The Most Unforgettable TV Show Villains Of All Time

The late, magnificent James Gandolfini helped usher in the age of premiere TV with his portrayal of villain and mobster Tony Soprano in HBO‘s The Sopranos. For eight years, Gandolfini embodied the complex, surprisingly sensitive, and utterly ruthless head of the New Jersey mob. For his work, he brought home three Emmy awards for best lead actor.

Of all the characters mentioned on this list, Tony may be the TV character some readers object to being called a “villain” the strongest. When you consider the many characters, some of them family members, Tony sends to their final reward by the end of the series, we’re confident that — at the very least — his victims wouldn’t argue with us about it.

He may be known better these days as the lead of ABC’s The Good Doctor, but in the early to late 2010s Freddie Highmore made his name by doing the impossible: replacing Anthony Perkins in the late actor’s signature role of Norman Bates. On TV, Highmore played a younger version of the villain in Bates Motel. 

A prequel series, Bates Motel shows us the lives of Norman and his mother Norma (Vera Farmiga) before the events of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 classic Psycho. The acclaimed series ran on A&E starting in 2013 and concluded with its fifth season in 2017.

Few actors who have played TV villains more perfectly embodied the idea of a character “you love to hate” than Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister. As merciless as any man in HBO’s Game of Thrones, and more pitiless than most, Cersei quickly becomes one of the most hated characters in the series. Unlike other initially villainous characters like her brother/lover Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and The Hound (Rory McCann) who would eventually be seen more as heroes by the fandom, Cersei remained one of the most despised competitors for the Iron Throne to the bitter end of the series.

The Walking Dead franchise gets a lot of criticism for arguably overstaying its welcoming and creating too many spinoffs, but one thing that speaks not only to the skill of the primary show’s writers and the acting of Jeffrey Dean Morgan is the wonderful evolution of Negan. He not only is introduced as one of the hit TV show’s villains, but he’s responsible for perhaps the single most traumatizing moment in The Walking Dead — the brutal murder of Glenn (Steven Yeun). 

In spite of it all, Negan has since become one of the franchise’s chief protagonists, even soon sharing the spotlight in the upcoming spinoff The Walking Dead: Dead City with Lauren Cohan who will reprise her role as Maggie.

Before Kevin Spacey’s fall from grace, he helped Netflix become the world’s most popular creator of original streaming content with his chilling portrayal of the TV villain Frank Underwood in the political thriller House of Cards. Starting off as the Democratic House Majority whip, Underwood is betrayed by the President who had promised him the position of Secretary of State in return for his support. Encouraged by both his own ambitions and those of his equally pitiless wife Claire (Robin Wright), Frank comes up with an elaborate plan to not only ascend the highest ranks of Washington, but to get payback on everyone who betrayed him.

We don’t know exactly how the Daleks of Doctor Who have maintained their popularity over the decades, but that the fans love the cybernetic TV villains is undeniable fact. Created in the 1960s, the basic design of the Daleks has remained the same, as if they were unnecessarily elaborately made wastebaskets with stubby antennae sprouting from them like snouts and tiny arms. Their unforgettable battle cry “Exterminate!” is easily one of the most iconic catch phrases in sci-fi TV, right up there with “Resistance is futile” and “This is the way.”

Younger TV fans might not have heard of him, but there was a time when no villain on the small screen was more reviled than Larry Hagman’s J.R. Ewing on the CBS prime time soap opera Dallas. Long before similarly wealthy and powerful men would show how little their conscience mattered in series like House of Cards and Succession, Ewing was doling out bribery, blackmail, and all kinds of unapologetic betrayal like candy. 

After the series’ original 13 year run, Hagman reprised the role in TNT’s revival series. Sadly, during the production of the newer show’s second season, Hagman passed away.

If you’re only familiar with Anthony Hopkins’ turns as Hannibal Lecter, you could be forgiven for assuming no one else could possibly do the character justice. But if you set aside your prejudices and watch NBC’s Hannibal you may be convinced the TV villain is even more fascinating than what you saw in Silence of the Lambs.

Mads Mikkelsen is so incredible in this career-making role that he genuinely makes you wonder whether or not he will in fact prove to be a villain. In the first season it’s easy to harbor the fantasy that he’s more like the titular lead of Dexter — a serial killer preying on his contemporaries. But once Mikkelsen lets loose the dragon, it’s unmistakable and unforgettable.

It will be a long time before a TV villain emerges who is as expertly written and performed as Walter White of Breaking Bad. The evolution of the cancer-stricken Walter White to his cold-hearted alter-ego Heisenberg is one of the most believable and sympathetic storylines in the history of television.

Of all the brutality we’re witness to in Breaking Bad, perhaps the cruelest thing about the series is that it truly is Walter’s transformation into Heisenberg — more than the money or the chemotherapy — that saves him, and at the same time it’s what destroys him.

To end a list of TV villains with the bad guy from a kids’ show may seem strange, but fans of Batman: The Animated Series likely won’t be surprised at all. In spite of his live-action big screen competition for the past 35 years being made up of four Oscar-winners, Mark Hamill’s yellow-toothed version of the Joker, to many, is the definitive version of the character.

Voicing the Joker for four years on Batman: The Animated Series, and getting much of the inspiration for his performance from the 1933 classic The Invisible Man, Hamill became as inseparable from the Joker as he remains from Luke Skywalker. He continues to voice the character for multiple projects, including other series, movies, and video games.