Beginning as a seemingly charming and benevolent king of the fictional kingdom of Rosas, Magnifico is revealed to be vain, controlling, and tyrannical after his motives are questioned by Asha (Ariana DeBose), the film's heroine.

[2] Earlier drafts for the film originally had King Magnifico sharing the role of main antagonist with his wife Queen Amaya, who in a typical Disney Villain tradition, would have owned an evil pet, a cat named Charo.

[3] According to Lee, the initial idea for King Magnifico began with creating a homage to classic Disney villains but the writers wrestled with how to define that.

[4] The writers wanted to ensure that from the first frame of the film the audience is able to follow Magnifico's journey and relate to him, rather than present him as a fully formed villain from the beginning.

[7] Co-director Fawn Veerasunthorn said that throughout the entire film, the team aimed to make the audience feel conflicted about whether to love or hate the character.

Buck wanted to convey the idea that Magnifico is admired but also evil, so they decided to give him an interesting backstory to add more complexity to his character.

King Magnifico begins as a benevolent ruler who is driven to build something aspirational after experiencing the trauma of his own wish destroyed in childhood.

[7] Lee felt that it was important to have the protagonist and the villain completely aligned in their philosophies at the start of the film but then explore how disagreement leads them to make very different choices.

Unlike Asha, Magnifico fails to see that the beauty of the wish is not just in the moment it is granted, but in the way that it motivates the wisher to move forward on their journey.

According to The Art of Wish, King Magnifico is the only Disney villain, except for Prince Hans in Frozen (2013), to be designed in off-white clothing instead of black or dark colours.

In addition, his robe was decorated with stars, while his jacket features the elements of fire, water, earth and air and also the zodiac signs.

Art director of environments David Womersley loved using its architecture to display Magnifico's power, with its stone walls and towers being as much a statement of authority and protection much like how medieval castles sought to assert royalty's powers, leading the crew to develop a "Magnifico style" consisting of aggressive shapes of triangles and angles while inspiring themselves on Torre del Oro in Seville, Spain; the castle's backstory was that the castle was built long before Magnifico was born, yet he superimposed himself upon taking over Rosas much like historical rulers.

Magnifico's book of forbidden magic, whose design was made ancient when it was decided that Magnifico discovered his ancient secret lair while renovating his study and came up very late in production due to the lair being a late idea, is an homage to the book of spells owned by the Evil Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs while the dragon motif that encircles its gem at the cover was an homage to Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty (1959).

[19] He said that rather than taking inspiration from earlier Disney villains he liked the layered characterisation of Magnifico and thought the film's message should be "never trust vacant charm".

[21] A sorcerer named King Magnifico, alongside his wife Queen Amaya, rules over Rosas, a kingdom in the Mediterranean Sea that they founded many years before.

A seventeen-year-old girl named Asha aspires to be Magnifico's apprentice and attends an interview, hoping that she can influence him into granting the wish of Sabino, her grandfather who is aged 100 years.

[22] Brian Truitt writing for USA Today compared Magnifico to the Magic Mirror in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and felt that his vanity and habit of admiring his own reflection was a callback to the film.

[23] Kate Stables of GamesRadar+ appreciated Magnifico for being "a proper villain" and likened him to Maleficent for "whipping fluo-green 'Forbidden Magic' around his subjects in a storm of power-crazed narcissism".

[24] Katie Walsh of the Los Angeles Times compared him to Jafar from Aladdin (1992), describing him as "the ultimate example of the alluring, preening villain".

[27] David Crow of Den of Geek described Magnifico as the first Disney villain to be given a character arc and praised the "reliably charismatic cadence" of Pine.

[28] Kalhan Rosenblatt of NBC News commented that Magnifico seemed like a classic Disney villain, being extremely vain and displaying his power in "a ghoulish shade of green", but highlighted that when his song "This Is the Thanks I Get?!"

[30] Lovia Gyarkye writing for The Hollywood Reporter found Pine's performance to be entertaining but considered that the character's motivations were not clearly defined, resulting in an abrupt and unconvincing transition to villainy.

She opined that his characterisation was not developed to make him a plausible character and that he should have been more nuanced rather than relying on corruption from forbidden dark magic as the reason for his villainy.

[33] Aleena Malik of Screen Rant thought that Magnifico was a one-dimensional villain and felt that his characterisation could have been given more depth with a more detailed backstory to help explain his motives.

[35] Donald Clarke of The Irish Times felt that Magnifico is more of an "unsympathetic technocrat than a proper Disney villain" and did not understand the film's message.

In a Variety review of the film, Owen Gleiberman described Pine's vocals as "punchy" and said that the performance makes the audience root against him.

[42] Phil de Semlyen writing for Time Out praised the fun in Pine's Magnifico and said that he is "like Saruman with a better grooming regimen".