15 Most Monstrous Villains In Television

As far as bad guys on The Wire go, Marlo is the big nasty. Avon Barksdale is a gangbanger through and through, concerned purely with the bottom line, while his former right hand man Stringer Bell is the gangbanger turned businessman, a self-made man determined to make more of himself and his criminal enterprises.

Marlo, on the other hand, is a vicious, amoral hood obsessed with power for its own sake. In a show that tries at least nominally to showcase different sides of its antagonist characters, to make them seem more human, more relatable, Marlo Stanfield is a grade-A sociopath with no redeeming features, played by the gimlet-eyed Jamie Hector almost entirely without affect, unblinking and unforgiving.

Ruthless and cruel, Marlo’s lack of respect for anyone and anything translates to a complete lack of fear. Of all the druglords represented in The Wire, he’s the worst and the most bloodthirsty, taking out his own mentor with the cold remorseless carelessness of a shark, ordering the deaths of children and people who’ve looked at him funny, provoking confrontations with strangers just to have someone else to kill.