Top 10 Greatest TV Villains of All Time

Lena Headey's Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones (2011-2019) wielded power with a coldness that made her more frightening than any dragon. A queen who blew up an entire cathedral full of her enemies with wildfire, ordered the deaths of hundreds, and turned maternal love into a weapon of mass destruction, Cersei was the show's most compelling force — a villain whose ruthlessness was rooted in a very human fear of powerlessness. The walk of atonement scene remains one of television's most harrowing sequences.

Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal Lecter in NBC's Hannibal (2013-2015) surpassed even Anthony Hopkins's iconic film version by making the cannibal psychiatrist genuinely seductive. Cultivated, intellectually brilliant, and utterly without remorse, Mikkelsen's Lecter murders with the precision of an artist and the calm of a philosopher — and the show lets you enjoy every moment of it. The series remains the most visually luxurious portrayal of evil in television history.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan arrived in The Walking Dead (Season 6, 2016) with a barbed-wire baseball bat named Lucille and proceeded to beat two beloved characters to death on camera in one of the most shocking season premieres in TV history. A charismatic tyrant who runs his post-apocalyptic empire through terror and a twisted code of rules, Negan is the rare villain who becomes more interesting the longer he stays on screen — eventually forcing the audience to understand, if not forgive, exactly how he became the monster he is.

Jack Gleeson's Joffrey Baratheon in Game of Thrones (2011-2014) was the villain audiences most loved to hate — a petulant, sadistic king who executed a fan-favourite character at the end of Season 1 and spent three years making everyone around him miserable. What made Joffrey so effective was Gleeson's complete commitment to the character's cowardice; Joffrey was cruel because he was afraid, which made his cruelty feel horribly recognisable. His death by poisoning at his own wedding was met with audience applause worldwide.

Louise Fletcher won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Nurse Ratched in the 1975 film, but the character originated as the central antagonist of Ken Kesey's 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and has since become television's most enduring symbol of institutional cruelty. Cold, methodical, and genuinely convinced of her own righteousness, Ratched weaponises the language of care to exert total control over a psychiatric ward. The name has entered the English language as shorthand for any authority figure who uses the system as an instrument of punishment.

Giancarlo Esposito's Gustavo Fring in Breaking Bad (2009-2012) and Better Call Saul (2017-2022) is perhaps the most quietly terrifying villain in television history. A fast-food chain owner and drug cartel distributor by day, Gus operates with absolute composure — his mask of civility never slipping even as he enacts revenge schemes measured in decades. The scene in which he calmly tidies himself after a shooting, then collapses dead revealing half his face has been blown off, is the single most stunning villain exit in television.

James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano in The Sopranos (1999-2007) was the character who proved that television could sustain a villain as its protagonist for an entire series. A New Jersey mob boss who murders associates with his bare hands then discusses his feelings with a psychiatrist, Tony is TV's most fully realised monster — charming, funny, loving, and utterly capable of sudden savage violence. The Sopranos pioneered the antihero era of prestige television, and Tony Soprano remains its most influential creation.

David Morrissey's Philip Blake, known as the Governor, in The Walking Dead Seasons 3 and 4 (2012-2014) took the zombie apocalypse to a darker place than any walker ever could. A charismatic dictator who runs the fortified town of Woodbury through a mixture of charm and horrific violence — including keeping decapitated heads in fish tanks as trophies — the Governor showed that the true monsters in a post-apocalyptic world are always human. His brutal attack on the prison and what follows remains one of the most devastating sequences in the show's history.

David Tennant's Kilgrave in Marvel's Jessica Jones Season 1 (2015) is the MCU's most psychologically sophisticated villain, built as an explicit metaphor for coercive control and abuse. A man with the power to make anyone do anything he says, Kilgrave tormented Jessica Jones for months, forcing her to commit acts of violence against her will — and then refuses to understand that any of it was wrong. Tennant plays him with a petulant, gleeful entitlement that makes him genuinely frightening rather than cartoonishly evil.

