House of R - Our 10 Favorite Villains of the Century (So Far)

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

It feels good to be bad! Mal and Jo share their top 10 villains of the century (so far) and round it out with some honorable mentions. (0:00) Intro (6:19) Rules (24:31) Jo’s no. 10 (29:50) Mal��s no. 10 (37:56) Mal’s no. 9 (42:31) Jo's no. 8 (49:12) Mal’s no. 8 (54:21) Jo's no. 7 (1:04:15) Jo's no. 9 and Mal's no. 7 (1:08:28) Jo's no. 6 (1:16:39) Mal's no. 6 (1:22:14) Jo's no. 5 (1:28:30) Jo's no. 4 (1:34:55) Mal's no. 4 (1:40:22) Mal's no. 3 (1:47:29) Jo's no. 3 and Mal's no. 2 (1:57:31) Mal's no. 5 and Jo's no. 2 (2:07:27) Jo's no. 1 (2:14:53) Mal's no. 1 (2:22:52) Honorable Mentions Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson Producers: Mike Wargon, Kevin Lam, and John Richter Social: Jomi Adeniran Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And welcome to House of Our in person here in Los Angeles. House of Our Ringerverse podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin. Joining me today to rank our favorite villains of the century so far, we have the soft hearts of women. Sir Ellen, bring us the pod. It's Joanna Robinson. Hello, my darling.

Welcome back to the studio. I've missed you. Hello, beautiful Mallory Rubin. How are you? What a joy to stay. like stare into your beautiful face. I agree. You're further away at this table than you sometimes are.

We can barely do our little, but we still can. Okay, we still can. That's all that matters. It's the long-awaited, hotly anticipated, not quite as anticipated as the long-awaited fall of fame, but the long-awaited, hotly anticipated continuation of our best-of-the-century so-far series. We did our best-of-the-century speeches, celebration this summer. We had a blast.

And we knew we wanted to do a few more of these before the year ends. We're still probably going to do another topic or two, but that's open. Bad Babies. Keep these suggestions coming. You guys have had some great suggestions. You sent some great ones. Keep them coming if you want more best of the century, parentheses so far, celebration pods from us. I feel like we have a moral responsibility to ourselves and the bad babies at a minimum to do something around shipping or sex or romance or.

Or longing, yearning. Who's to say that's the best of the century so far? Yearning tendrils. Who's to say that's not what the villains list actually is? It might be. It might be. Programming reminders before we get to our list. The Middive Boys, pew, pew, pew.

Gen V finale week. So the guys will have the finale pod on GenV season two coming the middle of this week. And then we, at the end of the week, talk about anticipated. I know. And we get to do this together. in person. My God, Buffy Season 2. Correct. Tell everybody how we're breaking it down. We are dividing Season 2 into two parts, right? So we're not trying to tackle 20 plus episodes in one podcast episode. And for reasons that allude me, we're not doing 22 podcasts on

Season 2. Listen, Dare to Dream that that's what we do for Season 3. We're splitting it. Yes. We're splitting it at, I believe it's episode 14, in a sense, a huge Season 2 episode. So it's not quite half the season, but we wanted a lot of space to talk about that tumultuous moment inside of this season and then the back half of the season. So we will one through 14 and then 15 through the finale is the two part Buffy Season 2 plan. You guys have said so many good Buffy emails to Hobbits and Dragons at gmail.com. And also, I keep hearing from people who are watching Buffy for the first time along with you. And that is just like thrilling me to my core. It's making me so happy. I have ordered my first bit of Buffy merch. You're telling me this live in person.

I was hoping I would have, I still hope I have it to wear tomorrow. If not, I'll definitely have it for the second season two pod. It is, unsurprisingly, Rupert Giles t-shirt. Okay, I can't wait to see it. You know that that style of shirt where it's like all the faces? Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those. Every single picture, he just is wearing Tweet and looking hot. I really hope it arrives on time. I told Adam, I was like, I need you to be on, like, package watch. Wow. Something is coming that is a top priority needs to be immediately unpacked, washed, air-dried,

so that I can wear it this week. By the way, you know, I wore my overalls. This is not the podcast we're doing today, and yet here we are. Excited to be together talking. And truly is. I wore, obviously, overalls for the season one pod. And then I was like, is it weird to wear the overalls again for season two? And then I wore them to the office last week.

I don't know. I don't know what happened. I lost where I was on my outfit tracking, which basically... Does that means you can't wear them this week? I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think so. She says wearing nothing but Carhart T-shirts every single day. We'll see. The overalls are so integral to the end of Buffy Season 2, though. I know. I have a tracker going right now of all the different colors that Willow has won on the overall front. Buffy wears overalls. Okay, we're going to talk about... Buffy wears overalls? Let's talk about villains. Let's do it. How can everybody follow? You already said the inbox is open. Yeah.

Hobbit and Dragons. Gmail.com. Correct. Like, follow, subscribe. You know the drill. You can watch full video episodes of House of R on Spotify. Follow the YouTube channel, the Ring ofverse YouTube channel. Follow the Ringreverse on the social media platform of your choosing.

What do you want to say about our spoiler warning today? It's a little bit of a blanket. We're just going to talk about all the stories in our universe ever. Over the last 25 years. I would say, barring Buffy. which may or may not appear on my list today, but if it did, I would be very careful around what I say around you about Buffy, right?

Because we're actively watching that. But barring that, anything that is like, you know, like half a decade old or whatever, like... In order to explain why a villain made our list, we probably have to talk about their role on a given story of a fictional universe. There's one selection on my list that I have some real spoiler terror on

and we'll be a little bit careful about. Because it's like a twist or a turn, and you don't want to reveal that this person's a villain? Okay. But, well, yes. But other than that, I'm kind of like, the bad babies have seen Game of Thrones. You know, I feel like we're probably okay on that front.

Nothing I picked here is like an obscure tiny little property you've never heard of. Have you heard of the MCU? I have. Are you familiar with Star Wars? Yeah. Let's get to our rules. Okay. Let's do some table setting for how we are going to approach our 10,

favorite villains of the century so far. What do we mean by villains? What do we mean by 10? What do we mean by favorite? What do we mean by century so far? Okay, as always, just a little like process refresher. The bad babies will be familiar. We're counting down. We're counting down from 10 to one. Our lists are surprises. I don't know what's on your list. You technically don't know what's on my list, but as usual probably do. We did like some minor, like, only, only one property. Vague pregame chatter about trying to divide on one property. One property. That was it. And Arjuna just let us know that we do have more overlap than I think I was suspecting. Here's my formal guess. And I think this would have been my guess even before Arjuna was like,

you guys have some overlap. I think we're going to have four. Okay. Well, I'm going to set the over under at three. Okay. Three sounds good. But I'm going to take the over. Are you taking the under? What does it mean when you just take the, the... I guess I should say three and a half. Then you could take under and land a three. Eligibility. What's eligible? What time frame are we working inside of January 1st, 2000 through this very day? So something could happen the rest of the year.

This was on my mind actually with Stranger Things. Yeah, I'll just say we're going to do honorable mentions at the end. I've got Vecna and Papa in my honorable mentions. Did not make my top 10. Could whatever happens in season 5 propel Vecna into the top 10? And I think it's possible. Well, what I think is really interesting about, as I was thinking of, similar to the speeches, I was like, let's think of the big properties that I want to make sure that I hit.

Yeah. And what I found fascinating is like sometimes even with those big properties, I was like, there isn't like a, it isn't because of the villain that this show or this movie means so much to me. And so just because the show or the film meant so much to me did not mean that that villain made my list. Absolutely. So, absolutely. In that time frame, people might be wondering, okay, well, what if the villain existed before and then continued into that century, or we got other versions of that villain previously? So we talked about this. This was one of the, like, how are we framing this exercise that we actually did discuss for a while? Here's where we landed.

You can pick a version of a villain from this span of time if we have seen other versions of that villain before. You just need to kind of incorporate into your argument why this one maybe rose above or set out. We're calling this like mostly because I think we did not pick this character and don't want to spoil the ones we did. If you have any who fall into this bucket, I do ultimately. The Lex Luthor rules. Yes. So like there are versions of Lex before this period in time. With respect to Nick Holt, we did not pick Nick Holt.

But you could have. Lex Luthor. But yeah, we could have picked a specific Lex Luthor and then had to explain why that Lex made our list. versus like Gene Hackman or exist in comic books or whatever it is. And also like this is a little bit of, this is where the nuance comes into the exercise because obviously many of the people watching or listening to this pod might say like, well, guys, like Darth Vader's been around this century. How can you have Darth Vader on your list of like the most essential, iconic, important, memorable,

meaningful, best, favorite, whatever villains? I would posit that you could select certain Vader runs if you wanted to from this century, but you'd have a hard time saying that they meant more to you probably than the Vader, who came before. I agree. So we'll kind of go through that as we-VILAR. It's not on my list. Vader is not on my list either, though my Star Wars alt's list is massive.

Gigantic. I've been second only to the Marvel alt's list, which was an actual exercise in anguish. The Marvel selection was awful. And especially when you think there's like just all the MCU stuff, but then you've got Sony Marvel. You've got Netflix Marvel. Sony Marvel was very much on my mind. Dude, it was on my mind. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay. Sorry, I was thinking like Dr. Michael Morbius, but you were thinking Spider-Man. I'm sure. I was thinking like DACA. But like, I am always thinking about morbid time, always. So you're forgiven. You're forgiven. Properties.

Television and film only. Only. If it's flavored by, You know, or like the original book or something like that, I think that's fine. Yes. Could go the other way, though. Maybe there's a character who exists on the printed page, whether it's in a comic or a book, maybe in a video game, whatever the case may be. And you're like, this is a favorite of mine. The film or TV version doesn't quite measure up. Maybe the character is not on the list because of that.

