10 More TV Villains You Didn't Realise Actually Won
4. Helmut Zemo - The Falcon & The Winter Soldier
Because having Helmut Zemo (Daniel Brühl) triumph over the Avengers in Captain America: Civil War wasn't good enough, he ended up doing it again in follow-up series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
Zemo is reluctantly brought into the fold by Falcon (Anthony Mackie) and the Winter Soldier (Sebastian Stan), who require his help to bring down the Flag Smashers, a group of anti-nationalist anarchists who have been enhanced by Super-Soldier Serum. After destroying many vials of the serum and killing its creator, Zemo is handed over to Wakanda's Dora Milaje in the season's penultimate episode, before being imprisoned in the Raft.
This might initially seem like a big L for Zemo, yet in the finale his butler Oeznik (Nicholas Pryor) kills the remaining serum-enhanced Flag Smashers before they too can be imprisoned in the Raft, leaving Zemo with a satisfied smirk on his face the last time we see him.
Just as some refused to admit that Zemo won in Civil War because he still ended up in the clink, the same is true here. He may be behind bars, but he once again completed his mission, and impressively did so without any superpowers of his own.