Nobody expected the world's greatest supervillain to become the world's greatest dad.

That is precisely the point. When Despicable Me arrived in 2010, Gru was introduced as a bald, freeze-ray-wielding, Minion-commanding mastermind whose single ambition was to steal the moon. He was cold, pompous, and genuinely indifferent to children. He adopted three orphan girls specifically to use them as tools in his scheme. He planned to abandon them at an amusement park the moment they were no longer useful.

What happened next — across four films, two spin-offs, and fifteen years of one of the most beloved animated franchises on the planet — is one of the most quietly extraordinary character transformations in the history of cinema. Gru did not just become a father. He became the kind of father that makes audiences reach for a tissue in the middle of a family movie, then pretend they were just yawning.

You already know his story. You have watched him put on a fairy princess costume for Agnes's birthday party. You have watched him race across the planet to make it to a ballet recital he nearly missed. You have watched him trade the moon — his life's ambition — for the girls' safety without a single second of hesitation.

But there is something deeply satisfying about breaking down exactly why Gru works as a father figure, and why his particular brand of parenthood resonates so powerfully with audiences of all ages. Because Gru is not a perfect dad. He is something much better than that.

Let's get into it 👇

💛 Love this kind of content? Help keep it coming: Support That Love Podcast

If you love this, check out: 12 Best Despicable Me Characters Ranked

#10 — He Never Pretended to Be Someone He Was Not

One of the most common failures of fictional parent characters — and, truthfully, of real ones — is the performance of parenthood. The idea that being a good dad means presenting a cleaned-up, sanitised, entirely non-threatening version of yourself that children can feel safe around. Gru never did this. From the very first moment the girls entered his life, they got the actual Gru: the pomposity, the accent, the house full of weapons and yellow henchmen, the Antarctic cold that radiated off him whenever someone knocked on his door.

He did not pretend to be gentle. He did not perform warmth he had not yet developed. He was exactly who he was — and what the girls discovered, slowly and on their own terms, was that who he actually was underneath the villain exterior was someone worth loving.

This matters because it means the trust that eventually develops between Gru and his daughters is real. Margo did not fall for a performance. She did not fall for a version of Gru designed to earn her confidence. She fell for the actual person — the complicated, occasionally exasperating, fundamentally decent man underneath the supervillain branding.

The authenticity of Gru's relationship with his daughters is the franchise's most underappreciated quality. In a genre full of characters who perform parenthood, Gru stumbles into it completely without a script — and somehow produces something more genuine than almost any planned approach could have achieved.

Where to watch: Stream the Despicable Me franchise on Peacock or Netflix in the US.

🎙️ Stream love stories that hit just as hard — That Love Podcast is live now: thatlovepodcast.com/episodes

#9 — He Showed Up Even When It Cost Him Everything

The ballet recital scene in the original Despicable Me is one of the most emotionally precise sequences in the franchise — and it is great not because Gru makes the right choice in time, but because of how hard he tries to.

Gru's moon heist falls on the exact same night as Margo, Edith, and Agnes's ballet performance. He initially refuses the ticket. He tells himself he will not need it. He has spent years working toward this singular goal — stealing the moon is not just professional ambition, it is the thing he has been trying to achieve his entire life in order to earn his mother's approval. And yet a Minion quietly slips the recital ticket into his pocket before he leaves.

When the moment arrives — when Gru has completed the heist and is floating somewhere above Earth with a shrunken moon in his possession — he finds the ticket. He checks the time. And he makes a desperate, completely impractical attempt to get back to Earth in time. He does not make it for the original recital. But he shows up immediately afterward, and he performs it all over again in his own lair for the girls, just for them.

The message is clear and earned: showing up matters. And when you cannot show up on time, showing up anyway — exhausted, late, carrying whatever you have left — still counts.

Where to watch: Stream Despicable Me on Peacock or Netflix in the US.

#8 — He Wore the Fairy Princess Costume

Despicable Me 2 opens with one of the most perfect establishing shots of Gru-as-father that the franchise ever produced. Agnes is having a birthday party. The fairy princess entertainer has cancelled at the last minute. And Gru — a man who once commanded an army and attempted to steal the moon — is in a full fairy princess costume, complete with wings, a pink dress, and a wig, performing magic tricks for a group of five-year-olds.

He does it badly. He does it completely without dignity. He does it with the expression of someone who is enduring rather than enjoying. And he does it without hesitation.

This scene does more to establish Gru's evolution as a father than almost any dramatic moment in the series. Because the measure of a parent is not found in the grand gestures — the sacrifices under pressure, the heroic rescues, the declarations of love. It is found in the thousand small, embarrassing, unglamorous moments where you simply do what needs to be done because it matters to someone you love.

Gru in a fairy princess costume is the most honest portrait of parenthood the franchise ever offered. It is funny because it is absurd. It is moving because it is completely sincere.