So we are ranking today film and TV renderings of giving villains. We should do something book-centric before the years over. years over. Should we? But I think that we both want to and know we should and frankly know we must, but are like, God, it's been hard enough to do these. How will we contain ourselves? How will we control ourselves? I feel like we should pick our favorite passages. Yeah, our favorite book passages and then just read them to each other to close out the air. I mean, that would be great. And between every single passage, one or both of us can say, I'm having an actual panic attack about what I might left off this list. What a great bond that'll be.

I can't wait. Genuinely can't wait. The villains in question today must be from genre tales that would make sense in our universe. Could we have covered it on House of R or Ringervorverse if we had been potting when a given thing ran? This is not going to be a podcast today where we pick Gus or Marlowe, right? We're picking... I don't have anything that sort of I need to defend. Do you know what I mean?

I feel like... speeches I did last time, but I don't for this. Emphasis on favorites. This is a big one. You always freak out, worried that people are going to be like, oh, but actually left this off the list or your answers aren't perfect. Terrible. Terrible.

These are our lists. Our list. The hardest thing, though, is that, fuck, you make your own list. And do it in the comments. Boost the engagement. I mean, we love you, make your own list, and we would love to see your list in the comments. I, this is a. weird one where in terms of my personal anxiety and psychosis when it comes to preparing for our

podcast, it's actually favorites I feel actually gives us a lot of cover with how the list will be received by our adoring public. It's really more the personal turmoil like, oh, well, if it's my favorite, how can I possibly leave off thing X that I love so dearly? Weirdly, I think best is almost cleaner. I thought speeches was hard. This is way harder. I mean, we did an entire podcast just about Marvel villains. I know, it was like four hours. That was a great one. I really loved that. This was, this was very hard. I will say that six through one on my list, I was like, these characters are making it. It's just a question of how I order them. 10,987, I changed my mind. a lot.

And my honorable mentions, which we'll do in very rapid-fire fashion so that it is not, in fact, a seven-hour podcast. It's a chunky field. It's a girthy list. It's a girthy field. Before we dive into revealing our orders, let me ask you a philosophical,

dare I say, existential question. What makes a villain a villain? Is this your version of like, one man's freedom fighter is another man's terrorist? I think there will be a lot of variance in the list. So perhaps some trends and patterns emerged. I'm interested if you think you can reveal any trends that emerged from your list without tipping all of your selections.

But here are some of the things that were on my mind when I was putting this together. What makes a villain memorable, right? When we look back on these 25 years, who stands out? And why, specifically, why do characters become indelible? A word, I will surely say, like 75 times today. What makes it indelible or iconic? Which one is going to come up more often? You know what?

I think it's, Vegas took that one off the board with me a long time ago. All right. It's always iconic no matter what, but I think indelible will be in the hunt today. Okay. And that's something. So what makes a villain iconic, indelible, memorable? What makes a villain notable in a given span of time? And how much did that matter to you when you were making your list?

Like how much did you find yourself saying, well, I'm actually, I'm going to push this character ahead because they feel very emblematic of or reflective of where we, are in as a viewing public, as a general public in the last 25 years. How top of mind was that for you. What makes a repeat villain, who we've seen other versions of before, feel newly notable, feel fresh. Can somebody, this is something we talk about a lot, who eventually becomes a hero, still rate as a villain? Where are you on all of that and just in general how you approach this exercise and what themes did you find yourself noting and tracking as your list took shape? Thank you so much for these questions. I will take them one by one.

You're the best. What makes it feel memorable? I think something that I was thinking about when I was thinking about this question that you put in the document for us to think about. I love this preamble that you put together here because it addresses all the things that I was going through as I was trying to make my selection. There's like this idea of like iconography, a quotability, something like that. You know, like all of that is interesting to me. But what it came down to was sort of the we talk a lot about passions on this podcast,

the depth of emotion that this particular person stirs up in me. And whether that emotion is hatred or fear or any, you know, it needs to be a complex character that hopefully

stirs multiple feelings inside of one. And is there sympathy for this person? You know, that's another question you have on the list. Yes. I think there's a version of this list I could make where they're all characters on an arc from villainy to hero like heroics and I I definitely have some of that on here same but I don't think it should be the only way in which we talk about villain but it is a very compelling archetype for both of us we love these these characters who are learning and growing but if they're doing some of their learning and growing in the last 25 years they get to be on the list is sort of what we decided right in terms of making a villain notable in a given period of time I'm thinking about the last 25 years, breaking it down into like sort of, I always wind up doing it by presidential eras.

But that's kind of arbitrary. But I do think of like, you know, post-9-11 Bush era. I think of the Obama years. I think of COVID and Trump one. And then, you know, we're in Trump two. That's just like an arbitrary way in which I think of like what I was feeling as an American at that time. And so what is reflective of what was going on for us as a society at the time, which I think is interesting as we're celebrating. 25 years. This, even more than speeches, I felt like villains thinking about how they reflect the

times that we were living in. What were the villains that were, what was the nature of evil that was most on our mind at that time? And then not only that, but as we sit here in 2025, what feels like maybe wasn't even the most resonant then, but is the most resonant now? That were like, wow, that was really putting a finger on something that we are currently definitely grappling with. Yes. As a world, as a country, etc. I remember. I, really did try to avoid recency bias in my list. Yeah. I only have one example, I think this is true, only one example of like a currently ongoing

show. Interesting. Only because. I didn't even think about that. That character's not done yet. You know what I mean? And so in order to put them on the list of with only 10 and 25 years, it felt like, well, what if that character takes a massive notes dive?

And I'm like, I don't want to. Yeah. You know, any means. Even though so far, so far it covers a lot, so it doesn't really matter, but that's where I am. Right. What makes a repeat villain newly notable? Yeah. I mean, this idea of just completely redefining something or plumbing new depths of an archetype that we hadn't seen before,

rearranging just how we think about something, or now when we think about that character, we think about this interpretation of that character first and then all others after that. Yeah. And I think that's, I mean, did any themes, the thing about the themes is that I kind of tried to have a spread. Yeah, different archetypes. That there are, you know. Did you force yourself to adhere to that? Like, I need to have 10 different villain archetypes reflected here.

No, not all different, but just sort of like, some variance. That's enough of that. You know what I mean? Sort of thing. Similar for me, I, as you already kind of hinted at, and then unsurprisingly to anyone who has consumed our podcast for, I'm like my initial, I'm just going off the dome,

sketching out what pops into mine. I'm like, this is just a lot of like dudes on redemption arts. And I still have a healthy chunk of that here. But I had to like, I had to be a conscious, deliberate decision to not have that be my entire list. And then like some buckets and pockets of themes emerge, right? I have some different types that I didn't feel like I had to just do only one. There are some through lines for sure. Dudes on Redemption Art.

Yeah, it's here. And also attractive men with British accents who liked a monologue. Also here. It's a real. We have a tight. Prouded field. We have a tight. It's crowded field.

I'm excited to see what the Buffy pick is, of course, because my exposure to Buffy so far is not in this century yet. I know. I've only seen the 90s first two seasons so far. So whatever is coming and I feel sure there will be something. But I actually have a guess, though I don't know. Okay. I was very, I was very preoccupied with that notion of like, what can I share with Mallory about this? It's why I actually felt bad about that.

I'm like, should I offer to leave the room? It's kind of why my Buffy pick is where it is. It's not as high as maybe it would be if I could talk about it and sort of like a fully flush of. So that you can talk about your Buffy pick? No. I think I'm threading the needle. Okay.

All right. I co-assigned everything you said. I think this is a really interesting way to look back at the stories that we have consumed and see what's... I like that note about what stands out in new. Yeah. Or with more, like, it feels like it stands out maybe even more like in high death than it did in real time. Yeah. In retrospect, what has lingered longest?

And also I think in terms of more so than I think if we had chosen heroes, this idea of like what what villains reflect about what we were going through at the time. Yes. I think it's really interesting. I agree. I think the other kind of like blanket note, because I'm sure on a pick-by-pick level, we'll talk about performance. But this is not just a list of the 10 best performances. Now, I think a great performance, obviously, is part of elevating a character in our esteem. And that character's ability to really work its way into our hearts and just stay there to root in the strength of the performance, the strength of the writing.

Sometimes, but not always, the strength of the property. All of those things are going to play a role in how memorable and personal and personal. permanent something feels. But if you're talking just performances, like, I think the number one is different. Though I honestly would make a case for my number one on that front too, but I think some of the picks I have a little lower would move off, et cetera. I did a last minute switch from my one and two. You flipped them? I did. And my two is performance and my one is something else. Interesting. Yeah. I feel the most sure that we have. I think we have, of the, of the, overlap. I think we have someone in the top two that's the same. I would agree. That's the one,

that's the one that I feel certain we have the same one. So just a question of if it's two or one. So now I have an idea based on what you just said. Okay. Fair. Should we get to it? Any other kind of big picture thoughts? I'm really excited about this. Me too. I also just, we've already danced around a bit. I will say, it's just going to keep coming up this idea of like, is this an anti-hero or is this a villain? Or is this an antagonist? versus what a villain is. And I think that's amorphous and complex, you know what I mean? I have a character on my list that I suspect you might as well, who is just kind of like an outright hero at this point.

And that's part of why that character is interesting to me. And in some ways, just makes the villain's stint stand out and I think even starker relief. Okay, now I think I got your Thrones big round. That's not about my Throne Spick. Oh, okay. I do wonder if you thought I met someone else about Thrones, though. I think I did. But that was not about my throne pick.

Okay. Enough of this coy preamble. Let's get to it. Let's get to our top 10. Favorite. Favorite. Favorite. Favorite.

Our list. Whatever fuck any of that means of the century so far. Because we do not know our respective lists, we're going to start by revealing the pick. And then if the other person has it higher on the list, we will wait to talk about the character until we get there. We've got a few clips to sprinkle in today. It's going to be a party. Joanna, start us off with your number 10. Because we're trying to navigate this clip thing,

I'm just going to say what the property is. And then if you don't have a villain from this property, then I can just go ahead and play my clip, right? Do you have? This is like a game of GoFish. Do you have a villain from Doctor Who? I don't. Okay.

