10 TV Shows Where The Hero Became A Villain

5. Dale Cooper - Twin Peaks/Twin Peaks: The Return

Across the first two seasons of Twin Peaks, Agent Dale Cooper was a paragon of goodness; he was kind, decent, and pure in a twisted world where evil and chaos reigned, and that made his ultimate fate all the more devastating.

While the original run of Twin Peaks ended with a cliffhanger that only briefly showed us Coop being possessed by the villainous Killer BOB, the eventual follow up, 2017's Twin Peaks: The Return, went all the way with the idea. That's where we meet the Black Lodge version of Cooper, known as Mr C, who is a being of sheer malevolence.

It's revealed that, after assuming Cooper's identity, he went on to sexually assault Diane, and then, after an intervening period of 25-years where he was mostly off-the-grid, returns to the Twin Peaks area to carry out more of BOB's misdeeds, including murder, as an agent of total evil, and the complete inverse of the great Dale Cooper.

It contains a terrific performance from Kyle MacLachlan, and is all the more terrifying because we know and love the real Cooper so much, and while this person isn't 'him' as such, to see his face and hear his voice carrying out such repulsive acts is one of David Lynch's most horrifyingly brilliant feats.