The Avatar of Greed, “greedy for all the money in the world”, who is somehow always getting himself into trouble with his get-rich-quick schemes. A little bit crybaby, a little bit reckless fool, a little bit shy. Even Lucifer thinks he’s adorable! And isn’t he?

Well, sure he is! But Mammon is also, after all, the second-most powerful demon brother, and his Greed is a deadly sin for a reason. He isn’t some incompetent baby who needs to be protected from his brothers’ bullying - there’s a lot more to him than that. So, let’s dive into it, shall we?

(includes spoilers through Season 3)

First, the “incompetent” part. Due to his seemingly constant streak of getting into trouble, it’s easy to think that Mammon is just not good at things, or that he’s just prone to fucking up. And sure, he certainly does get himself into trouble a lot! But this shouldn’t be taken to mean that he’s incapable of being responsible, or that he’s dumb. For Mammon, it’s often more about not applying himself, or occasionally even a calculated decision to fail.

There have also been times that MC is outright given the option of commenting on how he’s actually quite competent if he puts his mind to it, such as in the Part-Time Jobs event. And other characters make similar remarks from time to time as well.

Even more to the point, his student I.D. lists his dislike as “work” – meaning that, in the end, he just doesn’t want to bother putting in the effort if he thinks there’s an easier way to get what he wants. This is why Mammon’s greed often turns him towards gambling and get-rich-quick schemes, which then bite him in the ass.

This is also not to say Mammon is incapable of working responsibly, either. He holds a steady part-time job as a model, and he’s quite a successful one, in fact, making him actually some degree of self-sufficient if he wasn’t always blowing his money so fast. In the Lord of Fools Devilgram story, he laments that he wants to prove that he’s got what it takes to be a leader since he almost never gets any responsible tasks to take care of. And much as Lucifer is Diavolo’s right-hand man now, Mammon used to be the same to Lucifer back in the Celestial Realm, working as his most trusted assistant.

This brings us to our next point. Mammon is always in trouble because he is a troublemaker, and to some extent, he always has been. Even as an angel, he was too much for Michael to handle, and Lucifer was the only one who could get him under control.

After that, he revered Lucifer with the utmost respect and admiration, really being an “adorable baby brother” to him. And in that time, he was hardworking because of wanting to help his older brother. However, after they fell, Lucifer withdrew into himself a lot, shouldering more and more of the burden of responsibility onto himself instead of having Mammon and the others help him. That can be its whole own other essay and it will be but what this means for Mammon is, he’s both no longer occupied with responsibilities to help Lucifer, and also is getting a lot less of Lucifer’s attention than before. So what does he do? He goes back to being the troublemaker he’s always been. He steals, he gambles, he buys things he can’t afford, he’s impulsive and finds himself in hot water all the time with the consequences he didn’t think through.

And then he gets punished, and made fun of, and bullied by his brothers.

But just as he’s not actually incompetent, Mammon’s perpetual punishments can make him seem more defenseless than he really is. The brothers are ranked by power, not age, especially since age is meaningless at this point as they’re all thousands of years old. As we said at the top, that means he is the second-most powerful of the brothers. Big Shot Number Two. We just don’t see much of this because, while he talks big, it’s not actually in his personality to lord over others with his power. But he calls himself the Great Mammon, and he surely isn’t the only one to say it (though obviously the brothers do not call him this because, well, as the Seven Demon Lords, they would also be “The Great XYZ”).

This power is partially demonstrated not in what he does, but what he doesn’t do. He is one of the only brothers who can seemingly control his temper – he yells and shouts a lot, but he won’t go into a fit of demon-form rage often. This makes him one of the only two brothers never to have unleashed his demon form out of rage against MC. Instead, he’s the one who can somewhat keep his cool and even sometimes steps in to try to get others to calm down – even if that other person is Lucifer.

That’s not to say he’s never willing to unleash his power, though. In the Let Your Hair Down Devilgram story, we see him transform into his demon form after the three eldest brothers return home to hear their younger brothers shit talking them.

He seems to be taking glee in the idea of pummeling them, which goes to show that when he wants to, he can bring out his Number 2 card. He might not do it out of actual rage, but make no mistake, he can and will reveal that power when he sees fit.

All of this to say, neatly summarized by Mammon himself:

And don’t you forget it.