Roll my clip. And I'll help you. That's the promise. So, what do you think? Do we have a deal? Oh, hello. That was a clip from my favorite episode of Doctor Who, Midnight from the year 2008. This is great.

This is the villain is the quote, midnight entity, played by Leslie Sharp in the guys of a woman called Sky Sylvestery. This is far from, here at number 10, I feel like I have a lot of leeway. for like capital F favorite, right? And so this is far from the most iconic, you know, historically most iconic Doctor Who villains are like the Cybermen, the Daleks, in the New Who era, the Weeping Angels, or the Silence, or eternally the master. There's like so many.

I almost picked the master. There's so many sort of like bigger villains. The Midnight Entity, up until a recent episode actually, had only one episode to make. this much of an impression on me personally. And it is the reason why this episode is my favorite episode of Doctor Who. You could make a compelling argument inside of this episode, Midnight, where a group of tourists, including the doctor, are on a pleasure cruise around a planet called Midnight.

And an entity comes and takes possession of one of the passengers. And then what happens is this exploration of paranoia, groupthink, mob mentality, all this sort of stuff like that, where we're not sure who to trust. The doctor gets sort of like paralyzed and hamstrung by this entity and this woman, Sky, the Midnight entity, sort of takes control of the group. And one thing I want to say about Leslie Sharp's performance here, she's an incredible performer. I've seen her in a number of things. She has deeply unusual features and the way that she is lit inside of this episode.

And at a certain point in the episode, another character quotes from the Christina Rosetti poem goblin market. And so there's just this like ghoulish, goblinish. It was not to say she looks that way, but it's just the way in which her features are lit that makes her this just like really scary character. And then also, I love how it's wrapped up inside of this idea. You think about these villains, I was sort of doing a little bit of down the rabbit hole thinking about how our depictions of villains have changed historically. And sort of like once upon a time, the villain was the sort of rejected other, right? They were different.

They were, you know, just othered in some way. And something about Sky that puts a target on her back inside of the group is that she is just like quiet, reading her book, sort of different from everyone else on the trip. And then she does wind up being sort of the villain just because she's possessed by this other entity. But just this idea of like otherness, this classical conception of a villain inside. of this. And then this is, at the end of the day, at the end of the episode, a villain so profoundly disturbing to the doctor that unlike other episodes where the doctor is able to sort of like quip and skip and be weird and eccentric at the end, his companion at the time,

Donna tries to make a joke out of it and he goes, no, don't do that. It's so profoundly disturbing to him that he is just like rocked. So yeah, I love midnight. I'm not the only one. Season 4 episode 10, this is, I think, Arjuna, our producer Arjuna's favorite episode of Doctor Who. It's Rob Mahoney's favorite episode of Doctor Who. So it's not like, what a hipster pick to love midnight, but it isn't unusual. Nothing wrong with a hipster pick. It isn't unusual, I think, villain pick, but I will defend it forever. I love this story.

And in terms of, like, serialized sci-fi storytelling it is best. Like, this is just such a good little pocket story to come back to for Doctor Who. I absolutely love this pick. This is one of my predictions for the themes of our lists is that I did not have a Doctor Who picked, but that mine would be more the master. And that yours would be Sky for Midnight. And I love that. That blue. To the point about the impact on the doctor, we've mentioned this in many other pods over the years when talking about Captain America, when talking about Bucky Barnes, we're talking about the MCU.

But, like, you know, I always love that Winter Soldier Rousseau quote about, I'm paraphrasing, but part of what makes an effective villain is the impact that they have on your hero. Now, obviously, that is a different thing because it is the depth of history that those characters share. But still, like, villains aren't, they don't exist in vacuums. You can't be a villain in a vacuum, right? It's about the impact that you have on other forces and figures around you. So I really, I really love that. What a great start.

Thank you. Fantastic stuff. For my number 10, I will ask you the same question you asked me. I'll ask you about a property, a franchise. Do you have any characters on your top 10 from the wider alien? I do not. Franchise. Great.

And I will reveal my number 10. My number 10 is David from Prometheus and Alien Covenant. Weirdly the first thing I wrote down when we started doing this possibly because we were, in the midst of covering alien earth, and I had just rewatched Prometheus and Covenant, and David was very top of mind. I went through some versions of the list where David moved off and then back on,

but the 10th lot is always a fun one. Yeah, I'm doing more of my personal faves and 9 and 8. Yeah, actually, but 10, I felt I also had some room to play. So I would say, so Michael Fastbender, as David, it's an incredible performance. This is one where the performance is part of the reason that the character is so memorable. I think that even though the Fast Bender performance in David as a figure get a lot of love and acclaim,

it's still way underrated in its standing in the zeitgeist because those movies, relatively speaking, in the wider swath of the franchise, are just not as widely loved. We have a lot of affection for Prometheus. I think that what happens with David and Walter in Covenant is like mesmerizing. Yeah. Just riveting. But I don't think that David comes up as often as he would if these movies were like more widely adored. This was one in terms of like bucket and type of character where I'll just spoil.

You probably know. But I won't say the specific character that you know. I do have another my AI synthetic pick. coming. Oh, that's a good one. On my list. I have another one coming, certainly, and that was one of the, like, this has to be in my top. Would you say, is it interesting that those actors are married? I'm not going to comment, no. Some honorable mention stuff there. Got it. This was one where I was like, is this too similar? But I just felt like I didn't want to leave David off at the end of the day. I also think that, like, thinking about the years, the span of time we're covering, I like the idea of thinking of David as like a great 21st century, who is like building on and continuing a tradition, not only a classic idea, like what role does

artificial intelligence and the creation of man who then overthrows man or seeks to destroy man play in our fictional consumption, but specifically inside of the alien properties, like, we have ash, we have bishop, we've had Waylon Yutani in our lives for years. And then David comes in and you're like, this actually feels new. It actually feels new and like a continuation of a text that was already a part of my life and that I already cared about. So I think it's really meaningful for that. David, like, even by the standards of a good villain,

I think David really checks like every classic conflict classification box. You know, if you sub-man for synth, you've got like the man versus nature. You've got the man versus man. The man versus self. Some of that quite literalized over those two films. I think that everything about David's, David's, his creator, shot at Guy Pearce now and always, relationship to creating life and how

David initially is thinking about that through somebody else's eyes and mind. And then the evolution. Like David is eager to understand humanity, but then ultimately disillusioned is probably mild, like a very disappointed, sure he can do better. Why help what you can ultimately replace and destroy. Right? Destroy and replace. And I think that the progression across the movies

from, you know, our time in Prometheus with David is like this more opaque, conflicted, we have like a worry mounting in our hearts, but then in Covenant,

we're just in like outright foe, outright antagonist territory. And I like the way we build from this kind of like discomforting gentleness into something much more overtly sinister.

and the way that his desire to create just warps and twists and befowls whatever version of a soul or a heart or a moral compass he has. And the way that we go from like, I'll speak for my own experience watching David, like pitying him, right?

Feeling that empathy, this is a character with free will who is trapped as like somebody else's surrogate. and like a character who someone else, Wayland, is going to put all of his feelings and goals and ambitions inside of. And then you watch and you feel as that morphs into just overt fear. And we see what David's desire unleashes the betrayal,

the annihilation of the engineers, the black goo experiments. Oh my God, the Zina Morse, here they are. David versus Walter, the duplicity at the end. I just think that his desire to be a part of something and understand it and the way that that gives way to, okay, well, why try to improve what I could just replace is absolutely haunting. And it's a great performance. And there's some great hair that I'd love to hear your thoughts on. I have a lot of thoughts about blonde hair and how it's, like, it's interesting to me.

How many of your villains are blonde? Maybe half of them. I think what's interesting to me is that something that came up a lot in my development of this list, was this idea of not to get too like tropes coursey about it, but sort of... Of the tropes course. Milton's Paradise Lawson, his creation of Lucifer. Yes. And how his idea of who the devil is sort of forever changed her idea of like what a villain

could be like, right? That Dante makes the devil this like big monstrous, like whatever. And Milton's like, what if he's hot and charming and seductive and all those other stuff like that? So when I think of like, when I envision a Lucifer Morningstar, platinum blonde David is certainly like on the list of who I would think of inside of that. So I've got another platinum blonde devil coming. Got a couple.

Got a couple. Number nine. Speaking of platinum blondes, do you have anything on your list from the television series The Boys? I do. Okay. Not too much higher. I have the character and question checking in at number seven. Great.

We will come back then. our first overlap. How exciting. Yeah, interesting, because that was one where I was like, probably, but maybe not. That's my one exception to the ongoing series. And then when you said at the beginning of the ongoing, I was like, oh, maybe not. Interesting. Okay. Great. My nine, I do not think you have. This is really one of my personal faves, breaking out a personal fave here. And this is my absolutely just terrified of ruining the experience for people of watching this show. I've said this multiple times on podcasts this year.

Do you have anything from the television program, dark? Oh my gosh. I do not have anything from the television series Dark. Okay. Even though we said we're going to talk about why the villain's the villain

we're going to spoil things. You're kind of forewarned and just an inherent nature of the exercise. I would say that one of the great pleasures in life is watching Dark for the first time. If you don't want to hear this, skip ahead. Please do.

We'll have chapter titles in there. We're so... We're so protective of the Dark Excerance. I know. Because I think that genuinely compared to a lot of the properties on our list, it's just underseen compared to these other things. So I am going to say some stuff about dark in order to explain the pick.

I will try to be a little more general than we will be for some of the other picks. But if you want to skip it entirely, just fast forward. I'll make this one zippy. Yeah, go watch dark and then come back. Or just like hit fast forward four times. Let's tell the rest of the pod and then go watch dark.

Okay. You've been warned. My pick is Adam from dark. My wrinkly menacing fave. The end is the beginning, and the beginning is the end is probably the thing that my Adam and I say to each other the most in our house. I don't know why, but we quote that to each other all the time.

