10 Best Movie Characters Not Introduced Until The End

Snowpiercer's Wilford is the equivalent of the titular train's "final boss" and the man who created and maintains the Engine.

Snowpiercer depicts a dystopian tale of survivors of an extinction event, aboard a train endlessly circling the frozen wasteland that was once Earth. Chris Evans' Curtis Everett leads the lower-class passengers - relegated to the sub-human conditions of the train's "Tail" - in a bloody revolution against the wealthy occupants of the front carriages in a desperate fight to get to the front of the train.

An enthralling, visceral commentary on survival and inherent human nature culminates in a stand off with the train's mastermind, Wilford, played in a sublime turn by Ed Harris. The most sinister aspect about Wilford is his relaxed matter-of-factness, chuckling and tucking into his meal as he informs Everett that the revolution was no more than an engineered ploy to reduce the crowded population of the Tail to levels easier for him to manage. Wilford then proceeds to have 74% of the remaining survivors executed to achieve his desired total.

Wilford's status as an insidious villain of nightmarish proportions is solidified when it is revealed that he has children from the Tail manually operating the dangerous machinery within the Engine. It's a whole lot of evil to cram into the end of a movie, but Ed Harris manages to do so in his typically polished fashion. A film of such stature and quality deserved a despicable villain of the highest order and Harris achieves this despite only appearing briefly in the film's climactic sequence.