2020 was Pedro Pascal's year, with him playing a hero, an antihero, and a villain all in the same year. In the same month, even. Pascal, who was originally born in Chile before moving to Denmark and then growing up in the United States, has been acting since the mid-90s, starting off with one-off guest appearances in network TV shows. His first recurring role came in 2009 in The Good Wife, where he played Nathan Landry. But the real breakout role that put him on the map came in 2014 when he was cast as Oberyn Martell, a.k.a. the Red Viper of Dorne, father of the Sand Snakes, in HBO's Game of Thrones.
Since then, Pascal's star has been on the rise, with him landing starring roles in acclaimed shows like Narcos and making the jump to tentpole movies with The Great Wall and Kingsman: The Golden Circle. But 2020 was truly Pedro Pascal's year, with the actor somehow seeming to be in everything at once – or, at the very least, being in enough projects that shaped the pop culture conversation to feel as though he was. This is the year things finally came full-circle for Pedro Pascal, with him appearing in not one, not two, but three different franchises, and in each, he got to show off his incredible range. It's not often an actor gets to play a hero, an antihero, and a villain all in the same year.
The first of those roles was playing Din Djarin in The Mandalorian. Pascal has perhaps been best known for playing slightly flamboyant, roguish characters. Even when he was playing a character straighter, there has often been a bit of Oberyn Martell's flourish lurking in the edges. But Din Djarin was a completely different kind of character than Pascal had ever played: Serious. Stoic. Laconic. He didn't even show his face 99% of the time, instead keeping it hidden under his Mandalorian helmet. Din existed as a protagonist in a Western, neither good, nor bad, but a mysterious antihero who rides into town, rights wrongs or strikes deals through violent means, and rides off again. And despite the stature of that role, Pascal also had space on his 2020 agenda for two more releases that helped him fill in the full moral spectrum, as well as each making him a single father motivated by love (and sometimes blinded by it).
Coincidentally, his other two notable roles from the year were released on the exact same day, one calling for him to be a superhero and the other calling for him to be a supervillain. In We Can Be Heroes, he plays superhero Marcus Moreno. Robert Rodriguez's standalone sequel to The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D found Pascal in the role of a heroic swordsman and leader of Avengers-clones the Heroics who has mostly retired following the death of his wife. But when duty calls, he suits up again to battle invading aliens, even knowing it might mean his death – the definition of a true hero.
His role of Maxwell Lord in Wonder Woman 1984, however, is indisputably the movie's villain. A big, power-hungry, world-destroying kind of villain. Lord is a man desperate for fame and riches and strikes a monkey's paw kind of Faustian bargain to get it, and in the process, nearly brings down the entire planet with him. Interestingly, the decision was made to give Maxwell Lord a sympathetic motivation, however: Raised poor and from an abusive home, Lord is desperate to give his son the life he himself never had.
It's that last point that is the throughline of every major role Pedro Pascal has played this year: Regardless of whether he was a hero, an antihero, or a villain, Pascal's 2020 characters have all been single dads (and, in the case of Din Djarin, an adoptive one) just trying their best. Essentially, no matter what role he played, Pedro Pascal is the Fictional Dad of the Year.