So Dark, this is the German language Netflix series, ran three seasons from 17 to 20. It's fantastic. If you like time travel, mystery, intrigue, an examination of life in a community, in a town, what happens inside of family units, all of it. Check it out. It's fantastic. This is like one of the great cork board theory shows in recent memory. There's a great, I don't have the URL in front of me. There's a great website where like you can look at the connections as you're watching. You can like evolve it based on where you are in the show so it doesn't spoil it for you. It's so so grateful to the fan community for that.

One of my pals and all-time favorite colleagues, Jason Gallagher, I think he would say that that's the most important website on the internet. It's very good. Talk about it all the time. Okay. Why Adam? This is like the era of multiversal storytelling. Right?

And so I felt like I had to have a, I really wanted to have a villain who plays a key role in a time travel tale and I've spawned a new dimension tale. And I think that there's something really impactful about Adam as a character who shows us not the lust that that can spark in you, but the absolute paralyzing peril that it can insight. This is a character who is driven mad by the knot, by the time loops and what they do to people, by the idea of the God particle.

And he's motivated ultimately not to open new windows, open new doors, open new portals, but to close them all for everyone, no matter the cost, right? And the extremity of that position, even inside of my really probably needless preamble on spoiler terror, I'm going to now issue one inside of that. Just hit fast forward once or twice if you don't want to hear this part in particular. The reveal about who he actually is. And just I think it exponentially enriches the story and its ability to explore those ideas. Like, what does time travel do to you and how does it change you? Because we learn that that character is another character who we have spent a lot of time with. And it is just so delicious and so rich.

And it's the kind of thing that, like, it does work its way into your head and makes you think about human nature, nature versus nurture, right? What is kind of true? This is something we talk about a lot of multiversal storytelling. Like, what can you learn from other versions of yourself? That'll come up with another one of my picks today. But, like, what is fixed about who you are and what is determined in a way that can be seismic based on the things that have happened to you or that you perhaps have had a hand in allowing to happen to other people?

So I think it's just a great character. And it's a fascinating idea to play with inside of a slice of genre storytelling that I really love that we've gotten a lot of to the point where there's like, I think, a lot of fatigue. And this is something that I think just like rises above. So Adam from Dark, my number nine. Love that pick. That idea of, you know, a particular twist of like a multiverse or a time travel. There are unique things you can do with those kind of stories, which we like to talk about all

the time. But also that idea of devastating you, the viewer, with what has happened to someone that you were emotionally invested in is one thing. there's this other idea of, to go back to that, you know, the Lucifer example, or this idea of sympathy for the devil. You know, a trick that Milton plays in Paradise Lost is puts you sort of in the devil's POV for the, so you get sort of drawn into this. So this idea of like, oh, the devil has a point or I'm emotionally invest in this person. So this is forcing me to confront, you know, how I have come to care for this person who could do this monstrous thing or all these other things. is some of the greatest use of villainy, I think, inside of these stories.

And then what if they have to confront that about themselves? Love it. Delicious. You're number eight, my darling. My number eight. Do you have anything from the animated Star Wars world? I do at number eight. But this is great because I feel sure I know of yours, as you probably know who mine,

is they're different characters. But we both have animated Star Wars villains. Do I know your sins? Mine's Throne. Is yours mall? Yep. All right. We're all the good.

With your help, the Jedi can stop Sidious before it's too late. Too late. For what the Republic to fall? It already has, and you just can't see it. There is no justice, no law, no order, except for the one that will replace it. Hot. Shout out my husband. Animated Darth Mall.

You love this guy. I love this guy. He's one of my honorable mentions. I'm thrilled you. I'm thrilled you have this picture. Voiced by the great Sam Whitwer. And again, when I came down to like British men who loved a monologue, like I had to narrow it down. But Maul did make the cut here towards the bottom of my list when I'm here with capital F favorites.

So British seductive pension for a monologue. Okay. We talked about at the top of this podcast, we talked about this idea of taking a character who had existed before and doing something new. with them. Yes. And there's a version of that, which might show up higher on our list, where it's like, this character was already venerated and this person pulled the trick of just. Yes.

Checking for me at number five. Reclaiming, you know, that sort of thing. This is a character everyone thought kind of looked cool. Yeah. And that was pretty like, meh. No one gave a shit about Maul other than like he looks really cool. he's got a really cool lightsaber, and that was almost like a, a pain point of phantom menace. Particularly for people like my age or whatever. If you were younger and you watch Phantom Menace and you just thought Darth Mall ruled, then that's great.

But for people who were like adults when they came, or at least older teenagers when they came in to see Phantom Menace and you're just like, we saw the character in the trailers and we thought that character was going to be the best Star Wars character ever. And then he's like just kind of a henchman who has to be dubbed over because he doesn't really talk that much. and then, like, you know, gets cut in half and dies. Or did he? Or did he? Because he didn't. And they brought him back. Got cut in half and then went to live as a mechanical spider and a trash planet.

You know, a story for the ages. I agree. It was George Lucas's, Dave Floney says it was George Lucas's idea to bring him all back. Perhaps because George Lucas himself was like, we didn't do enough with that character. Conflicted, brooding, alienating, self-mythologizing, all this sort of stuff. like that. And this idea, this Miltonian Lucifer idea of better to rain in hell than serve in heaven, this idea of just sort of like cast out as a second

hand, so close to the ultimate power in the universe, cast out. And then what sort of petty power can I garner for myself outside of that? The idea of manipulating the freedom fighters around him in order to sort of. And then in this clip we used here, which is from 2020, and this is one of my more recent entries,

you know, and thinking of like the last 25 years, 2020 is actually like one of my more recent ones. This idea of, and I, you know, I don't want to spend too much time on Kylo Ren if in case you picked him. But like, Kylo Ren, I considered honestly. I considered, I did not pick Kylo. He's an honorable mention. I really considered Kylo Ren, Rise of Skywarker is a tough place for Kylo Ren to land in terms of like his legacy. But this idea that is sort of imitated right here of like, join me together. We can do this.

Yeah. Is an all-time great villain move. And I just think what is done with Maul to, I do love this guy. I love this guy. It's great. And I didn't give a shit about live action mall. And the way in which Mall has this relationship here with Asoka, the way he shows up elsewhere. Yeah.

Searching for – yeah, searching for an apprentice. The Obi-Wan – the Canobi Mall duel, you know, all of this stuff. And there isn't – there is something so compelling about him, but he's not on a redemption arc, right? Like his duel with Canobi is – you're not on Mall side in the final. duel of his life. So this is not a character headed towards altruism. But this is a character who is nonetheless, like, charismatic and compelling and mesmerizing and complex and the devil you need it sometimes. And then, you know, the person who is trying to call out to your devils inside of you and sort of grow that inside of you. I just, you know, the manipulative teacher, like all of this

sort of stuff, which is classic Star Wars. I just really love. So, fantastic book. I'm thrilled that he's here. The stuff with Mall across Clone Wars and Rebels both is really excellent. And I like what you're what you're hammering about like it's not actually a redemption arc. He's really in like a enemy of my enemy era. And you know, this idea of revenge. And that can still lead to moments of shared clarity or insight. He obviously imparts to Osuka, to Ezra, et cetera. Uh, a number of meaningful pieces of information over the course of those tales. But yeah, like, Mall is, they did a great job with the, I think, the macro and the micro with mall.

Like, everything with his brother, everything with his personal lamentations about being, like, the literalizing of it with the trash heap, but cast aside by his former master, never thought of, and then suddenly just when discovered again, like an inconvenience who must to be removed from the delicate balance of Sith math. You know, he's a character who is defined by feeling wronged, which is potent text, certainly. That's a lot of these people are just like. Yeah, the way that he seeks to, like you said, like weaponize out and other people.

I really like the Esther stuff in particular with Maltz. It's great. Fantastic pick. This is also my slot for animated Star Wars. This is where I have Grand Admiral Thron. and I want to be clear that this is specifically an animated Star Wars Rebels pick. This is not about live action Theron and Asoka. It pains me to say, I wish it were.

Shotsfire, Lars Mikkelson. Well, this is also a Lars classic here. I still have a lot of hope for what they can do with Theron and live action. I think it's important ultimately that they nail. Theron in live action. Hope springs eternal for you. I genuinely do. I'm impressed.

I'm not given up yet. Okay. This is specific to rebels. Obviously, Thrawn is a character who predates this century. The Zon or the Empire texts are iconic, cherished and adored beloved. But Thrawn's restoration in the new canon, both in Star Wars Rebels and in the new Zon novels, just, I think, a real feat and a highlight of recent,

recent being a pretty decent chunk of time at this point, recent Star Wars storytelling. I love Thrawn because, as we have talked about many times, especially in the lead up to covering Asoka and then covering Asoka, he's a different archetype inside of Star Wars. Part of the reason that Kylo didn't make my list eventually, ultimately was because I did feel like I had that archetype covered elsewhere. Very fair.

Thrawn brings a different flavor to my ranking. I love Kylo, but I don't love Kylo because of his villainy. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. It's that other pull on him that is most compelling about him. Worst Awakens, Kylo, just unbelievable and obviously. Last Jedi, Kylo God Tier. Just fantastic stuff.

So I do have Kylo as an honorable mention, for sure. Thrawn, not Power Mad. not a SIP, not a forced user. He is a practical, tactical genius. He maneuvers through study. I think that was a little bit of Hamilton. He maneuvers through study, through care, observation, right? He genuinely seeks not just to best his foe, but to understand them. He respects them. And that is often why he's He is either ahead of them or we as viewers feel certain that he will be again. His strength is his mind and his patience and his diligence, and I find that inspiring. Obviously, it's not just about like brute force and might. You know, there's something really just distinct about it.

