Updated November 2, 2020 12.6K votes 3.0K voters 329.7K views
Over 3.0K Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of TV Villains Who Got Exactly What They Deserved
Voting Rules
Vote up the perfectly hateable TV villains who suffered satisfying fates.
Sure, there are great moments in the movies when a villain gets their comeuppance - think Grand Moff Tarkin getting blown up along with the Death Star in the original Star Wars, or Hans Gruber falling to his demise from the top of a massive skyscraper in Die Hard. But isn't there something just more satisfying about watching TV villains meet their end? After watching a bad guy taunt the heroes, stir up trouble, and unleash chaos for multiple episodes (or even multiple seasons), it can be electrifying when we finally see them go down in flames. And if you need proof, here are some of the very best examples of TV villains whose punishments fit the crime.
Where do we even start? Perhaps no TV villain of the last decade has been as loathsome and utterly irredeemable as Ramsay Bolton. The bastard son of nobleman Roose Bolton, Ramsay is a full-fledged psychopath who relishes in maiming his opponents (often by flaying them alive) and torturing his captives. After turning on his own father, he becomes the lord of Winterfell and imposes his brutal reign on the entire region of Westeros.
His Fate:
Jon Snow leads a desperate siege on Winterfell to retake the territory from Ramsay, and the tide turns in his favor when Sansa Stark and Petyr Baelish arrive with reinforcements at a crucial moment. Ramsay tries to retreat to his fortified settlement, but a giant wildling breaks down the gate, allowing Jon to rush in and challenge him to a one-on-one duel. Ramsay loses and is imprisoned in Winterfell, where Sansa gets revenge for his brutal treatment of her by letting his hunting dogs eat him alive.
Joffrey starts off as merely a spoiled brat at the beginning of the series, a young prince who doesn’t hesitate to abuse others because his royal title means he rarely hears the word “no.” But when Joffrey ascends the throne, his full cruelty is revealed. He decides on a whim to have Eddard Stark beheaded for treason, despite pleas from his family and advisors that doing so would spark a civil war, and he later fires an arrow through a mistress just for fun. It’s possible that his vicious nature is the result of inbreeding: Joffrey isn’t actually the son of King Robert Baratheon or the heir to the throne, but a product of incest between siblings Cersei and Jaime Lannister.
His Fate:
After years of tormenting everyone around him, including members of his own family, Joffrey is poisoned on his wedding day. The dark joke is that nobody is sure who did the deed, since so many of the wedding guests had their own reasons for wanting him gone. (Although Joffrey’s uncle, Tyrion Lannister, is initially blamed for the act, it’s later revealed that the actual culprit was Lady Olenna.)
Before the zombie outbreak, Philip Blake was just an ordinary office worker and family man. After the outbreak, he becomes known as “The Governor,” the ruthless leader of a small community in Woodbury, GA. The Governor rules his town with his iron fist and doesn’t hesitate to do away with anyone whom he believes to be a threat to his order. When his spartan mentality clashes with the more humane philosophy of Rick Grimes and his band of survivors, a battle breaks out between the two groups.
His Fate:
Shortly after capturing and decapitating Hershel Greene, the Governor leads a siege on the prison where Rick and his fellow survivors are living. Rick and the Governor get into a brutal fight, and just as the Governor is about to finish him off, Michonne arrives and stabs him through the torso. As he lies bleeding, Lilly shows up to finish the job by shooting him in the head.
Born Kevin Thompson, the supervillain known as Kilgrave developed psychic powers as a child that allowed him to control other people. Not surprisingly, he grew up to be a sociopath who saw everyone around him as mere puppets to be manipulated for his own benefit. He used his powers to turn superhero Jessica Jones into his sex slave and enforcer, even making her take another woman's life with her super-strength. When Jessica develops the ability to block his mental control, she flees and works to defeat him before he can cause any more harm.
His Fate:
Jessica realizes that Kilgrave’s Achilles’ heel is his monstrous ego: his certainty that nobody can ever outsmart him. She lets Kilgrave think that he’s strengthened his powers to the point that he can control her again, luring him close enough that she can grab him and snap his neck.
Although she plays the part of a virtuous superhero for her massive social media following, Stormfront is really a closet white supremacist who is using her popularity to advocate for the white race and to start a race war. There's nothing "neo" about her - she's a literal Nazi. She was born in Germany in 1919 and stopped aging long ago thanks to an experiment that also gave her lightning superpowers. Now she believes it’s up to her to succeed where the Fuhrer failed.
Her Fate:
Stormfront’s social media popularity crumbles when evidence of her past leaks and the public turns against her. Furious, she tries to exact her revenge on the Boys, but is subdued by the trio of Starlight, Kimiko, and Queen Maeve. But her fatal mistake comes when she threatens to harm Rebecca Butcher in front of Rebecca’s superpowered son Ryan - Ryan uses his heat vision to attack her, scorching her entire body and cutting off most of her limbs. Stormfront is left alive, but is now completely and utterly powerless.
Although Todd initially seems like an ordinary, exceedingly polite young man, he is in fact a sociopath who doesn’t even hesitate when he has to take the life of a small boy who witnessed a crime. He takes over as Walt’s assistant for cooking meth when Jesse quits the business, and he and his neo-Nazi family later assume control of the operation when Walt himself retires. But Todd proves to be a subpar cook, and he ends up simply kidnapping Jesse Pinkman and forcing him to make that perfect crystal-blue meth for his benefit. When Jesse tries to escape, Todd kills his ex-girlfriend Andrea.
His Fate:
Todd and his uncle Jack lure Walt into their compound, planning to finally finish him off and tie up any loose ends from their criminal enterprise. But Walt has an ace up his sleeve: a machine gun hidden in the trunk of his car, which he’s programmed to fire automatically when he taps a button on his keyless remote. The gunfire takes out the entire crew save for Todd, who lives just long enough to marvel at the chaos around him before Jesse personally strangles him.
