What makes a superhero? A colorful costume or extraordinary abilities certainly help, but maybe the real mark of a superhero is a supervillain. After all, what’s the point of all those powers if you’re just battling normal crime?
Indeed, whenever there’s a new superhero movie or TV show, one of the first questions fans want answered is “Who is the villain?” A good supervillain provides a match for a hero, an equal that will take all of their powers and cunning to defeat. Fittingly, many of the best superhero movies or shows are the ones that have great supervillains, and the 32 below are the best of the best—or, rather, the worst of the worst.
The following bad guys come from a variety of titles, beyond just the expected rogues from the Marvel Cinematic Universe or DC films. There are cartoon super-crooks, televised tyrants, and, yes, enough Jokers to fill up Arkham Asylum. (One supervillain you won’t find on this list? Harley Quinn, who may have begun her career as The Joker’s sidekick, but she’s since fully graduated to heroine—or at least antihero—status.)
32. Black Mask (Birds of Prey)
The Joker, Harley Quinn’s infamous ex, is nowhere to be seen in Birds of Prey. Instead, Margot Robbie’s take on the crazy antiheroine is Ewan McGregor’s Roman Sionis, a.k.a Black Mask—a flamboyant and extremely narcissistic nightclub owner and Gotham City crime lord. Black Mask is not an A-list Batman villain by any means, but McGregor takes advantage of the baddie’s relative obscurity by making the character his own. He’s unhinged and petty, simultaneously a laughably normal guy and a twisted DC supervillain; the sort that will spare a victim from a gnarly fate only to change his mind when he gets grossed out by a snot bubble. In other words, he’s exactly the right type of crazy to match Harley.
31. Slade (Teen Titans)
The ‘00s Teen Titans cartoon couldn’t call this longtime DC villain by his comic name of “Deathstroke,” but even Slade Wilson’s first name alone makes for an intimidating moniker. Unlike the Teen Titans Go spinoff, the original oscillated from being silly to being serious, and any time Slade showed up, it was no laughing matter. A masked genius with peak combat skills and Ron Perlman’s intimidating voice, Slade was the Titans’ archenemy who nearly tore the team apart from within on two occasions—first by blackmailing Robin into being his apprentice and then by inserting the geokinetic turncoat Terra into their ranks. The show had other, ostensibly more powerful supervillains in later seasons, but none posed as great a threat to the team as Slade.
30. Bane (The Dark Knight Rises)
As a movie, The Dark Knight Rises is kind of a mess, but Tom Hardy’s Bane is an incredible supervillain. Part of that is because it’s still fun, many years later, to put a coffee cup up to your mouth and do an impression of his singular voice. (“YoU mErElY aDoPteD tHe DaRk; I wAs BoRn iN It.”) Despite the meme Bane inspired, he’s an imposing, threatening presence—a hulking man who can best Batman in strength and wits. The telegraphed reveal that Talia al Ghul is actually the film’s real Big Bad is in part a letdown because it sidelines Bane, a scary, slightly goofy, and uniquely alluring screen villain.
29. Mojo Jojo (The PowerPuff Girls)
If the PowerPuff Girls’ archnemesis had to argue why he’s the 29th best on-screen supervillain in his own words, we’d be here a while. The mutated chimpanzee has a cool helmet, a flowing purple cape, a gigantic brain, and a tendency to boast about his would-be world-conquering achievements in lengthy, redundant, run-on sentences. One of the show’s funniest villains, Mojo, whose backstory is connected to the PowerPuff Girls’ origin, as detailed in the 2002 movie, is also one of the most prolific and effective. And, of course, the most verbose.
28. Namor (Black Panther: Wakanda Forever)
The deck was stacked against Wakanda Forever, which had to mourn the tragic, untimely death of actor Chadwick Boseman and, by extension, his King T’Challa. The film does an admirable if flawed job promoting Letitia Wright’s Shuri to the role, but its one unqualified success might be Namor. As played by Tenoch Huerta, Wakanda Forever recasts one of Marvel Comics’ oldest characters into a Mayan-inspired aquatic king, ditching the comics’ slick hair and tiny black Speedo for something with a cultural weight to balance Wakanda’s Afrofuturism. Such bold reimaginings don’t always pan out for movie adaptations but they do here—and it helps that Huerta nails the mixture of haughty charm and menace that made the character iconic.