Like we've talked about this a lot, but he loves art, right? He's able to track the specter through Sabine's graffiti or like the decal on a helmet that Ezra was wearing. And he is, you know, as a chis in the empire, he is an outsider. He is apart from this thing that he has found himself inside of. And, you know, we, I remember when we were covering season one of Andor, even though they're very different characters, we talked about with Dedra, how like there was like a kind of Thrawn-esque in that respect quality in those in those Partagaz, like, office, you know, come to the team meeting scenes where you're like, wait, I'm going to have to. work harder than everybody else to prove that I belong here, even though I'm better than them. And that's a really interesting thing in a villain and a character, because so many of these villains are inherently from the jump, everybody's like, I worship you. Let me, can I be a part of

the cult that studies at your knee? That's not the position that Throne finds himself in, and I think that's ultimately very dramatically compelling. So yeah, I did consider Mall, but I felt confident you would have them all. I considered Kylo, but felt like honorable mentions was appropriate. I did consider Dejra. But I really wanted an Andor character, but I feel we are, I like, we have Andor on like a lot of our list. So I felt like this was a place where we could do something else. I wanted to do Star Wars, right? And so I was like, what are the most, what are the key Star Wars things? And it's just like, Andor is my top Star Wars the last 25 years. But the villain is like the empire. You know, and I could go part of guys. I could go.

You know, there's like a lot of chronic, like there's a lot of good options, but it's the combined movement really. And so I couldn't narrow it down to one villain. But I really wanted to do Andor, but I didn't. I know. We found ourselves in similar spots. That takes us to number seven. I've already revealed this is where I have Homelander. Yeah.

So do you want to do your number seven and then we can talk about Homelander together? Let's do it. When do you got a seven? Do you have anything from Dune Part 2. As an honorable mention, but not a number one. my top 10. I'm excited, though, that you do. This is great. This was a hard one for me to leave off. Do we have the same? Is it the right one, though? We'll find out. Okay. My pick is, I have no clip for this, so I will just say it. It's Jessica Atrades. Oh. Is who I've chosen here. Rebecca Ferguson,

herself. Wow. I would have brought out a knife to lick it, to reveal. Fade Routha's mine. Vane Routha. Just a really good one. Darranged performance. I think there is something, what is because Fade Routha is and especially in his sort of like black and white you know visage like a villain right capital V villain

what is so delicious about the world that Frank Herbert has created in Dune is in the Trades family specifically is sort of like is this person a villain like that's what Dune really pushes your back up against a wall

is this person a hero yeah is this person A person a hero is this person a villain? Or have I been duped, sort of what we were just talking about, into rooting for the villain this whole time? These were like the really loud arguments you were having at the end of Dune part two, right? When it came to our guy Paul, who we will someday cover in an absolute banger podcast, Paul of Fame. But here we're going to talk about his mother. There's a manipulative quality to Jessica in how she manipulates her own son and the masses.

that she single-handedly warps centuries-old propaganda to protect herself and hers is just masterfully done. The way in which, I mean, we love Rebecca Ferguson. And Rebecca Ferguson played an incredible... My wife. You can't have all the wives. You have to share the wives. Nope. No.

Rebecca Ferguson played an incredible villain. I want to shout out her performances, The Hat in Dr. Sleep. Really, really good stuff. This is much scarier. what she does here with like little screen time swathed in all of these like covered in tattoos, covered in all of these draperies and stuff like that. This is what, this is what Denisville Nouve said about Lady Jessica, right? He says the entire story unfolds because of Lady Jessica, because of a decision she made

to give birth to Paul instead of a girl. She's a fascinating character, one of the most influential and interesting in the novel. That's what he said. But was true of Jessica Atreides in the novel is she gets like really sidelined in the back part of Dune. And so, Deney decided to expand her role,

sort of similar to the way in which he expanded Chani's role, right? And this is what he said about this, right? He said, I think pregnant women look tremendously powerful. To use that power was very exciting. And usually when you see pregnant women

on screen, she's always giving birth. To avoid that moment to stay in the state of pregnant, I thought it was very Frank Herbert-like. I was going to go away from the killer toddler. But I thought that was more fresh and originally. Honestly, it's one of the things I'm proudest of in the adaptation. And sort of like when he was trying to figure out what he most wanted to explore in the Dune adaptation that he hadn't yet was sort of like the female characters, he's like Jessica and Chani and hopefully, you know, as we go forward with like Erilon and all these other characters, like what do these women and how are they working behind the scenes to insert. inspire or warp.

And this idea of like, the idea of using an idea. Yes. In order to instigate Holy War. And I just, I love this. And when we meet Jessica in the first Dune, we're like rooting the fuck for her, right? And then we meet her in Dune Part 2. And it's something else entirely. And it is so complicated what it stirs up inside of us.

Also, yeah, the vision. This is not the last mother I have on this list, but the vision of like the pregnant mother, the Mary, the Madonna, like all this sort of imagery. And then you add to that, the voice. Yeah, oh, yeah. Which is so terrifying. I just, I love her.

And I wanted to pay homage to her. That's a great pick, man. I love that pick. Yeah, I think the complexity of the kind of outright rejection of those hero villain polls and maybe our, instinct and the way that we kind of are primed to receive those figures, and then that is complicated and explored across the books and the films. I like thinking about that in the way you're framing Jessica, because, like, you have a character like Paul, who is saying of the

weaponizing of the prophecy and the propaganda, very like, you know, we obviously just covered inception as part of Hot and all and Subur, very like an idea as like a virus, to your point. I love that moment when Paul is like, that's not hope, right? And screaming. but also Paul is a character that we are questioning and learning over the course of the progression of the story to see and understand in full. So it's not like the character or figure who is going to interrogate Jessica's decisions or call Jessica out is a person that we can fully support. Right. That messiness is the entire point, which is great. I'm excited for the third. This little trickle of like here, their film in Dune is. I know. It's very excited.

It's very exciting. Are people ready for the dude Messiah text? I don't know. Are they ready for the Paul of Fame? It seems like they are. It seems like they're more than ready. It seems like they are. That's a great pick. I love it.

Homelander. Do you have a clip for? I do not. I have a clip. Oh, let's see this little homelander clip here. Really set the mood. I'm done. I am done apologizing.

I am done being persecuted for my strength. You people should be thanking Christ that I am who and what I am because you need me. You need me to save you. You do. Chilling. I love that clip ends like on the red, white, and blue cape. I know. What could it possibly bring to mind in our current time?

Can I just share a quick Eric Ripke quote? Please. The show is many things. Settle is not one of them. If you, for instance, think Homelander's a hero, I don't know what to tell you. Jesus, that's disturbing to know that there are people who might think Homelander's a hero. And yet, of course, it tracks perfectly because the base that Homelander appeals to is obviously reflected in real life. And I think there are, I mean, so that's, of course, Anthony Starr, as Homelander and the boys.

We're heading into the final season of the boys in a minute here. From the minute Homelander hit the screens, there was a collective, like, we're seeing something special and insidious in a way that is like almost too uncomfortable given actual real life. Yeah. But of course, that is part of why it is such an effective character and that the way that the boys use as Homelander and many other characters in thought and the fictional but only just media and entertainment conglomerance, etc.

you don't, to the Kripke's subtlety point, have to work very hard to recognize or clock the real-life comps. And I think that there are like two main reasons to have Homeland are on the list. Obviously, like, the performance is really good. The overall kind of mix of interplay among the figures on the boys is, has been very entertaining over the years. But I think they're like kind of two primary buckets. It's one, and this is also true, of course, writ large for the boys as a fictional universe, the like, what if superheroes but bad, right? Like, what if Superman slash Captain America but bad?

What if when the compound V hit, the Super Soldier serum hit, right? You got, if we're thinking about Earth, Skine, like, it becomes great, but bad becomes worse. This is why you were chosen for Steve Rogers. Well, this is the horror that can surface. the other, of course, is that Homelander is, I think, kind of inarguably the poster villain for our fascist real-life moment right now. And the theme and visibility and ambition and power, lust for power, greed, and need for power that manifests in the bastardicization,

the commodification and bastardization of like every sacred ideal is really disturbing. to watch control over thought, over the media, the entertainment industry, society, politics, the Trump era, Fox News era tyrant whose stock and trade is, obviously, homelander is like the most powerful being, but the stock and trade, the actual like fuel is the deception, right? The misinformation. The violence, the approach. The violence, the oppression, the idea of a quote-unquote hero who will literally go to the tallest possible building and piss all over the people that he is like nominally supposed to serve and protect.

Very pointed. And the fact that he is such an insecure man baby who would love nothing more than to suckle at the nearest teat. And if he can't find one, he's got a personal cooler full of mother's milk at his disposal when he needs it. it might not be subtle, but it is pointed and effective, and I'm not surprised what we both have Homelander on the list. I'm so glad Homelander's here. Like Anthony Starr's Homelander is an all-timer performance from a, like when you, it's not just the removal of the platinum blonde hair,

but when you see Anthony Starr like talking in an interview, you're like, that guy, I mean, whatever his personal proclivities might be, that's not the same guy. as Homeland. You're like, well, that's just acting. But, like, the way his face, though, like, Rick to smile. Yeah. That, like, there's no smile that a Homelander ever gives that looks genuine. It just looks plastic.

Yeah. It's worth noting, I agree with you. Homelander is here, and I have another character here that is, like, here to represent, like, the moment we find ourselves in now. But, of course, Homelander was created in 2006, like, well before, you know, Trump comes to power, but sort of similar to Andor. this idea of like these cycles are eternal. These archetypes are eternal.

So like it's not just reflecting the now. It's reflecting these cycles of power. Something that Garth Ennis, the creator of Homelander said about the character, like what makes this character so impactful to him? Right? As he says, quote, cruelty, lack of humanity, lack of empathy. I often think if you want true horror, your first step would be to eradicate kindness. Right.

And so we'll get versions of this across characters when we talk about like sociopathie or all these other stuff where it's just sort of like or megalomania of just sort of like being incapable of seeing the world outside of your own sort of how does this impact me? How does this glorify me? How does this hurt me? Right. not how can I protect or better the world around me. My favorite homelander scene is a scene where he's talking to himself and he's looking himself in the mirror. Unbelievable. Like an unbelievable scene of television.

