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This is something that kind of sparked on another site. Did Steele get what he had coming to him for everything he did? I think he did personally, with an ego as big as his losing all your fame and becoming a hated outcast while your enemy becomes the town hero is a fitting punishment.

Still, I can see why some might think he deserved worse. He willingly tried to get the town's last hope lost, which would've cause a large number of deaths, which he was completely aware of, then tried to make himself out as the hero of the story. And he was making Balto's life a living heck. So yes, I see why some might think he had more coming to him. Just personally I think his fate was the perfect one for an egomaniac like him. Some people thought him dying by falling off that cliff was a better end to him, but I don't. At that point he hadn't yet done the thing that pushed him over the edge to deserving death, that hadn't happened until directly after.

So, what do you guys think?

What other website was this sparked from?
When I see it written like that, it really dawns on me how selfish his actions were. All of those lives at risk, to preserve his own image...

That's a really tough call to make, but it's certainly a good conversation piece!

I think that him being essentially forgotten by the town was a suitable punishment for him, who thrives pretty much solely on being recognized and worshipped. Him and Balto essentially switching roles in the eyes of the town's folk was metaphorically the end of him.

TV Tropes, it's complicated.

Anyway, yeah, I agree. I think his fate was perfect as it swapped Balto and Steele from positions they didn't deserve to ones that they did. And the plot would've had to be changed to have him actually die after he'd finished his role in the plot, the only way I can think is freezing to death in the blizzard, and I don't think that was fitting as it wouldn't have revealed his lies to the town.

I'm not sure which would be a more appropriate punishment for him: Death of his reputation, or just plain death.

Personally I don't believe death would be appropriate. But I also don't think just closing the door on him was enough either. I keep coming back to this, but I've been writing a Steele story for the last couple years that picks up where the movie left off. As far as the movie was concerned, it was good enough to just remove Steele from the picture pretty much. The movie wasn't written to have a sequel so they didn't indicate what might happen to Steele in the long run.

Here's a segment from the prologue of my story that indicates where it's headed, as well as a peek into Steele's psyche. It's just my take on what happened after the cameras were turned off.

Very nice, I do think that sums up Steele's fate quite well. Though also, him surviving leaves the openning that he might eventually learn the error of his ways. Though naturally, it'd take a pretty big thing to change him, given how selfish he was. Still, fans can give him whatever fate they decide to.

I do remember reading somewhere that Steele (on the main site here, actually) was originally intended to be in Balto 3 and end up turning good in the end, but that's all that's really known. Clearly he wasn't in the third film, so we don't know how it'd have turned out.

Well, we don't know what happened after the door was shut on him, do we? Since he didn't appear in the sequels, people usually assume he was just exiled.

I think it's a bit extreme to think he deserved death. He didn't kill anyone did he? Yes he attempted to - but he never actually succeeded. I think he's just misunderstood.. he can't have always been bad. No one's born evil. xD I feel sorry for Steele.. I imagine he had a pretty awful past or harsh upbringing to turn out the way he did. xD I feel sorry for him.. all villians need a good backstory as to why they're so mean, and I bet Steele's was sad and unfortunate.

I don't care what any of you say! I wubb him <3

Personally, Rebel, I've always thought that it's rather silly to draw a line between attempting and comitting a crime. I mean think about it this way. Suppose I tried to kill you. Would whether you managed to avoid injury, or whether or not the doctors succeeded in saving your life, reduce the magnitude of what I did? Hardly.

Ha. Well, tell you what. When I'm finished with my story, you can read it and tell me if you think it did his backstory justice. I've already written out the whole thing, from when he was born all the way through to the present (in the context of Balto). I will say that I don't believe he's misunderstood. You don't get to be that arrogant and that disrespectful of life by being misunderstood.

If anybody was misunderstood, it was Balto. Steele acted the way he did not because he had a bad life, but because he had a privileged one. He always got everything he wanted, and when it wasn't given freely to him, he took it by force. He was a bully with a very high level of self esteem, but the problem was that he was also intelligent, and that made him dangerous.

It also made him a very good antagonist for the movie. No, he wasn't born evil, no dog or person is. But he learned how to manipulate people and other dogs to get what he wanted, and he was big and strong enough to enforce it. He didn't see other dogs or people as friends or companions, he saw them as minions to do his bidding. He cared nothing for the lives of others, and that was never more obvious than when he was more concerned about losing to Balto than he was about the lives at stake in Nome.