27. The Riddler (The Batman)
Paul Dano’s take on Batman’s question-posing foe from Matt Reeves’ 2022 film is a far cry from the garishly green and question-marked versions of The Riddler. Jim Carrey, this ain’t; instead, Dano’s Riddler is Gotham City’s riff on the Zodiac Killer. The riddles he challenges Batman with are intellectual, but there’s something grimy, visceral, and violent about his methods. He’s legitimately scary and ultimately a bit pathetic, grounding the Robert Pattinson Batman series in a way that no previous film adaptation of the Caped Crusader had accomplished.
26. Col. Stryker (X2: X-Men United)
What makes Brian Cox’s Col. William Stryker, the villain of X2: X-Men United, such an effective supervillain is how human he is. Stryker doesn’t have any superpowers—that’s kind of his whole M.O.— as his vendetta against Mutants drives him to warp and manipulate them in pursuit of his ultimate goal of killing all the Mutants. Stryker is so dedicated to this genocidal, pro-human pursuit that he all but throws away his own claim to humanity by lobotomizing his Mutant son. All that and he’s also responsible for Wolverine’s adamantium skeleton. That’s worthy of a spot in the supervillain hall of infamy.
25. Wenwu (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings)
The MCU has, wisely, twice reinvented the Mandarin, a longtime comic book villain with racist, “Yellow Peril” origins. The first was Ben Kingsley’s Iron Man 3 villain, revealed to be an actor deliberately playing up (and therefore subverting) those tropes. Then Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings revealed the “real” Mandarin, a movie-original take on the character. A warlord who obtained immortality and vast, shadowy power upon finding the titular Ten Rings, Wenwu was Shang-Chi’s father and his foe. Tony Leung, one of the greatest living actors, lent his skills and extremely expressive eyes to the MCU to play Wenwu, effortlessly imbibing a character with such a complex backstory with life and pathos.
24. Sylar (Heroes)
The NBC series Heroes went off the rails, but oh man, was that first season an all-timer. Following a diverse group of people who discover they have superpowers, Heroes’ first season came to a head when all the characters joined together to stop Sylar. As played by Zachary Quinto, Sylar was a coldly psychopathic killer as well as a voracious hunter, who tracked down other people with superpowers and stole their abilities. Later seasons of the show would lose the thread of what made Sylar so scary and intimidating, but that first season is about as close as we’ll get to a superpowered Hannibal Lecter.
23. Ego the Living Planet (Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2)
In the Marvel comics, Ego the Living Planet is, well, a planet that’s alive. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 reimagined Ego as a Celestial who can give himself a human form, played by Kurt Russell. Revealed to be Peter Quill’s father, Ego has secret ambitions that threaten all life in the universe. He’s a bad guy on an unfathomable scale, and yet, in part because he’s got Russell’s natural charm and charisma going for him, you can’t help but like Ego. Star-Lord certainly did, only falling out of Ego’s thrall just in time to save the day with a little planetary patricide.
22. The Penguin (Batman Returns)
Tim Burton got weird when he made his second Batman movie, Batman Returns. Oswald Cobblepot earned his supervillain name in the comic books because he wore a black and white suit and vaguely looked like a penguin, with a pointy nose and somewhat rotund frame. Burton’s Penguin, played by Danny DeVito, is a grotesque, malformed man who grew up in the sewers, raised by literal penguins. It speaks to how singular Burton’s Batman films are that this version of the supervillain feels right at home in Gotham City—heck, he almost wins an election to be mayor!
