Steele

Steele is an Alaskan Malamute and the lead dog of the fastest dogsled team in Nome. Selfish and aggressive, he serves as the main antagonist of the first film, often instigating the bullying of Balto over his wolf heritage. He was voice by Jim Cummings.

Personality
The most famous dog in Nome, Steele takes pride in his popularity amongst both the village humans and the dogs, often showing off in front of his admirers. He is incredibly arrogant, often swaggering up to females in the hopes of impressing them with nothing but his looks and reputation.

He also likes Jenna, but she sees through his lies and loves Balto the pure-hearted instead, which further strengthens Steele's hatred and jealousy of Balto. He is also a crafty liar, claiming that Balto and the rest of the team had died, but at the end of the film, when everyone finds out, all of his lies cause him to be shunned and disliked by those who used to respect him. He is mean and sarcastic when he gets on Balto's nerves. He is sneaky, treacherous, envious, extroverted, loathsome, eccentric, smart, temperamental, empathetic, egotistical, loud-mouthed, somewhat of a pervert and energetic as well.

Appearance
Steele is a large, muscular, Alaskan Malamute. He has eyes are ice blue and his nose is black. Among other dogs, females in particular, he is considered enviable and desirable.

Balto
Steele was in a middle of a race but in a desperate attempt to win, he tries to bite the dog on the opposite side and this cause them to bump to each other. Steele laughs at the musher as he seems to know the action he caused to lose. When he was about to reach the finish line, he first encountered Balto (in the movie, Steele's behavior towards Balto is an obvious indication that they have met on prior occasions) after being outrun by the latter in a race while rescuing Rosy's hat. His musher was rethinking about Steele being the fastest but the other guy replies that Steele can be outrun, Steele was angered after that comment once he heard Balto's name he glared at him and later he saw Rosy's dad makes Balto go away, Steele starts asking Jenna out to celebrate his win with her but she'll reject it then Steele makes an insult that maybe he has feeling for Balto, Jenna was presumably going to deny it but her owners tells her to that they're going back home. When Balto was alone in a dark alley, he comes in and insults him and calls him "Bingo", as he saw Boris with him, he insult him if he's part anything. After that, Balto tries to make him go away but Steele turns back and smacks him with his tail then tells him he has a massage for his mother (he presumes that Balto's mom is a wolf, however, he doesn't know anything about Balto). Steele catches Balto growling and showing his teeth but he orders his lackeys to bark at him. He insult Balto again and tells him to go to his pack and spits at him. While Boris and Balto are walking away, he throws snow at them and he throws a rock on Balto's head.

Steele later steals sausages and catches Jenna talking with Balto in the boiler room and marches in, carrying a stolen strand of sausages. He openly flirts with Jenna, offering her the meat he has stolen and get her away from Balto, but she refuses it and tricks him into walking against the hot metal boiler. Her and Balto run out, Steele was in pursuit and burst though a door that Balto shut and knocks all of them on their feet. Steele tries to get rid of the sausages and throws the sausages while pointing to where it was going and they get tangled around Balto's legs, making him fall and getting framed. Jenna escapes, but Rosy's father and the butcher find Balto with the sausages and believe he has stolen them. Steele is praised by Rosy's dad for catching the "thief".

Out of jealousy, Steele felt Balto was a threat so he bullied Balto. When the town became sick, there was a relay race for the fastest dog and to choose who would be on the sled dog team that would relay the medicine. Despite being deliberately kicked off the course by a competitor, Balto was the rightful winner of the race (by taking a special & longer route to catch up), but right after the race ended, Steele would be shocked and would tells Balto that he'll never be a sled dog which Jenna scolds Steele for being a glory-hound. When his musher was gonna check Balto, Steele stomps on Balto's paw as a musher reaches to pet him, forcing Balto to growl in pain and bare his teeth, making the humans believe that the wolf-dog is aggressive and dangerous. This causes Balto to be disqualified from the race, despite being the victor. Steele became the leader of the sled team that would return the medicine to Nome, managing to lead the team successfully to Nenana and halfway back to Nome before becoming lost.

When Steele was in a middle of heavy snow falling, Star tells him if he knows where he's going and he tells him where's he IS going but later they would go to the same place he was before and Star tells him he's going in circle and this would anger him, he rushes to find a diferent direction and he'll lead the team to a slippery cliff and would knock out his musher. Steele was stranded there for a while.

Balto discovers Steele and his team at the edge of a large ravine. Despite Balto's pleas for Steele to let him help take the medicine back to Nome (knowing that the children will die if the medicine does not get there in time), Steele tries to tell him to get back or he'll "tear" him apart but when Balto tries to get it back, he attacks him, making obvious that he thinks Balto as a threat to his position. Balto refuses to fight back, but still manages to escape Steele. Steele than tries to pull him off the cliff but the red bandana that Jenna gave Balto unties and causes him to fall down the ravine, surviving. Having demonstrated his good nature and noble intention to bring the serum back to Nome at all costs, Balto gains the unconditional support of the other dogs on the team. They pick up the trail and head back without Steele. Despite his fall, Steele manages to follow Balto's trail back to Nome, marking all of the trees around the ones Balto already marked to confuse him. He returns to Nome and meets up with the dogs there. He lies and tells them through fake tears that the rest of the sled dogs had frozen to death and that Balto had destroyed the medicine. He fibs that before Balto died, he told him to take care of Jenna. Jenna realizes that Balto would have never told Steele to do such a thing and tells all the other dogs who believe Steele's story that he's lying. But no one believes her due to her love for Balto.

