10 TV Shows Where The Hero Became A Villain

4. Lester Nygaard - Fargo

The genius of Lester Nygaard's villainous turn lies, at least in part, in the casting of Martin Freeman. While Freeman is a fine actor, he rarely strays too far from the same path: a quiet, unassuming, sweet-natured guy,

Lester fits into this same pattern. An insurance salesman, who we see was bullied as a child and continues to be as an adult, he comes across as a fairly normal if a little boring person, the kind who wouldn't dream of hurting anybody and is very much the victim of his story. We're supposed to pity him, to relate to him, and to root for him. But over the course of Fargo's great first season, as his world dovetails with Billy Bob Thornton's Malvo, Lester takes a dark turn.

It starts, somewhat surprisingly, right from the first episode: this downtrodden man has had enough, and pushed by his wife, snaps and brutally murders her with a hammer. It's a shock to the system, especially because it's Freeman, and Fargo plays on that dichotomy throughout its ten episodes: Lester does some despicable things, and yet because so much of it is things spinning out of his control and played with his own fear, it rarely commits to full-on villainy - until the end.

While Lester's pretty far gone anyway, it's when he allows his second wife to go into the office and retrieve the passports, telling her to put on his coat with the hood up, knowing full well Malvo lies in wait, that we see the true extent of just how sociopathic he's become.