#7 — He Blew Up a Carnival Booth for Agnes

At Super Silly Fun Land, Agnes spots a stuffed unicorn toy on a carnival prize stand and is immediately, absolutely, cosmically certain that she needs it. The game is rigged — a classic carnival setup designed to be impossible to win. Agnes tries. Agnes fails. Agnes's hope begins to deflate.

Gru steps up to the booth. He aims. And then he completely destroys the booth entirely with his blaster, reducing it to splinters, so that Agnes can simply reach in and pick up the toy.

In isolation, this is a funny scene. In context, it is something more. Because Gru is not supposed to be having fun. He brought the girls to this park specifically to abandon them — his plan was to use them, discard them here, and continue with his actual priorities. He had no intention of forming a bond. He had no intention of caring. And yet here he is, weaponising his criminal toolkit to win a stuffed unicorn for a child he has known for approximately forty-eight hours.

The action happens instinctively, before Gru has fully processed that he is doing it. That is the tell. That is the moment the audience understands something that Gru himself has not quite admitted yet: these children have already gotten in.

Where to watch: Stream Despicable Me on Peacock or Netflix in the US.

You'll also love: 20 Best Animated Movies of All Time You Need to Watch

#6 — He Read Bedtime Stories (And Meant It)

The bedtime story scenes in the original Despicable Me are the film's emotional core — the sequences where Gru's transformation happens most visibly, one page at a time.

Agnes makes Gru read her favourite story, Sleepy Kittens, a children's picture book about — exactly as advertised — sleepy kittens. It is not a book that a man who has spent his career planning moon heists would select for himself. Gru begins with the energy of someone performing a minor administrative task. He reads the words. He does the voices. He leans in. The girls settle.

And then, when they are asleep, he gets up to leave — stops — and kisses each of them on the forehead. The beat before he kisses them is the whole film in miniature. You can see him deciding. You can see him weighing the vulnerability of the action against whatever remains of his defences. And you can see the defences lose.

Gru's later creation of his own book — One Big Unicorn, clearly based on his own experience with the girls, written and illustrated entirely for Agnes — represents the complete arc. He went from grudgingly reading someone else's story to telling his own. He went from a man with no story that included children to a father who could not imagine a story without them.

Where to watch: Stream Despicable Me on Peacock or Netflix in the US.

#5 — He Gave Up the Moon Without Hesitation

everything for Margo Edith Agnes, Despicable Me climax Gru dad moment

The climax of the original Despicable Me turns on a single, devastating choice. Vector has kidnapped Margo, Edith, and Agnes. He will release them in exchange for the shrunken moon — the thing Gru has spent years working toward, the object that represents every ounce of his professional ambition and, more importantly, his entire life's effort to earn his cold mother's approval and respect.

Gru does not hesitate. He hands over the moon.

No dramatic pause. No extended internal conflict. No speech about what the moon means to him. He had the moon. Vector had his daughters. The transaction is immediate.

What makes this moment so powerful is everything the audience knows about what the moon represents. This is not Gru giving up something he casually wanted. This is Gru giving up the thing he has wanted his entire life — the achievement that would have proved something about himself to the world and, more painfully, to his own mother. And he trades it for three girls he had originally intended to discard.

The fact that Vector does not honour the deal — that he takes the moon and keeps the girls anyway — is almost beside the point. What matters is the decision. What matters is the instant in which Gru understood what he valued most, and acted on it without flinching.

Where to watch: Stream Despicable Me on Peacock or Netflix in the US.

🎙️ Stories about love and sacrifice are what we do every day on That Love Podcast. Come listen: thatlovepodcast.com/episodes

#4 — He Became Someone His Own Childhood Needed

One of the most important — and most frequently overlooked — dimensions of Gru's fatherhood is what it represents in the context of his own childhood.

Gru's mother Marlena, voiced by Julie Andrews in a perfectly contrary piece of casting, is cold, critical, and completely incapable of offering her son the validation he spends his entire early life trying to earn. Young Gru's drawings, inventions, and achievements are met with indifference or gentle dismissal. His dream of going to the moon is treated as an irrelevance. The emotional hunger that drives Gru's entire supervillain career — the need to achieve something large enough to finally matter — is rooted directly in a childhood where he was consistently made to feel small.

Gru's parenting of Margo, Edith, and Agnes is the direct inverse of everything he experienced growing up. He cheers them enthusiastically and sincerely. He sees their attempts and celebrates them regardless of quality. He attends their ballet recital. He makes them feel, consistently and unconditionally, that they matter — that their presence in his life is not a burden or an inconvenience but the most significant thing in it.

The generational shift is never stated explicitly in the films. But it is there in every scene: a man who was not given what he needed as a child, choosing to give his children everything he missed. That choice is not nothing. In many ways, it is everything.