I've spent a long time in Steele's head while writing this story, and there are some solid psychological principles behind it. I do agree that he is an interesting character worthy of his own story. if I didn't, I wouldn't be writing one.

People say he was exiled or whatever, but I personally think it's a stupid concept. Even cartoon dogs don't have that kind of power or law. I say he was incredibly disrespected for a number of years until everyone moved on.

He may have been an arrogant blowhard, disrespectful of women, and a bully to (let's face it) ONE character, who doesn't even have the grapes to stand up for himself. He may have wanted everyone's attention and to be the town hero, but if you ask me I don't think it was his fault in the second act.

Notice how drastic he changed from the last time we saw him, stranded and in a panic and basically at a complete loss of what to do. Being under extreme pressure and in excruciatingly cold temperatures tends to make one go insane. And I think that's exactly what happened. I think he went completely and utterly mad from the stress and the cold, causing him to go into a rage. But since he was the dog team's leader, after the musher of course, the rest of the team didn't know what to do either. So they stayed with him.

If you recall, Star was even wondering what was with Steele. The rest of the dogs probably had no idea there was even anything wrong with him. If Steel was thinking clearly, he probably would've used Balto's help only to claim the glory right from under him anyway. It seems very like him.

And if you also recall, he wasn't the "violent" type in the beginning of the movie. Otherwise he would've just beat the crap out of Balto in the beginning. He was just a bully. When you see him come back to Nome, and he warmed up, and started recalling everything he'd done. It was obvious by his reaction to Jenna calling him a liar that he knew that what he did was wrong. So he created a lie, thinking that the children of Nome were hopeless anyway. And he ended up getting his attention anyway, and thus he took it all in.

So considering that more than likely he was a tortured soul when he was young, who grew into an angry person, only to slip into madness from the vast blizzards, to come back and lie about the situation, he certainly doesn't deserve death. Frowns gallore from the people who refuse to see the situation from different perspectives, sure. But not death.

^ True, nice perspective. Which is yet another reason I don't think death was a good fate for him. But the point is he still lied, yes, the other dogs would've been mad with the true story, but it's rather clear he was in his right frame of mind at the time to concuct such a lie as he did. Had he truly regretted it at the time, he'd have gone back and tried to help or told the truth. His own ego caused the problem.

However, that said I think his owner probably wasn't too thrilled about finding out Steele was the only one of his dogs to abandon him when all the other dogs didn't. Maybe not enough to abandon him outright but enough that he probably wasn't kept in the position he was in before. The fact is, it showed he wasn't loyal, at least not the most loyal dog on the sled team. And the other sled dogs clearly wouldn't trust Steele ever again either. And yes, humans don't consider dogs thinking animals, but the town probably didn't take too kindly to their champion sled dog abandoning his team.

Here's my take on Steele's mental condition, it was forshadowed that Steele wasn't the most mentally stable dog to begin with. Whenever he got mad before that he'd get a rather deranged look but managed to supress it. He was the only sled dog on the team that went mad, which fits into this. Steele was mentally unstable to begin with, he was just good at supressing it except for when he got mad, but he never got truly furious until Balto showed up.

For comparison, look at Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective, who was pretty much the same way, underneath the smug mask he was derranged, just very good at hiding it and only taking it out at certain points. Steele was much the same way and his trigger was getting mad when he was upstaged, failing on the sled run was part of it, but he didn't snap until Balto showed up. The way he saw it, Balto was trying to upstage him, something he'd already been doing a pretty fine job of with Jenna. It was the straw that broke the camels back, he snapped and let what he was hiding come to the surface fully and brutally assaulted him, then tried to ruin the path. Then after he'd thought he'd won, he reverted to his normal state because he was back in control.

In other words, Steele's ego was what kept his deranged mind under check, so long as he was on top, he was able to keep himself under control. When he was put in a situation he couldn't control and then confronted with someone else that in his mind was stealing his fame and position from him, which caused him to snap. Once he reaffirmed control, he returned to his normal state. Make sense?

Actually Cat, a lot of what you said is wrong based on what happened in the movie. For example, Steele was a bully to his own "friends", not just Balto. They were afraid of him, see Star's reaction to Steele yelling at him. Balto stood up to Steele in every scene they were together in the movie, not sure how you missed those.