And so, yeah, just this idea of like his sort of inner circle of one and how that demented worldview has these ramifications. And then also as we think about the last 25 years and we think about this is not going to be the last superhero property on either of our lists, right? But we think about the era of the superhero film and TV storytelling, which the last 25 years certainly was for a large chunk of it. This, as you said, sort of critique of that demented twist on Superman and Captain America is it just came along at such a perfect time for that. And there was a movement of this because it came along the same time as HBO's Watchman came up. know anything like, again, these are invincible.

These are movements that happened on the page before they happened in film and television, but these various creators are Kripke or Dimilandlov or whoever were like, I really want to do this superhero story right now because I really want to interrogate this idea of like might is right or all these other things that like. If you had this power, would you actually use it for good? Would you be a good guy? I don't think so. So yeah, I'm really delighted.

We both have Homelandar here. Not surprised. Not surprised. Take me to your number six. Okay, this is bizarre. No, I'm excited. This is my throne's pick. Oh.

This was not my throne's pick because I thought you were doing my throne's pick, but now I don't think you were doing my throne's pick. So this is like, this is how we like duped ourselves out of my number one throne's pick. But what if it is the same after all that? Well, my pick is Circe Lannister. Okay. Which is not your pick. No, but I have a very.

closely related pick. Right. Yeah. Go ahead. I'm excited. Tell me about Circee making your list. Is your pick? I'm not going to tell you. You'll have to wait. That sucks. You'll have to wait. Because it's my number one. I actually think we had different picks and I talked myself out of mind because I thought you were doing it. That's okay. Well, if so, we can make it a smuggle. A smuggle once we get there. Listen, Lena Heaney's here who complains. But the reason my throne's pick is low is because I thought my actual number one, which is the second name I wrote down Mallory's doing. I think I talked myself into something bizarre. Anyway, who said when you play the Game of Thrones, you win or you die? Circe. Circey, motherfucking, Lannister.

What I love about, you know, I am going to talk a little bit about Circe on the page versus Circe on the screen and stuff like that. But one of the things that drives me up the wall is when people say Circee Lanister was, like, stupid. She's not stupid. at all. Tyrion's right is that she's not as smart as you think she is. Absolutely. But you cannot call the woman who, like, outmaneuvers Ned in the first season, orchestrates what happens in the Winds of Winter, your favorite episode of Game of Thrones, the blowing up of the fucking sept, outmaneuvers the Tyrells. You know, you cannot call that person stupid. So does she overreach? Does she make mistakes? Does she ultimately, you know, get punished for those mistakes? Absolutely.

but there was something so delightful. I mean, I considered Joffrey. I considered a number of other characters. That's not your pick. I know. I know what your pick is now. I consider Joffrey. Joffrey's a great pick.

But Circe as a foil for, and foils are so important to pick inside of the world of villains. But Circe is a foil for, as George R. Martin has said, both DeNaris and Sansa, this idea of like, Right. This is who Sansa wants to be when we meet her and then learns how to be and not to be as the show goes on. Takes lessons from her. Oh, yeah. But is like, I don't want to be that exactly. But there is something there that I can use.

There is power, right, inside of this world. These are a couple things that George R. Martin has said about Circey Lanister, right? Circe is a case study in how privilege in society shape a person. On the one hand, she's extremely privileged, daughter of one of the greatest houses, beautiful, rich and entitled. She's shown deference by most people she meets. This privilege often breeds certain attitude. However, she's also a woman in an extremely patriarchal society. She's told she's better than everyone else, but also told that certain things aren't for her.

Better brother gets things she can't have. The conflict this creates is interesting to explore, and I've certainly tried to do that with Circe. right so and then he also he's also said of course people who like who watch the tv show tend to like surcy better than people who have read the books because the show surcy is given even more i think sort of empathetic treatment in certain places but nonetheless does enough monstrous things that when we watch the walk of shame it is such an important moment for a reader or for a watcher in terms of like there's the glee and Cersie has done all these terrible things and we love to see someone who's done terrible things brought low.

And then there's also just sort of like this treatment of a woman in a way that I have a lot of pain rooting for. It's not clear. And that's sort of like what I will come to again and again, again, I think except maybe for like a couple of my top picks of like this idea of like it's not clear to me. Yeah. How I'm supposed to feel in that conflict inside of the human heart. It's the only thing we're writing about, I've heard. Is really important. I do want to read this one book surcy quote because it is just like an all-timer, even

though we said we're not doing this based on books, but it is flavored by our feelings about book characters. This is something that book surce said, which I love, to Robert Barathean, 10,000 of your children perished in my palm, your grace, whilst you snored, I would lick. your sons off my face and fingers one by one all those pale, sticky princes. You claimed your rights, my lord, but in the darkness, I would eat your heirs. Great stuff. Circey rules.

Lena Hini is tremendous as Circey Lanister. And I just think, you know, as a as a villainous character who is start to finish, a villainous character on this show and somehow indoors does not fall until the very end, spoilers for the end of Game of Thrones, is someone worth celebrating on this list. So I have no notes. One of my finalists for my Thrones contenders as well, thrilled that you have Searcy. Wouldn't have felt right for neither of us to have Searcy. So I think she belongs here. Yeah, the humanizing element that you're citing, I always think of like the season one show creation, the conversation between, you know, Circe and Robert about Leanna and what could have been or what never could have been and how tenderly we feel toward both of them, all of them, in that moment, how deeply tragic and Shakespearean it is, but how that does not in any way diminish the horror that we feel when we watch her do the things that she does. No one walks away from me with Cersie and Jamie.

I think really in the running, for like, if we were just talking about villain moments, I think it has a case to be like, a number of power. Yeah, I mean, it's just chills. And also, like, when you, because you can watch these scenes, these moments where Circe is, you know, we love a prophecy, right? Golden Trouts, gold will be their crowns, gold their shrouds. The way that, Circe is one of our favorite characters to talk about with shot out Maggie the Frog, like the idea of the self, not just the prophecy, but the self-fulfilling prophecy and the way

that that shame and guilt and doubt lead her further and further into that spiral, but also to kind of calcifying the strength that she must grab and hold on to. And you have this like this feeling of the deep empathy as you watch her lose the things around her, her children who mean the most to her. And so then because of that, not to go all Tyrion, like, you know, it's the one redeeming thing about you that in your cheekbones, But, like, you know, because of that, when you feel so tenderly toward her, when she loses people she loves and then you watch what she is capable of doing to Jamie, there's like the

decisions that she makes about the fate of the realm, the fate of man. But when she says to Jamie, like, no one walks away from me. It's just, it's a cementing of something God tear, I think, really. It's so good. I also think there is such an interesting exploration inside of Circe when it comes to, again, this second mother on my list, but when it comes to this idea of. this Walter White-esque idea of I'm doing it for my family. Sure, of course, yeah.

Right? Everyone in the world who isn't us, you know. But when she loses those children, perhaps because she loses them or it was just always going to be this way, you know, she's worse. The thing she's willing to do are even worse. I always think of like Jamie riding back and seeing the thing that his entire reputation,

what everybody else said about him, thought about him, right? King Slayer, Man Without Honor, seeing the city on fire, right, burn the mall, and then riding forward and realizing that the person closest to him in the world was the one who brought about the thing that he had given everything to once prevent. Chills. Thrones, it used to be good. It was really good. Did you know about one in three people with plaques psoriasis may also develop psoriotic arthritis, which causes joint pain, stiffness, and swelling? Does this sound like you? Listen to what it sounds like to be a million miles away.

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Oh, man. I have another hot blonde checking in here at six. Great. We love a blonde. This is a character I know you love. Do you have anyone from Battlestar Galactica? I don't have anything about us. Great. At number six, I would like us to talk about six. Yes. Amazing.

Adam was like, is it just because you get to say six at six? And I was like, ultimately, I feel this is the right spot. That's just an added bonus. I really love that Adam was like helping you with like the number or like listening to the number. At the very last night in a moment of absolute panic, I was like, have I forgotten anyone who I will not be able to like live with myself? Six on Six. Okay. I have a clip. She's not going to do it. She has to do it. It's not her decision, guys. No.

It's God's choice. He wants you to repent. We've recently spent some time talking about a Battlestar in general, but... On the prestigious TV podcast. Hooked. We've recently spent some time talking about Trisha Helfer's iconic Cylon. Six in general, number six. Who takes the form?

as you can tell from that clip, if you've not seen Battlestar Galactica, if you're not familiar with the premise of the reboot, it takes the form not only of a human, and a very compelling human, but of, as we see with our beloved Gaius Bollah there, figure who Gaius would desire this idea of the fair form, to your point,

masking those lethal intentions that only become clear, as we peel back the layers, the reveal inside of this reboot that the toasters, the four toasters, who of course are still present in this story as the Centurians, look not just like people, but like that. In some ways this selection isn't cheap because one of the bonuses about picking six

is you get like all the sixes. You get so many different versions of six. Experts smuggle. And they're all, they are all, distinct, and that's one of the things that's really rewarding about watching the show. You know, of course, you've got, like, maybe your feelings about Shelley or Natalie or whatever the case we'd be. I would say this is primarily, it is about the totality of the six experience. This is primarily a Caprica six head six pick, of course. You know, one of the fun things

about the way that the show is structured is that each of the primary silent figures has, like, even though we get different versions of them, kind of through lines and personality traits, right? So six is passionately love. Sixes passionately hate. Sixes corrupt. They manipulate. Sixes is a spouse gospel. Sixes are, I picked that clip deliberately for this reason, like not only the puppeteering that we see with Gaius and thus affairs at mass, affairs at scale.

But the primary, one of the primary gateways into the stories like, deeply religious exploration of fate, destiny, purpose, meaning, justification for your choices and your behavior, et cetera. Sixes are not always villains. That is a true thing. Certainly not always a character who we can argue with or dispute, but then, of course, that is the genius of it, because this is also the character who brings about the decimation of the colonies. And then who snaps the neck of the baby? One of our first moments. Our first moments of there, just like a little...