Lena Headey's Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones (2011-2019) wielded power with a coldness that made her more frightening than any dragon. A queen who blew up an entire cathedral full of her enemies with wildfire, ordered the deaths of hundreds, and turned maternal love into a weapon of mass destruction, Cersei was the show's most compelling force — a villain whose ruthlessness was rooted in a very human fear of powerlessness. The walk of atonement scene remains one of television's most harrowing sequences.

Mads Mikkelsen's Hannibal Lecter in NBC's Hannibal (2013-2015) surpassed even Anthony Hopkins's iconic film version by making the cannibal psychiatrist genuinely seductive. Cultivated, intellectually brilliant, and utterly without remorse, Mikkelsen's Lecter murders with the precision of an artist and the calm of a philosopher — and the show lets you enjoy every moment of it. The series remains the most visually luxurious portrayal of evil in television history.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Negan arrived in The Walking Dead (Season 6, 2016) with a barbed-wire baseball bat named Lucille and proceeded to beat two beloved characters to death on camera in one of the most shocking season premieres in TV history. A charismatic tyrant who runs his post-apocalyptic empire through terror and a twisted code of rules, Negan is the rare villain who becomes more interesting the longer he stays on screen — eventually forcing the audience to understand, if not forgive, exactly how he became the monster he is.

Jack Gleeson's Joffrey Baratheon in Game of Thrones (2011-2014) was the villain audiences most loved to hate — a petulant, sadistic king who executed a fan-favourite character at the end of Season 1 and spent three years making everyone around him miserable. What made Joffrey so effective was Gleeson's complete commitment to the character's cowardice; Joffrey was cruel because he was afraid, which made his cruelty feel horribly recognisable. His death by poisoning at his own wedding was met with audience applause worldwide.

Louise Fletcher won an Academy Award for her portrayal of Nurse Ratched in the 1975 film, but the character originated as the central antagonist of Ken Kesey's 1962 novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and has since become television's most enduring symbol of institutional cruelty. Cold, methodical, and genuinely convinced of her own righteousness, Ratched weaponises the language of care to exert total control over a psychiatric ward. The name has entered the English language as shorthand for any authority figure who uses the system as an instrument of punishment.

Giancarlo Esposito's Gustavo Fring in Breaking Bad (2009-2012) and Better Call Saul (2017-2022) is perhaps the most quietly terrifying villain in television history. A fast-food chain owner and drug cartel distributor by day, Gus operates with absolute composure — his mask of civility never slipping even as he enacts revenge schemes measured in decades. The scene in which he calmly tidies himself after a shooting, then collapses dead revealing half his face has been blown off, is the single most stunning villain exit in television.

James Gandolfini's Tony Soprano in The Sopranos (1999-2007) was the character who proved that television could sustain a villain as its protagonist for an entire series. A New Jersey mob boss who murders associates with his bare hands then discusses his feelings with a psychiatrist, Tony is TV's most fully realised monster — charming, funny, loving, and utterly capable of sudden savage violence. The Sopranos pioneered the antihero era of prestige television, and Tony Soprano remains its most influential creation.

David Morrissey's Philip Blake, known as the Governor, in The Walking Dead Seasons 3 and 4 (2012-2014) took the zombie apocalypse to a darker place than any walker ever could. A charismatic dictator who runs the fortified town of Woodbury through a mixture of charm and horrific violence — including keeping decapitated heads in fish tanks as trophies — the Governor showed that the true monsters in a post-apocalyptic world are always human. His brutal attack on the prison and what follows remains one of the most devastating sequences in the show's history.

David Tennant's Kilgrave in Marvel's Jessica Jones Season 1 (2015) is the MCU's most psychologically sophisticated villain, built as an explicit metaphor for coercive control and abuse. A man with the power to make anyone do anything he says, Kilgrave tormented Jessica Jones for months, forcing her to commit acts of violence against her will — and then refuses to understand that any of it was wrong. Tennant plays him with a petulant, gleeful entitlement that makes him genuinely frightening rather than cartoonishly evil.