TV villainscan often make or break an entire series. While heroes are the characters we typically root for, it’s those we love to hate who tend to keep us tuning in to watch our favorite shows. A good villain can captivate us for a whole season or story arc. A great villain will live on in television infamy forever.
But there are also those villains who, in reaching for the purest form of evil imaginable in the context of a TV show, actively repel us from watching their terrible exploits.Certain small-screen antagonists take things too far, without giving us a good reason to justify their reprehensible actions, or any redeeming feature to sympathize with.
Thebest TV villains of all timeare nuanced characters, with at least some form of moral logic, however warped or partial it might be, and a backstory or inciting incident that goes some way to explaining their behavior. Yet, there are plenty of small-screen villains whosecharacterizations fall flat because there’s no clear motivation behind their awful behavior.
Suchvillains are less fun to watchthan those we can have even the tiniest bit of sympathy with. Rather than draw us in, two-dimensional antagonists committing mindless villainy turn us off by going too far in their desperation to shock and horrify audiences.
For us to be genuinely affected by a villain’s actions, we need to identify with them on some level. On the other hand, these seven cases are virtually impossible for us to relate to. They’re either too repulsive or too cartoonishly evil to serve as characters we can enjoy watching in any way.
7Sarah Atwood (Yellowstone)
Played By Dawn Olivieri
While some fans might regardSarah Atwood asYellowstone’s best villain, it’s difficult to get on board with this perspective, given how badly drawn the character is. Atwood swings wildly between being Jamie Dutton’s seductress and the Machiavellian plotting the Dutton family’s downfall, without her motivations ever being fully clarified.
Her role in John Dutton’s death feels like a step too far for a scheming lawyer, even if Atwood’s license to practice law isn’t real. Rather than explaining her true motivations or substantiating her position asYellowstoneseason 5’s chief antagonist, however,the show simply kills her off, just two episodes after the Dutton family patriarch is found dead.
6Homelander (The Boys)
Played By Antony Starr
While theHomelander we see in the TV adaptation ofThe Boyshas a little more depth than his comic-book counterpart, he’s still a villain turned up to eleven, and then some. Everything Homelander says and does feels like it’s designed to wind us up.
While some fans of the show might argue that this exaggerated characterization is the whole point, it still doesn’t feel right.The Boysputs a satirical spin on the superhero genre, skewering the social interests at play behind the genre’s traditional tropes, yetthe satire rings relatively hollow in the case of Homelander.
Many commentators have drawn parallels between the character and U.S. President Donald Trump. But if that’s the parodyThe Boysis going for, there’s so much more the show could have done to make it work. Instead, Homelander comes across as an outright psychopath whose screen presence is generally repugnant.
5Norma Bates (Bates Motel)
Played By Vera Farmiga
Whether it’sAnthony Perkins’ portrayal of Norman Batesin the original moviePsycho, or Freddie Highmore’s equally unsettling version of the character inBates Motel, the son of Norma Bates is generally considered to be the main villain of thePsychofranchise. But Norman’s crimes have as much to do with his mother’s parenting as they do with his own mental illness.
Norma Bates fosters a relationship of mutual emotional dependence with her son, knowingly and deliberately exposes him to traumas she’s suffered, and repeatedly refuses to get him the mental health treatment he needs. Even worse,she normalizes and encourages Norman’s sexual attraction to her, gives him a passionate kiss, and purposely makes him jealous of her sexual partners.
While Norma herself faced hideous cruelty and sexual abuse during her own upbringing,Bates Motelisn’t the story of her childhood. It’s the story of what happens between her and Norman.
Her awful manipulation and abuse of a son who quite clearly has a serious mental health conditionis too much to bear. Because of Norma’s behavior, Norman Bates’ life could only ever have one outcome. She’s the real villain of the story, and she’s a repulsive one at that.
4Jonathan “Black Jack Randall” Wolverton (Outlander)
Played By Tobias Menzies
Jonathan Wolverton, otherwise known as “Black Jack Randall”, is an utterly irredeemable human being. What makes his unspeakable cruelty so much worse is thatOutlanderoften doesn’t make it clear why he’s being so sadistic.
During the course of the show,Black Jack Randall’s worst momentsinclude murder, sexual assault, torture, blackmail, child abuse, nailing a hand to a table, and repeatedly attacking the show’s protagonist, Claire Fraser, without warning. He also runs a corrupt prison where inmates suffer appalling ill-treatment at the hands of his guards.
So much of whatBlack Jack Randall does feels like it has no purpose, other thanOutlanderindulging in gratuitous, senseless violence. There ought to be more to a villain than simply causing untold pain to others and getting away with it.
3Eric Cartman (South Park)
Voiced By Trey Parker
From the earliest episodes ofSouth Park, it was abundantly clear that Eric Cartman was something far more sinister than a disobedient child. Cartman isn’t just selfish, ignorant, and foul-mouthed —he’s routinely racist, anti-semitic, and abusivetowards those with disabilities.
None of these things are necessarily a problem to depict, as long as Cartman’s behavior is called out, and he becomes the butt of the joke. However,South Park’s storylines have backed up the character’s hateful sentiments on countless occasions.
For example, in one scene, it’s revealed that Kyle carries a bag of gold around his neck because he’s Jewish, just as Cartman had claimed. For those watching at home,it’s not always clear whether the show wants us to be with or against Cartman’s deplorable behaviortowards others.
Besides the hatred he so frequently spews, Eric Cartman is capable of committing acts too evil for us to stomach.South Parkhas arguably never moved past the momentCartman fed Scott Tenorman’s parentsto him in a 2001 episode.
2The Trinity Killer (Dexter)
Played By John Lithgow
Given thatDexteris all about killing, it shouldn’t come as a surprise to viewers that serial killers of various kinds populate the show’s episodes. Nevertheless, one especially murderous villain has never sat right with most viewers.Dexter’s Trinity Killer, played by John Lithgow, is such an unrelatable character precisely because of his seemingly normal life.
This killer is one of the most brutal, merciless perpetrators of murder in the entire series, and yetthe random violence he commits doesn’t tally with the rest of his character. Even the childhood trauma depicted as the motive behind his actions doesn’t really allow us to join the dots.
In the end, the actions of Lithgow’s character come across as nothing more than senseless, nauseating bloodlust. It only reinforcesthe feeling that there’s no other reason for the Trinity Killer’s rolein the series than that Dexter and his team repeatedly fail to catch him, when he’s right under their noses.
1Ramsay Bolton (Game Of Thrones
Played By Iwan Rheon
This might be an unpopular opinion amongGame of Thronesfans for whom Ramsay Bolton is one of the show’s greatest villains, but Iwan Rheon’s character leaves a lot to be desired. He’s sadistic, vicious, and pure evil without any real explanation throughout his five seasons in the show.
Whether it’s setting a pack of dogs on a helpless baby, or the numerous times he exacted gruesome punishment on someone in his torture dungeon,pretty much everything Ramsay Bolton does is off-puttingly cruel. Even his father’s treatment of him as an illegitimate heir doesn’t explain the level of barbarism to which he descends.
Game of Thronescan lay claim to some of the bestTV villainsin any genre, but Ramsay Bolton isn’t one of them. He’s a one-dimensional specialist in torture and bloody murder, whose absence from the series would make next to no difference to its story or character development.