Steele didn't "go crazy", and especially not from the cold. He's a husky, huskies can withstand temps down to 70 degrees below zero. Steele was ANGRY. He was angry because he was used to everything going his way, and getting lost was not something he was going to admit to, even though he knew it was his fault. That's because Steele has a massive ego and an undeserved sense of entitlement. And then Balto showed up, and what did Steele do? He took out all his anger and frustration on Balto.

Oh yeah, he's a real role model. Since he survived the fall, he wanted to get back at Balto in any way he could, so he scratched all the trees, then ran back to Nome on his own and immediately started lying about what happened. Again I fail to see the redeeming qualities here. He didn't "warm up", he was lying through his teeth. The entire time. He lied to all the dogs there, and he lied to Jenna, for purely selfish reasons. That's how nasty he is, he would go so far as to hurt Jenna just to try to get her to give up on Balto.

And obviously he knew what he had done wrong. He was doing it on purpose. He just didn't expect Jenna to be able to see through his lies the way she did. Steele is all about having a huge ego, a misplaced sense of entitlement (snubbing other girls just to get Jenna, then getting angry when she didn't want to be with him) and a vicious streak when things don't go his way.

"Tortured souls" don't grow up to have massive egos. That is the opposite of how it works. The interesting thing about this conversation is that you are basically swapping Steele and Balto. Balto grew up with no parents, in a town where everybody hated him. You want to talk about tortured? Take another look at Balto. Steele's arrogance and sense of pride cannot come from having a tortured past, it can only come from having a privileged past where he was told every day by external sources how great he was. You don't come to believe you are the greatest thing this world has to offer without having that kind of confirmation in your life every day.

If you have been beaten down every day of your life, with no friends and everybody hates you, you turn out like Balto. Not like Steele. It's a little thing called "humility" that you learn when you hit bottom. Steele has never learned that lesson nor has he ever hit bottom, at least not until Balto finally put him there. For what it's worth I don't think Steele deserves death either.

And finally, about exile being a stupid concept: Really? Come on. It's a movie about talking dogs. If you're going to say exile is a stupid concept in that context, then you're going to have to admit that everything else in the movie is a stupid concept too. Like talking dogs, for example. And there are hundreds more examples too, like Balto saving Rosie's hat. Or putting on their own harnesses. Or the mail dog's ear twitching to the telegraph machine. In fact the entire movie is one giant stupid concept, if you're going to be consistent with your criticisms. You can't say the concept of talking dogs is perfectly fine, but the concept of one of them being exiled is not. That makes zero sense.

^ I agree with everything you said, actually. Though I have to point out Balto saving Rosie's hat is a bigger plot point than it seems, I made a thread detailing why I think that.

Anyway, back on topic, I agree. Steele is a narcasist, he thinks of himself above everyone else. As Jenna said "The only way Steele notices anyone is if they're wearing a mirror", he only cared for himself. He was the town 'hero' and clearly well taken care of for being a prized sled dog who'd one championships. He didn't know what Balto's life was like until his own actions knocked him off his pedistile and made him the outcast.

However, I will say this much, I think Steele getting put in his place is possibly the best thing that could've happened. Not only is he punished, he gets to learn what its like to have nothing and be hated. He knows what Balto's life was like because of it. If he gets madder, that's one way. But it could also deflate his ego and make him a better dog. Yet another reason this fate is perfect.

Well, as heartless as this may sound, if a dog is insane enough to be a danger to people, usually you don't have much of a choice but to put it down.

I don't think that Steele was being particularily malevolent regarding the people he was saving.

My belief is that Steele simply wanted to be the hero, or at least get a lot of attention and praise.

As soon as Balto threatened to take that away from him, he lost his train of thought about the the medicine, and simply saw Balto trying to take his spotlight.

At that point, him trying to stop Balto was just about stopping Balto; I gather he had forgotten completely about the purpose of the journey altogether, and the medicine getting lost was just collateral damage for ensuring that Balto didn't rob him of his glory.

I still stand by my original statement that Steele's punishment was particularily suitable for him; him no longer being the fastest dog in Nome (or the most famous dog in Nome, to quote a movie I saw once) was essentially the "end" of him.

Felt like I needed to chime in about Steele being murderous and insane. I say he was closer to insanity, but he wasn't murderous. He just had a bit of a one track mind coupled with a massive ego, and lost sight of the bigger picture.

If he ever went to court, my bet would be that he would be charged with some form of criminal negligence. Maybe someone should do a crossover with Steele in the court from the "He Barked, She Barked" episode from All Dogs Go To Heaven!


All of this is my opinion, and my interpretation of the events.