Where to watch: Stream the Despicable Me franchise on Peacock or Netflix in the US.

#3 — He Learned to Ask for Help

The Gru of Despicable Me is a man who does everything alone. He trusts no one. He asks for nothing. His entire identity is built around self-sufficiency to the point of isolation — a defence mechanism so comprehensive that it eventually becomes the prison he cannot see around.

Despicable Me 2 is the story of that beginning to change. Lucy Wilde arrives in his life and refuses to behave like anyone he has ever encountered before — enthusiastic, disarming, completely herself without apology. She does not need Gru to be impressive. She does not need him to perform. And gradually, impossibly, Gru begins to let his guard down.

The parenting dimension of this shift is crucial. Gru as a solo dad is devoted but limited. He can do everything for the girls in terms of protection and provision, but the emotional breadth of what he can offer is constrained by his own unprocessed difficulties. Lucy, by simply being present and warm and genuine, expands the family's emotional world in a way that Gru alone could not.

Asking for help — accepting partnership, allowing someone else into the architecture of his family — requires a vulnerability that the early Gru would have found incomprehensible. The fact that he gets there, and that his daughters gain not just a father who loves them but a family that holds them from multiple directions, is one of the franchise's most quietly significant achievements.

Where to watch: Stream Despicable Me 2 on Peacock or Netflix in the US. Own the full franchise on Amazon Prime Video.

You'll also love: 12 Best Animated Movies to Watch With Your Family in 2025

#2 — He Was Brave Enough to Change

Changing is the hardest thing. Not changing in a moment of crisis — those changes are forced on us. Changing deliberately, day by day, against the gravitational pull of everything you have been for your entire adult life. That kind of change requires both courage and humility, and it is exceptionally rare in real life and even rarer in fiction done convincingly.

Gru's arc across four films is one of the most convincing depictions of genuine personal transformation in the animated genre. He does not simply flip from villain to hero in a single revelation. He resists. He holds onto his identity. He tries to keep his plans intact even as the girls rewrite his priorities from inside his own house. And then, slowly, the version of himself that the girls need him to be becomes the version he actually wants to be.

By Despicable Me 4, Gru is a married AVL agent and father of four who still carries his supervillain energy — the bravado, the accent, the Minion army — but who channels it entirely in the direction of protecting his family. The transformation is total, but it never erases who he was. It incorporates it. The skills he built as a villain become the tools he uses as a father and protector.

The message the franchise offers quietly and consistently is both simple and genuinely profound: who you were before the people who need you arrived does not determine who you can become for them. Change is possible. Change is the whole point.

Where to watch: Stream the Despicable Me franchise on Peacock or Netflix in the US.

#1 — He Loved Them Before He Knew He Did

This is the thing that makes Gru the greatest animated dad of his era — and one of the best fictional father figures in cinema across any genre. It is not that he decided to love his daughters. It is that he already did, long before he was willing to admit it.

The progression of his unconscious love is mapped beautifully across the first film in a series of small, almost unnoticeable moments. He blows up the carnival booth for Agnes before his mind has registered the impulse. He reads the bedtime story with the voices, without being asked to do the voices. He kisses them goodnight after convincing himself it is not necessary. He keeps the ballet recital ticket in his pocket when he told himself he would not need it. He sends three Minions to find Agnes a replacement unicorn toy the instant her original one is destroyed.

None of these are the actions of a man who is performing fatherhood or calculating its strategic value. They are the actions of a man whose defences have been breached — not by force, not by argument, but by the simple, relentless presence of three children who needed him and were going to love him regardless.

The moment in the climax when Gru gives up the moon — his life's ambition, his mother's approval, his professional legacy — without hesitation is only possible because everything that came before it has already done the work. He does not give up the moon because he has decided the girls are worth more. He gives up the moon because the decision has already been made for him, in a dozen small moments he barely noticed.

The girls did not change Gru. They revealed him. Underneath the villain, underneath the ambition, underneath the cold exterior built to survive a childhood nobody should have had to survive, was a father. He just had not met his children yet.

That is why Gru works. That is why the franchise works. And that is why, fifteen years on, audiences are still watching a bald supervillain with an unidentifiable accent become the most unexpectedly perfect dad in animated history.

Banana.

Where to watch: Stream the full Despicable Me franchise — all four films — on Peacock or Netflix in the US. Own all six Illumination films digitally on Amazon Prime Video.

Conclusion

Gru was not born a great dad. He did not choose fatherhood, plan for it, or arrive at it with any kind of preparation. He fell into it — clumsily, reluctantly, and with considerable collateral damage to at least one carnival booth.

And that is precisely what makes him so extraordinary, and so recognisable.