21. Syndrome (The Incredibles)
The Incredibles, Pixar’s masterpiece, is quite possibly the greatest superhero movie ever made, so it’s only fitting that it would have a great supervillain. A prescient take on toxic fandom, Syndrome originally wanted to be Mr. Incredible’s sidekick, IncrediBoy, but when his assistance and adoration were rejected, something curdled. As a grown-up, Syndrome made it his goal to eliminate superheroes, both directly by taking them out with his deadly Omnidroid robots and conceptually by making it so that everyone was super (thanks to tech he controlled, of course). Now, if only his supervillain costume hadn’t had that cape…
20. Zod (Man of Steel)
With respect to Terence Stamp and his take on the Kryptonian general in 1978’s Superman II, Michael Shannon’s Zod in Man of Steel 35 years later is the superior Zod. Shannon, an actor capable of playing unhinged and bug-eyed when called to, certainly delivers as Zod, a militaristic survivor of Krypton’s destruction who wants to conquer Clark Kent’s adoptive homeworld. Man of Steel was criticized, rightfully, for its choice to have Superman kill at the end of it, but Shannon is so driven and puts so much rage into his performance that you can almost understand it. This is not a supervillain who will be stopped.
19. Sonny Burch (Ant-Man and the Wasp)
Superhero franchises keep raising the stakes. If you save the city in the first movie, you’ll save the world in the sequel and the galaxy in the one after that. Ant-Man and the Wasp was so refreshing, then, because it had villains that were fittingly small-scale. Sonny Burch is a fairly small-scale crook who wants to get his hands on Pym’s Quantum technology to make a buck. That’s it! He’s not trying to conquer the globe or beyond. Sometimes it’s nice to have a villain with modest ambitions, especially if that villain has Walton Goggins’ sweaty, smarmy charisma.
18. Apocalypse (X-Men: The Animated Series)
The ‘90s X-Men cartoon has incredible staying power, to the point where Disney Plus brought it back for a sequel series fittingly titled X-Men ‘97. In that way, the show is kind of like its most powerful supervillain, Apocalypse. Believed to be the first-ever Mutant, Apocalypse was born En Sabah Nur in ancient Egypt, but he terrorized the X-Men throughout time, even trying to turn some of the heroes into his evil “Horsemen.” Seemingly immortal and blessed with near-limitless powers, Apocalypse is the type of threat that pushes the X-Men to the limit.
17. Reverse Flash (The Flash)
The Arrowverse featured a lot of supervillains—that’ll happen when a shared superhero television universe spans 10 series and more than 800 combined episodes. The best of them was unquestionably Reverse Flash, a scientist from the future who went insane after being upstaged by his one-time superhero idol and decided to dedicate his life to being The Flash’s evil opposite. As played by Tom Cavanagh, Reverse Flash was a terrific foil to Barry Allen, taking full advantage of every time-twisty, paradoxical implication of his speedster doppelganger from the future.
16. Joker (Batman)
The villain of the 1989 Batman is just one of the many iterations of the Joker who deserves recognition as one of the top baddies of all time. Still, while some underrated icons in the hall of fame for Batman's arch enemy (looking at you César Romero) deserve the spotlight too, the Joker in Tim Burton's flick takes the cake. Jack Nicholson’s Clown Prince of Crime might not be the best of all time, but it’s certainly the one that all future Jokers would have to measure against. Revealed to be a crook named Jack Napier who was responsible for killing Bruce Wayne’s parents, Nicholson’s Joker is unhinged and menacing, eluding a sense of malice as acidic as the vat he fell into.
15. The Monarch (The Venture Bros.)
Dr. Rusty Venture’s archnemesis, The Mighty Monarch, was perhaps not a very “good” supervillain, but that was kind of the point of The Venture Bros. The Adult Swim series explored the theme of “failure” in its sweeping, lovingly astute parody of all things geeky, and The Monarch’s futile addiction to this one-sided vendetta certainly applied. Still, The Monarch and his partner in crime/life, the husky-voiced Dr. Girlfriend, got plenty of chances to succeed and grow over the course of the show.
14. Kilgrave (Jessica Jones)
The first season of Jessica Jones was the best of the Netflix Marvel TV shows, and a large part of that goes to David Tennant’s menacing, manipulative Kilgrave. An amoral man who gained mind control powers as a result of a medical procedure in childhood, Kilgrave used his abilities to bend anybody he wanted to his will, including Jessica Jones, whose superstrength was irrelevant when Kilgrave could control her with just his voice. A walking, superpowered metaphor for abusive relationships, Kilgrave is one of the most chilling—and all-too-relevant— villains on this list.