And almost just like to see what it would feel like and out of interest. What sounds it going to make? How's it going to feel in my hand? There's the casual nature of that, and that, of course, the deeply, like, studied and, like, what will all of this mean for the fate and the shared future, deliberate nature

of what a six can do? Six champions, there are a lot of characters in Battlestar who do this, but six most of all, the superiority of humanity's creation over humanity. And this feels like an appropriate time to reflect that on our list of terror. Sexy AI made flesh, as you promised. Yeah. And, you know, I think also though it's true, and you talked about this, you know, Six and Six and Gaius being like your favorite. It's a character we never tire of spending time with. And the fact that we are so swept up and we are so drawn in allows you to then understand how character like, Gaius or other characters could do the things that they do and make the mistakes that they make. And that's important, I think. When you have a villain, you're like, why would anybody listen? Why would anybody be convinced for a moment? That's actually not interesting at all.

This is a much richer text. So like the platinum blonde spin on a classic trope that feels really heightened and keen right now. Excellent pick. Excellent pick. I love, and this is true of like a couple of the that I have coming up, but the idea of a performance so compelling that the writers have to go, and this is something that Trisha Helfer has talked about, that the writers would go, oh, shit. We have to write much more for her because she's just supposed to show up and be sexy, but this person is doing something she is doing that. Yes.

And all these other things. So all of a sudden we have to like. A character who wasn't supposed to be as present as they wound up being. Will it come up again on our list? Who's to say? Who's to say? Six. My number five.

Tell me. Hast thou, I know you do. Anything from the MCU? Yes. Yeah, I do. At three. But do you have anything? I'm interested to see what you pick.

From Black Panther. Okay, good. This is my honorable mention from the MCU. I'm really, really, really glad that this is your pick. Because I'm kind of thinking I know what your pick is, so I decided to go with Michael B. Jordan as kill monger, this idea of the villain with a point of view. Yes. Right? The villain where you agree with everything they say, but not the way in which they're going around it. So like a really

key, an idea so keen and so well executed here that a number of other stories started to go in that direction, right? This is 2018. A number of other stories started going that direction. so much so that people started getting tired of the villain with the point of view or we're like just like take me back to something else. But this is it executed on just the highest level. And I'm thinking, I've been thinking so much about the incredible skill set of Michael B. Jordan inside of this year's centers where we watch him play to completely distinct characters. And so I think even though Kilmonger, you know, when we did our, our, MCU villains list. There's like a top three, I would say, that people usually go to in Kilmonger is usually

in the top three. But I worry that because he's like a one and done villain barring what if. And because the Black Panther, Black Panther's presence in the MCU was really detoured because of what happened with Chadwick Bozeman. So like the impact of Wakanda were still trying to figure out at their. are still trying to figure out over at Marvel headquarters, like how all that works. I worry that as we go along,

Kilmonger is not being forgotten, but not being as revered as he should be. The idea that Ryan Cougler turns Kilmonger, Eric, into a boy who grew up in Oakland, which is an author insert, if ever you have one inside of this story. And making him into this, Shakespearean, like the Shakespearean archetype of the

the jealous, frustrated, like, bastard, right? Like the Don John, the Edmund, that's just sort of like, I am owed this, right? So there's the points that Kilmonger is making about Wakanda's sort of like isolationist attitude and all that sort of stuff like that. But then there's also just the personal, like, I am the son of royalty. Yes. and you cast me out and you did not give me my due.

And I am owed this. Why am I not a prince of Wakanda? I should be a prince of Wakanda, right? And then as just the purest foil for Tachala that you could think of inside of the storytelling. I think his line, just bury me in the ocean with my ancestors who jumped from the ships because they knew death was better than bondage is like the line of Black Panther. You're watching that, you're watching a villain die. And he drops that and my audience gasped, right? It was just sort of like text inside of a superhero movie that we were not prepared for necessarily. And I just, you know, also talk about like

lethally sexy you know villains I just think that Kilmonger is so key to the this is like the height of Marvel we are no longer in the height height height of Marvel

but like the Black Panther you know Infinity War end game era of just like Marvel at its absolute sort of grasp on the public Black Panther as like an Oscar contender like all this sort of stuff. And as, you know, Chadwick Boseman is incredible. There's so many incredible parts of this story.

But like, I think Killmonger elevates it to completely different level. Because like the MC villain problem is something that like we talked about it again and again and again and again. And like there are ways in which they unlocked it incredibly. And then there are ways in which you're just sort of like this old thing. And then there's Killmonger, which is just on a different level altogether. So I just wanted to make sure that it. we respected killmonger inside of our celebration of the last 25 years of storytelling. I'm thrilled the killmongers on your list. It was my MCU pick. I mean, you know who my MCU pick.

We'll get there soon. It's just I, it's my, I can't, I can't pick. I just, I can. And we, you know, as we tend to with these lists, kind of like, try to limit ourselves to one per property. But that was really, really difficult. Like, killmonger is an incredible character in that performance. and the writing and that mix of the interpersonal and the view of life and society and the way that people treat each other and what they owe to each other is just really like expert and essential ultimately. So I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled the killmongers on your list. My number five is also from a superhero movie. Do you have anything from the Christopher Nolan in Batman movies on your list. I sure do. Coming up next? Nope, or higher. Higher.

I think we were wrong about some things. Is it Bain? No, I'm kidding. It's not Bain. What if I had Bain? That would be the most Mallory pick. You're like, we said favorite. We said favorites. I think having Bain on my speeches list was enough. Okay, so we will put a pin in my number five until we get to that spot on your list. And so that takes us to our number fours. Do you have anything from the television series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer? I don't because sadly I've not seen any Buffy that is set in the century yet. So the clip I'm about to show you is from the year 2000, season four, season five, actually.

But I was very careful about what I picked. Okay. I'm ready. So as not to hurt your experience. Will you play this clip, please? Death is your art. You make it with your hands day after day. That final gasp, that look of peace. Part of you is desperate to know what's it like? Where does it lead you? Very powerful. Very, very, very powerful. That is James Marsters as William the Bloody, aka Spike. We have only seen, you met Spike in your season two watch, you've only just met him. Yes. I didn't think it was a spoiler for you to know that he is in later seasons.

No, I know. I know that. You know how important Spike is and it's not because of just what he did in season two. So there's that. This is from the season five, episode seven, episode Fool for Love. And that whole section, that Billy Idol on the New York subway look for Spike, flashback Spike is like one of the most iconic thing that has ever happened. Wow.

In terms of like platinum blonde complicated people on an arc, this is my er text for that, so I'm letting it stand in for like all of my others. Okay. Yeah. So you're, I don't know, your Sawyers, your Jamie Lannisters,

all of these people all came from my experience here with my problematic fave. Yes. I recall seeing all these people put together. in like a tweet of yours at one point. In an image grid. The thing that is so key, the reason why I think it's interesting

to put Spike here, I was like, 2000 gets me right in under the, but like a character on an arc, backslides are part of the point, right? And so like we're moving forward, we're moving backwards. There are arcs that are forced by circumstances.

There are arcs that are formed by personal growth or whatever. but Spike is a villain and not a villain on this show as you see inside of season two, right? Yep. A villain and then an ally, right? And so this is just like a thing that happens with our guy Spike.

Yes. As you alluded to before, Spike was only supposed to be on this show for five episodes and James Marster's you can tell the point in season two where he was supposed to die. And then they were like, oops. Absolutely not.

Too sexy to die. Absolutely not. It's got to stick around. and the character becomes, this and another character that I have actually coming up next are so impactful that the story starts to sort of almost bend around them. A character that is so charismatic. Villains are so fun to write for.

Marsters is so good at, and as you see just as early as season two, you know, love sick yearning, in addition to snarky comebacks, in addition to passionate monologues,

in addition to little comedy beats like he has with Joyce in season two, you know what I mean? Like there's just like all that stuff just like stays in the mix

as we go forward. It only gets better and better with Spike. And so I, he would maybe even be like my number one if I were able to like

fully talk. I'm surprised when he's not your number one. More about Spike, but I just don't feel like I can do him justice inside of my desire to preserve your experience. So he's here down at number four.

But he's higher in my heart. And I just think that, like, I... James Marsters has been telling this story on a lot of, like, you know, con and podcast circuits recently about, like, in the wake of the Joss Whedon, people learning more about how Joss Whedon treated people. He talks about how Joss Whedon, like,

threw him up against a wall in, like, anger about how he's being forced to keep his character around when he wanted to kill off his character. This is something, this is a story that James Marsh has told a lot of times. The idea that you could like so enrage, I mean, Jocelyn, not a normal well man, but like so enrage a creator that he like has to keep you.

Because Whedon's whole idea was like vampires are evil and I've already got like one sexy vampire that we keep around and the like in the guise of angel and I don't want to just like make this a thing, but Spike is so undeniable that he becomes this thing. To the point where then like Whed and Later like sort of lists him as like one of his favorite characters, you know what I mean? And so it's just sort of like that evolution inside of again, an unwell man, I would say, just speaks to sort of the elemental aspect that is Spike. Genuinely one of the funniest characters on the show, generally one of the characters that inspired the most emotional sort of reaction for me on the show. the show and I just love him and he's here at number four.

You reserve the right at the end of the pod to make to make Spike number one if you want. I'm not going to. I really feel really good about my top three, but like Spike, I love you. You're very important to me. I think I know now your top three. Okay. I think I know because I, well, maybe I don't, but I feel pretty sure now I know you're, I know your top three, which is an excellent top three. I can't wait for more time with Spike. I, do you. I have nothing to add, obviously, other than, as we'll discuss in our Buffy Season 2 pods, it's been a, it's been the thrill of a lifetime to get to meet him and to start to get to know him. And it's very clear that I am only starting. So I am really looking for it. There's like

not, I'm having, I would have a hard time coming up with another character. Sawyer would be one, actually. I'd have a hard time coming up with another character who more people in my life would be like, I can't wait till I can talk to you about character X. You know, I feel like Spike has, like, been that character for a while. Obviously, when people are coming to Lost, that's how we talk about, like, Sawyer with them. So, like, just wait. Sort of energy. Yeah.

