And if that didn’t work, she lied—about how many and which types of tests Theranos devices could perform, about how fast they could perform them, about where the devices had been deployed, about when they’d be ready for a wider rollout, about the accuracy of their test results, about their regulatory approval, and about the company’s revenue prospects. By the time Carreyrou’s WSJ bombshell exposed that Theranos had been outsourcing many of its tests instead of running them on its devices, Holmes had run roughshod over almost every part of the research, development, design, and implementation of her vision—all in the interest of getting to market quickly and raising a ton of money in the process.

One other man looms large in the Theranos story: Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani, a Lotus Software and Microsoft alumnus who had sold his company for a cool $4.5 million during the dot-com bubble. In 2009, Balwani became president and chief operating officer of Theranos, a position from which he made impossible demands and fired anyone who pushed back on them. Portrayed by Carreyrou as a garrulous bullshitter who had none of Holmes’ knack for attracting acolytes, Sunny was disliked within the company and distrusted by investors. Also, he and Holmes were a couple.

A villain of one’s own

In her freshman year at Stanford, Holmes showed up at her boyfriend’s dorm to break things off. It wasn’t personal, she told him: She was starting a business, and needed to put all of her attention on that. Though a minor aside in Bad Blood, this feels like an inflection point in Holmes’ story, the moment when she decides to pursue Theranos with a singular, aggressive focus. It’s also a moment at which, if you didn’t know anything about Theranos, you might still be rooting for Holmes. After all, if a woman at Stanford, a school that touts itself as an incubator of future CEOs, can’t dump her boyfriend to launch a startup without him replying, “This keeps happening to me!” then our feminist future has not yet been fully realized.

As time goes on, rooting for Holmes becomes impossible, until she is eventually felled by the same hubris that has brought down many a male executive—leaders too caught up in potential victory to acknowledge critical setbacks, and too arrogant to learn from feedback and disagreement. In March of this year, Holmes settled with the US Securities and Exchange Commission over charges that she defrauded investors; the settlement required her to pay $500,000 and forfeit 19 million Theranos shares. She is also prohibited from holding a leadership role at a public company for 10 years. It’s a dramatic fall from grace for a woman once compared to Steve Jobs.

Yet Holmes never stopped being captivating, first as a visionary, and later as a rare public example of a female leader brought low by her ego. There is something spectacular about watching her ignore, override, or shout down dozens of male voices (offering measured, valuable advice) in favor of steamrolling ahead. There is something fascinating about seeing her break through the glass ceiling by using others as battering rams. To be sure, Holmes is no role model—she’s more like the Cruella de Vil of Silicon Valley—but her chutzpah does command a certain dumbfounded respect. Even Sunny, arguably the brash, older man steering an impressionable young CEO down the wrong path, can also be viewed as the gender-swapped counterweight to every male executive who has handed a job to his unqualified girlfriend.

Modern society rightly lauds the idea of a female Jobs, or Warren Buffett, or better yet a veritable army of female captains of industry. Still, there is something intriguing about aspiring to have our own villains, too—the female Jeffrey Skilling, the female Bernie Madoff, the female Martin Shkreli. Holmes may be a disgraced former startup CEO who cost her investors some $600 million (paywall). But her settlement with the SEC required no admission of wrongdoing. Ten years from now, she’ll only be 44. And next year, she’ll be played by Jennifer Lawrence in a Bad Blood movie adaptation directed by Adam McKay. The Theranos saga may be a loss for the future of blood testing. For the future of female super-villains, it’s a damn good start.