The best parents in fiction — and in life — are not the ones who had it all figured out from the beginning. They are the ones who showed up, changed, stayed, and loved before they even knew they were doing it. Gru is all of those things. He is proof that a life's ambition can be traded for something better, that a childhood of neglect does not have to produce another generation of the same, and that the most unexpected people sometimes turn out to be exactly the right ones.

Happy Father's Day, Gru. You earned it.

💛 Enjoyed this? Help support the content that makes it happen: Donate to That Love Podcast

🎙️ Stream That Love Podcast — stories about love, family, and showing up for the people who matter: thatlovepodcast.com/episodes

💡 You May Also Love

• 12 Best Despicable Me Characters Ranked

• 20 Best Animated Movies of All Time You Need to Watch

• 12 Best Animated Movies to Watch With Your Family in 2025

• 10 Best Family Movies on Netflix Right Now

• The 20 Best TV Shows to Binge-Watch Right Now

• 15 Must-Watch TV Shows Releasing in 2026: Your Ultimate Guide

If you're enjoying this blog, check out these other ones:

• What to Watch on Amazon Prime Video

• What to Watch on Netflix

• What to Watch on HBO Max

• British Television & Movies

• That Love Podcast Episodes

• Blogs Central

❓ Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why is Gru considered one of animation's best dads? Gru is celebrated as one of animation's greatest father figures because his transformation from cold, calculating supervillain to devoted, unconditionally loving dad is both convincingly written and emotionally authentic. He did not choose fatherhood — it chose him — and the gradual, involuntary way his love for Margo, Edith, and Agnes develops makes it feel more genuine than most planned parental arcs in animated cinema.

2. Does Gru have biological children in the Despicable Me franchise? Yes. By Despicable Me 4, Gru has one biological child — Gru Jr., his infant son with Lucy Wilde — in addition to his three adopted daughters, Margo, Edith, and Agnes. The film explores Gru's dynamic with a baby who seems to actively dislike him at first, culminating in a father-son bond that mirrors the original trilogy's emotional arc with the girls.

3. Who voices Gru in the Despicable Me movies? Gru is voiced by Steve Carell across all six films in the franchise, in an accent that the film's creators have described as a deliberately vague Eastern European blend. Carell also voices Gru's twin brother Dru in Despicable Me 3.

4. What is the most emotional moment in Gru's fatherhood arc? The most consistently cited emotional peak is the climax of the original Despicable Me, when Gru surrenders the shrunken moon to Vector without hesitation in exchange for his daughters' safety. The moment is powerful because it represents the complete inversion of Gru's priorities — the thing he has spent his life working toward given up instantly for three girls he originally planned to discard.

5. Did Gru have a bad childhood? Yes. Gru's mother Marlena — voiced by Julie Andrews — is depicted as cold, critical, and emotionally withholding. Gru's ambitions as a supervillain are framed as partly motivated by a lifelong desire to earn his mother's approval, which she consistently denies him. His warm, affirming relationship with his daughters is the direct inverse of his own childhood experience.

6. Where can I watch all the Despicable Me movies? The Despicable Me franchise is available on Peacock and Netflix in the United States. All six films — Despicable Me, Despicable Me 2, Minions, Despicable Me 3, Minions: The Rise of Gru, and Despicable Me 4 — are also available to own digitally on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and Google Play.

7. Is Despicable Me appropriate for young children? Yes. All Despicable Me films are rated PG by the MPAA and are designed specifically for family audiences including young children. The films contain mild comedic violence, slapstick humour, and occasional mild peril, all without any content inappropriate for children. The emotional themes — family, belonging, love, and second chances — are universally accessible.

8. What happens to the girls at the end of Despicable Me 4? In Despicable Me 4, the girls are moved into witness protection along with the rest of the family after Gru attracts the attention of the villain Maxime Le Mal. By the film's conclusion, the family returns to their original home. Agnes is reunited with her pet goat Lucky, and the family celebrates together at a backyard barbecue that includes Gru's twin brother Dru.

9. Is Gru the best animated dad ever made? Gru consistently appears at or near the top of fan rankings for best animated dads, alongside characters like Mufasa from The Lion King, Bob Parr from The Incredibles, and Marlin from Finding Nemo. What sets Gru apart is the completeness of his transformation and the specificity of his love — the way it develops against his intentions, reveals itself through small moments, and is tested and proven across multiple films.

10. Is there a Despicable Me 5 in development? As of 2026, no official announcement has been made regarding a Despicable Me 5. However, the franchise is actively expanding through spinoff content, and the ending of Despicable Me 3 — which saw Dru escape with several Minions to pursue villainy — and various other open plot threads suggest significant storytelling potential remains. Illumination has not confirmed or denied future mainline instalments.

For the complete Despicable Me character guide, franchise history, and film details, visit the Despicable Me Wiki on Fandom. Stream the full franchise on Peacock or Netflix.