Steele's strategy of marking the trees initially manages to catch Balto off his guard, resulting in him becoming lost. Balto realizes what Steele has done and finds his way back to Nome by scent. Balto's return results in him being accepted as a beloved hero and the undoing of Steele's lies. The dogs of Nome realize that Steele was lying and shun him. This is a complete reversal of their roles in the beginning of the movie where Steele was the town's most popular dog and Balto was the hated outcast. It is unknown what became of Steele after the events in Balto, as he was never seen or mentioned in the sequels.

Relationships
{{Scroll (If certain characters aren't here, that means that they've not had any thoughts about them nor interacted with them. Feel free to summarize their perspective (Fanfictions NOT included).)
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Balto
"Go ahead wolf-dog! You'll never get home! I'll make sure of that!"

- Steele to Balto

Steele hates Balto for making the public rethink about him, he was disappointing to see Balto outrun him and would cause him to have hatred for Balto. He would show his true personality when he's not seen nor supervised as he'll hurt Balto physically and emotionally and also bully who ever is friends with him. He would get jealous of Balto more to see that Jenna is seen with him and it angers him way more when she admits that she loves Balto. However, Balto would help him but Steele would deeply refuse so he doesn't get any fame from Nome and if he is left-out of the sled-team he would cause him to be lost. He would also make lies about him and what he hasn't done. In the end, Steele would be shocked to hear Balto's back and would cause his reputation as a hero to be forcefully transferred to Balto.

Jenna
"Let's celebrate. I know where all the bones are buried."

- Steele to Jenna

Steele likes Jenna but she doesn't like him. Steele wanted to ask her out but was rejected by her which would make Steele make an insult towards her. He tries to get Jenna anything if it meant Stealing but Jenna wouldn't accept his offer again and would pretend that she's into him only to get hurt. He would feel a bit angry about knowing that she loves Balto and by that Steele wouldn't care how Jenna feels in certain situations. Steele even try to lie if that would give her a reason to spend time with him but he fails and he believes she just need time but his nature was revealed and presumably he now no chance of getting her anymore.

Star, Nikki and Kaltag
"Nikki, Kaltag, Star, move it. We're strapping up."

- Steele informing them

Steele works and hangs around with them a lot, he uses them to do his personal things such as hurting Balto or on his side on anything but he doesn't know they talk behind his back. When they are heading to get the medicine, he'll get lost in the snow wit them and later he was lead the to a ravine and which they were stuck there for a while. When Balto took the lead, he makes him get lost along with them. And presumably, Steele was rejected by them in the end.

Dixie and Sylvie
"Ladies."

- Steele to them

Despite being his huge fans, Steele ignores them and he doesn't care about them at all. However, since they're on his side regardless, he flirts with them but he would lose their interest when they find out his true nature.

Nome
Despite getting famous from that place, he mainly doesn't seem to care about it, he mainly competes there since he gets famous but he'll try to stop Balto from getting fame but he'll succeeded for a moment but he'll lose all his fame when the dogs realize that he lied to them (it's unknown for the humans).

Boris
"Hey goose, you a half-breed too, huh? Part turkey?"

- Steele mocking Boris

Presumably when he saw him hanging out with Balto, he bullied him.

Steele's Musher
Not much is known about their history together but Steele seems that he doesn't want him to rethink about him or be positive towards Balto. However, he doesn't seems to care about him. }}

Trivia

 * People assumed that Balto's mom was in fact a wolf as he says that he got a message for his mother and proceeds to howl. The fact is, he was assuming that as Steele doesn't know ANYTHING about Balto other that he's part wolf.
 * People claim that the reason why Steele never appeared in the sequels is because he died due to the deleted scene, this isn't the case as none of the Balto scripts mention this sequence happening.
 * Phil Weinstein has said that Steele, the antagonist from the first movie, was originally set to appear in Balto 3--in this case, Steele would've been one of the volunteers who would help Balto in his search for Duke
 * Niju, the main antagonist of Balto II: Wolf Quest, is based off of Steele.
 * Phil Weinstein explained that in the original script for Balto III: Wings of Change, Steele was one of the volunteers who would help Balto on his search for Duke―this would indicate that Steele eventually changed his ways.
 * After the events of the first film Steele's whereabouts are currently unknown for he did not appear in the other two films.
 * Steele was originally going to die in Balto but was scraped due to how dark it was. This also makes him the first character who's death was planned then scraped.
 * In the old script, Steele was originally gonna have 1 blue eye and 1 brown eye.
 * Steele is the second tallest while Doc being first.
 * Brendan Fraser was originally supposed to voice Steele, but was discarded.
 * It is unknown whether or not Steele died due his fall from the cliff after his fight with Balto.

Gallery
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