He wasn't portrayed as heroic at all. And what you interpret as heroic and likable is based on the human desire to see the "underdog" win.
When he was without the means to be the biggest *beep* on the planet, yes, he literally was forced to be more "down to Earth" but everything he did and planned while being stuck in a shack was plotting to retake Iraq. There's nothing sympathetic about that.
When I say he wasn't being portrayed as heroic, I am referring to specific examples made in the last two parts that revealed the futility and misguided nature of his desire. When we see him run into the boy, he threatens to murder the boy, this is no joke, as he murdered many boys in his day, but it reveals how far he's fallen, yet learned nothing from it. His next step was to have his men look into the boy's father, and next we hear about the boy's father, he's been taken away. Saddam likely had that boy's father taken and tortured just so the boy couldn't rat him out. He's still scum.
Then we see the two different reactions of roadside bombings. Saddam thinks a resistance movement for him has begun, and he wants to quickly reassert himself as the seat of power, immediately demanding that his people contact their leaders to tell them what to do. The other side of the coin is seeing his men's facial expressions throughout this, as they know the insurgency has nothing to do with restoring Saddam, that those people would just as likely kill him as an American soldier. This was cemented when his men had a discussion that they didn't believe his audio recordings were doing any good, they were just being loyal. Saddam to the very end ruled through fear and tyranny.
He was a villain through and through and even hanging out on the bank of the Tigris, while you thought you saw some heroic man planning some last stand for Iraq while joking with his buddies and having quality time with a local boy, you entirely missed what was really happening up until the very end.
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