15 Most Monstrous Villains In Television
Every great story needs a bad guy. These are the worst.
If film is the definitive storytelling medium of our age (and yes, it absolutely is), then television is specifically a writer’s medium, and no one understands the value of a great antagonist like a writer.
A great antagonist can drive the plot when it can’t drive itself. He or she can provide exposition when necessary without sacrificing credibility, and blackly comic relief even in the story’s darkest moments. A truly horrendous villain can get any hero over with the audience, even if they don’t like the actor or the character.
A really great nemesis provides structure to a longform plot, thematic resolution for a hero’s angst, someone for the protagonist to truly bounce off. And an appalling monster gives our heroes an uphill battle to win, impossible odds to overcome. For a writer, a truly horrifying Big Bad is a must: it’s the skeleton key unlocking any story, the shortcut to narrative perfection.
That’s why all the best bad guys are on TV, and what horrendous b*stards they are. We’ve had vicious psychopaths and damaged sociopaths; Machiavellian manipulators and brutal brawlers. We’ve had the abuser, the torturer and the homicidal maniac; the scoundrel, the anti-hero and, of course, the absolute, out-and-out fiend.
These, then are the fifteen most monstrous villains in television history. Watch yourselves: these characters are NSFW, and of course here be spoilers.
15. T-Bag (Prison Break)
Theodore ‘T-Bag’ Bagwell is practically designed by committee to be an antagonist. He’s a loathsome racist and murderer, and often referred to as a !*$%, although given that he plays no favourites with gender when it comes to sexual abuse, it’s very likely that the power-playing ‘rapist’ characteristic is predominant in him.
Male, female, old or young, T-Bag will force himself on anyone and anything, and couch it in the most reprehensibly sleazy kind of seduction possible. It’s almost like he’s desperate to get a rise out of everyone that meets him, determined to be hated.
The second season of Prison Break attempted to flesh out Bagwell’s background, to try to pin down how a man becomes such an unrepentant monster. Why they do this, I have no idea, except to say that the muppets can’t leave a good thing alone.
Regardless, actor Robert Knepper is such a talent that the viewer very nearly swallows this hastily concocted story of parental abuse and molestation, very nearly allows themselves to believe that there’s something childlike, even innocent trapped in that cesspit of a mind… but T-Bag can’t stop himself being T-Bag for long.