava). He only stops when she appeals to his ego by pointing out that saving Millie for the final two means taking the easy way out.

Kinda hard to say “he didn’t do anything actually evil, it was just gameplay,” when said gameplay was only able to happen through multiple acts of stealing, flagrant cheating, and ends with an attempt to cook your opponent to a crisp in a pool of lava.

Contrary to what I’m calling it, the “notebook incident” is far from just one incident. It's a plan that plays out over the course of the last four episodes of the season, and Bowie does something evil in every single one of them.

Also, I’m not super interested in talking about Rematch because this is more about the people who claim Bowie isn’t a villain in season one, but for what it’s worth, even when everyone is visibly pissed at him over his behavior in season one, and when his boyfriend encourages him to apologize, the best he can come up with is “really you should be thanking me,” so it’s obvious he doesn’t regret anything he did in season one a full year later.

Bowie is a villain. He may not be as openly evil as people like Heather or Mal, but I feel like a lot of people are confusing “not as bad as other villains” with “not a villain at all.”