13. Lex Luthor (Superman)
It is a credit to the late Gene Hackman’s talents as an actor that the fact that he didn’t shave his head to play the iconically bald villain for 1978’s Superman in no way impacts how effective his Lex Luthor is. This Luthor was campy—his evil plan involved wiping out the West Coast so he could make a killing selling real estate—but Hackman’s subtle menace made you believe he was more than a worthy adversary to the Man of Steel. Kevin Spacey would take over the role in 2006’s Superman Returns, but his Lex lacked some of the restrained silliness that made Hackman such a joy.
12. The Green Goblin (Spider-Man)
If Batman has the best Rogues’ Gallery of any superhero, Spider-Man is swinging close behind in second place. What better villain to star in the first Spidey movie than his greatest foe, Norman Osborn, aka The Green Goblin? And, what better actor to play him than Willem Dafoe? Few other actors could sell the Goblin’s mania and viciousness, and Dafoe does it so completely with his voice and his face, taunting and twisted. Indeed, if there’s one negative thing to say about Sam Raimi’s 2002 film, it’s that it hid Dafoe under an inexpressive mask for most of his villainy. (When he reprised the role in Spider-Man: No Way Home, they wisely ditched the mask pretty quickly.)
11. Mr. Freeze (Batman: The Animated Series)
The comic book Mr. Freeze made his first appearance in a 1959 issue of Batman, but it wasn’t until The Animated Series nearly three decades later that Mr. Freeze became a great villain. Series creators Paul Dini and Bruce Timm reimagined Victor Fries as a tragic figure, a scientist who gained ice powers following a botched experiment meant to save the life of his beloved wife, Nora. When a TV adaptation so thoroughly nails a character that the comic books retcon in this new origin, as DC did with Mr. Freeze, that’s proof of a great take on a baddie.
10. Kingpin (Daredevil)
Wilson Fisk, the hulking New York businessman and crime lord with a… very… deliberate speaking cadence, was one of the elements that made Netflix’s Daredevil series such a success. As played by Vincent D'Onofrio, Fisk is a mass of contradictions. He’s a thug with high-class aspirations. He’s a delegator with more than enough strength to get his hands dirty when he needs to. He tries not to break the law outright when he can bend it to his own ends—or even make it, as seen in the Disney Plus series where he becomes mayor. All this makes him a fascinating character and an appropriate foil to Daredevil (a somewhat contradictory hero himself).
9. Magneto (X-Men)
What makes Magneto such a good villain is how frequently you find yourself frustrated with him. As played by Ian McKellen and Michael Fassbender, depending on which X-Men timeline you're on, Erik Magnus Lehnsherr acts as an ally to his longtime frenemy Professor X almost as often as he’s a villain. The master of magnetism and leader of the Brotherhood of Mutants makes some interesting points: Who do the X-Men want to protect? Those who hate and fear them? But, as compelling as his case might be, Magneto always takes things too far. We want Magneto to be a hero, but his quiet anger and hardened prejudice keep bringing him back to the villain side.
8. Doctor Octopus (Spider-Man 2)
If you are a fan of the best Spider-Man movies, it'll come as no surprise that Doctor Octopus (as so expertly portrayed by Alfred Molina), is reaching for the title of the best superhero villain of all time. A kind scientist whose only real fault was his ambition, Otto Octavius turns villainous when something goes wrong with the high-tech mechanical arms he created to assist with his fusion work. It leads to one of the scariest sequences in any superhero movie (director Sam Raimi really showcased his horror roots), but the story of Doc Ock is ultimately a tragedy. Even as he threatens New York, you hope that Spidey finds a way to save him in addition to saving the day.
7. Thanos (The Marvel Cinematic Universe)
After several movies of teases throughout the Marvel timeline, the pressure was on for Thanos to deliver when he finally took center stage as the MCU’s main villain in Avengers: Infinity War. As played by Josh Brolin, thanks to some top-notch motion-capture, the Mad Titan delivers. More than just the ultimate foe that the entire franchise has been leading up to, one that would take every hero combined to defeat, Thanos is also a remarkably well-formed character. He’s arguably the protagonist of Infinity War, and you can sense his reasoned weariness as he nears completion of his quest to collect all the Infinity Stones and erase half of all life. When a younger, slightly less mature version of Thanos reappears in Endgame, he gets a chance to be a more straightforwardly cocky big bad, but even then he’s much something for the heroes to throw themselves against.
6. Homelander (The Boys)
The main antagonist of Prime Video’s The Boys has Superman’s strength wrapped up in Captain America’s patriotism—and the Joker’s madness. As played by Antony Starr, Homelander is a terrifying, unstoppable force; a “hero” whose tortured upbringing and fragile ego lead him to abuse his powers and privilege at every turn. His ruthlessness, matched only by his need for approval, makes every scene he’s in extremely tense, as it’s clear that Homelander cannot be beaten by any normal means. He’s a bomb constantly threatening to go off, and it’s a thrill to see Hughie and Co. struggle to find other ways to keep him at bay.
5. Loki (The Marvel Cinematic Universe)
Loki may have eventually done enough good to make his placement on this supervillains list debatable, but as the Avengers’ first foe and a constant thorn in his brother Thor’s side, Tom Hiddleston’s take on the God of Mischief is ultimately one of the great baddies. Powerful though prone to using trickery and deception to achieve his ends rather than brute force, Loki’s pain and inferiority lead him to betrayal after betrayal. Yet even as he’s invading New York with an alien army or stabbing his brother in the back (literally) once again, there’s a level of pathos to Loki that makes you feel for him. You want to hug him and you want to repeatedly smash his smug face into the pavement, Hulk-style.
4. Vulture (Spider-Man: Homecoming)
Too often, street-level heroes and villains get overlooked in favor of their more cosmic, outlandish counterparts. This is a mistake, as the scale of a threat has nothing to do with how impactful it is. Case in point: Is there a more menacing scene in all the MCU than when Michael Keaton’s Vulture turns around and coolly switches from “girlfriend’s dad” mode into “supervillain” as he grills a nervous Peter Parker in the back of the car? The chilling normalcy of Spider-Man: Homecoming’s villain, combined with a winning performance from the one-time movie Batman, of all people, makes Adrian Toomes one of Marvel’s best bad guys.
3. The Joker (The Dark Knight)
The Academy Awards don’t typically recognize superhero movies all that often, and yet Heath Ledger won a posthumous Oscar for his take on Batman’s archnemesis. As The Joker in The Dark Knight, Ledger ensures that his twitching, chaotic supervillain always had a calculating malice in his eyes. The biggest lie The Joker tells in The Dark Knight is when he claims not to have a plan. The Joker is all plan, an endlessly adaptable, unpredictable, and highly quotable agent of chaos and destruction. And he knows a really, really good magic trick involving a pencil.
2. Killmonger (Black Panther)
The key to Black Panther is that Killmonger, Michael B. Jordan’s villain in Ryan Coogler’s acclaimed film, is right. His extreme methods may be wrong, but Killmonger’s critique of Wakanda—a nation that sealed itself off from the world for its own protection rather than use its resources to help others in need—is extremely valid. T’Challa does eventually manage to defeat his cousin in a climactic duel, but even then, he takes Killmonger’s righteous anger to heart and opens up the country. One of the most nuanced, relevant, and thought-provoking villains to appear in any film—let alone a mainstream Marvel movie—Killmonger’s a triumph of a character, made effortlessly watchable thanks to Jordan’s slick charisma.
1. The Joker (Batman: The Animated Series)
Despite playing one of the most iconic heroes of all time in Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker, Mark Hamill’s best role will forever be that of The Joker in Batman: The Animated Series and subsequent DC Animated Universe appearances. No other depiction of The Joker has so perfectly calibrated the mixture of zany comedy and unpredictable, malicious threat as Hamill’s cackling clown. Batman: The Animated Series' Joker could crack wise with an irreverent grin or have his eyes narrow coldly, his frown becoming even more upsetting than his trademark grotesque smile. It’s the greatest take on the greatest villain in one of the greatest superhero adaptations of all time.
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