Just wait. Great pick. Thanks. I feel personally responsible that you felt like you had to put Spike it for. It's okay. He's in the top five. That's where he belongs. Okay.

And my top three are bangers. Yeah. Okay. My number four, do you have any characters from Harry Potter? I do. You do, but they're different. Yes. My number four is Voldemort.

I haven't you heard of it. I think there are some other serious contenders, and I know you will be presenting one shortly. Ultimately, kind of couldn't do the list without having Voldemort on it. I just couldn't. Though I do think that this is where the TV film-specific framing, like, I think would have been my out ultimately and certainly leads to like four versus higher up on the list.

Like the, I mean, Ray Fines is one of my all-time faves, as you know. And I think that Ray Fines is a very good Voldemort. But as we've discussed many times across various Ringer podcasts over the years, the films just leave out, I think, a lot of,

or kind of truncate a lot of the ripest and most interesting Voldemort material. So, Four was kind of like the highest I could go. Maybe that will surprise some people, but here we are. We talked about this when we talked about you and I off pod about the speeches podcast, right? That you were like, if it were Harry Potter book speeches, it might be my entire list. But given that we're just talking about movies and television, it's not it.

Even so Tom Riddle is here. Tom Riddle or Voldemort, certainly like a Tomarie Del. Tom Riedel. Tom Riddle. I can't see Tom Riddle without thinking of that story that you told me about traversing a French graveyard. No, it's in Scotland, but it was like French people. French people in this graveyard in Edinburgh where... Great stuff.

J.K. Rowling got the name Tom Riddle and these, I heard these French people's finding that... Tom Riddle and go, oh, Tomarital. That's a great stuff. Voldemort certainly like a signature villain for a general. generation. More reasons than we have time to get into today, but some of the top ones, you know, Voldemort's relationship to prophecy, very house of our core, Voldemort's worked view on power and might and belonging on what being special, not only means, but then entitles

him to. This is a half-liparince book scene, but I always like talk about there's a version of it in the film, but like the, you know, looking at the hands, like, always I knew there was something always I knew that I was special and how chilling that is. You know, the idea of the half-blood who marked another half-blood, and yet then still, created a society where only pure bloods had a place and would be accepted. A character who placed consistently such little value on humanity, including, of course, his, own, that he hacked away, chipped off pieces of his soul in order to create horacarxes, that the pursuit of immortality that that hanging on to some tether of life was worth the cost

of what it means to be human, a character of undeniably magical prowess and supreme skill, who then consistently still failed in all of these really deeply preventable ways. who we've talked about this a lot, like underestimated at every turn, anything that he, like, failed to rape or take seriously, whether that was the kid who's going to be my foe, or the idea of a house elf being able to get in that little boat and sail across the lake, right?

Like, that's not magic that would even register for him. Or, of course, children's tale. Tale of the three brothers? Oh, would that matter? What's that? Yeah. Right? Like that stuff is just all so powerful.

And of course, a villain who never, despite being given chances, proved capable of doing what Harry and others implored him time and time again until the very last to do. This is where I will read a book passage. I'll advise you to think about what you've done. Think and try for some remorse. some advice that Voldemort's creator could stand to heat and consider. We'll come back to that. Yeah.

Voldemort, checking in at number four. Great pick. Where do you have your HP pick? Three? One. Two, don't say. Okay. We're at your number three now.

Do you have a choice? From the television series lost. I do. I have it higher. You have it higher? Yeah. Great. I had this at three originally, actually, and then moved them up to two.

So you don't have to wait long. So this, oh, wait, no, so you're number three now. My number three is Loki. Which we knew was coming. My number three is Loki. Sorry. I couldn't not. Why apologize?

Oh, God. Not only did I pick Loki, perhaps the most predictable pick of the entire podcast. I've decided to treat us to a clip from Thor the Dark World. Loki. Hello, mother. I've made you proud. Everything that's good about Thor, the Dark World, is Loki. Oh, my God.

It's an absolutely fantastic. Fantastic Loki movie. Great Loki movie. Great Loki movie. Great Loki movie. Well, bad villain. In time, we'll all come to appreciate the Dark World. A lot of what is present in that clip for Loki in his need and how he thinks about

his standing and how other people hold him or do not hold him in a level of steam is very central. You know, we love a character on an archive. I don't know if it's come up before. Tom Hiddleston's Loki, you know, other than Tony and Cap, other than Downey and Evans, the through line of our shared MCU Infinity saga and for Loki Now Beyond experience. You know, Thor, the Avengers, Thor of the Dark World, Thor Ragnarok, Infinity War, Endgame, what if, Stingers, Loki Season 1, Loki Season 2, et cetera, et cetera.

Thor came out in 2011. So it's been a decade and a half with this version of this character. It's been a decade and a half with Tom Hidleston's Loki. And he is, of course, as we should never forget the reason that the Avengers assembled in the first place. I guess there's like a chance that we've, I was trying to think about this, that we've talked about Loki together more than any other character. You know, between like our Hall of Fame episode and covering Loki the show and covering other

Marvel properties. I think it's especially because in our. coverage of Loki. Loki is such a show of just like, let's talk about this character and what makes him so compelling. So I might agree with you. Yeah. So I mean, I don't know that I have much new to say. I don't have anything new to say, honestly. But like, you know, Loki is a hero now. Loki has gone on more than one journey arc, a glimpse of redemption. We love a character on an arc so much. We arched him again. And more fully this time. Ultimately just makes him, you, an even more remarkable character to me.

And I think the fact that we have gotten to glimpse what redemption would look like and how it would maybe unfold for him multiple times and in different fashions is really interesting and compelling to me. Seeing where he goes, you know, I think makes going back to Thor, Dark World, Avengers, like these eras where he was behaving horribly and doing deplorable things. even like Richard to explore and to revisit the questions that we've kind of always asked about this character and now really have new insights. We've always felt like we understood something kind of true and fundamental about Loki and why he aired and why he would slip into these modes of behavior and like sinister quests and need because he's like a boy who didn't feel like loved by his. It's that Shakespearean trope again, right?

He's the, like, rejected bastard sort of idea. Yeah, you know, and like the idea of what would he do if not for the way that Odin made him feel or if not needing to, like, constantly compete for attention with Thor? If his desires and capabilities and the things that drove him could manifest in the impulse to give, right? instead of ruling, if he could serve, you know, if he could gather those branches, like what would that look like? And the fact that we got to see that does not make him less notable as a villain to me. It makes him just even more kind of incredible as a, obviously, Loki has existed in the comics for eons, but as a creation in this way and this stretch of time.

And I think the getting to see our trickster fave learn from Mobius or Sylvie or all of the other versions of himself. And like, you know, we loved obviously to talk about this idea of like what makes a Loki a Loki and to see the way that he confronted that. You know, and ultimately that great trick of like, you know, the villain always thinks they're the hero. But Loki actually like couldn't for a long time think about somebody else as being worth something more than himself. And so, like, when he got to the point where he was like, all right, yeah, I am the guy who, like, did these things on Yotenheim or in New York. I held that scepter. I spent that time in the prison on Asgard. But that grief I felt when I lost my mother was real.

And it reflected something that was always there inside of me. To watch, like, to borrow and slightly tweak one of our favorite Yodaisms, you know, like to watch what he grew beyond. makes where we initially spent all of that time with him, I think just even more kind of fertile. So Loki is the best. He'll always be, even though he is a hero and has gone on many arcs, one of the great villains that we've gotten to watch and witness. I really agree.

And I'm thrilled that we have. So that's my number three. I know that we talked about this many times when we talked about Loki before, but one of my favorite things that I discovered when writing the MCU book was you know, the Thor screenwriter saying their main remit from Marvel in writing Thor was give us a villain as good as Magneto. Right. Magneto, by the way, really almost on my list.

Same. Honorable mention. Tough to miss out of Magneto. But give us a villain that, like, is as good as Ian McKellen's Magneto that will be able to sort of coalesce the Avengers around, right? Because his introductions here in Thor, but where we have plans for him also. So, like, that's what that movie is about with love and respect to Chris Hemsworth. It's about giving us Loki.

And so then Loki just becomes this locus for, like, you know, what comes after it. I just, he's so fun. And that's the thing about, like, villains are, should be often. So fun. So watchable. So fun for people to write for. Thinking about Hiddleston coming out at Comic-Con in character as Loki is like a top, like, tier iconic nerd culture moment of the last 25 years.

Definitely. And so, and there's not that many characters who, or performers who could do that, you know, just like that bit worked so well. Other characters have come out in other actors have come out in character, but none hit, as well as Loki being like a wrestling heel as he walks out onto the stage in Hall Age. It's just like astonishing stuff, really, honestly. So I'm so glad he picked Loki. I was pretty sure you would.

I had to. delighted that you did. I just absolutely had to. Okay, so then we're at two. So your number three is my number two. And my number two is my number five. Yeah. Yes. So which order should we do them? Do Joker first? Let's do Ben first. Let's do Ben first. Yeah. Okay. Ben Linus. Welcome to the list. So Ben Linus from Lost. Have you heard of it? You're three, my two. No. You're playing one of your mind games. They never trust you. In their defense, I'm not an easy person. to trust. But they came around when they realized that we all want the same thing. Ben Linus. Ben Linus. Tell us. So something you already said, or you alluded to earlier, was this idea, of course,

of the character who was only supposed to be around for a couple episodes, and then the whole show sort of starts to bend around them, right? Michael Amherstead was like, excuse me. Yeah, Michael Emerson's like, that's my entire thing. Michael Emerson is Benjamin Linus. Again, a character who is pushed towards sort of a more of an anti-hero space, does align the clip that I chose is from season five. And something, you know, our pal Rob Mahoney just watched all of Lost during his terrible bout with pneumonia. It's the only good thing about being violently lost. And I was talking to him about Benjamin Linus. And he was like, the thing about that guy is like, and that's why I picked that clip. He's like, I don't know.

understand how like everyone keeps listening to him and believing him, even after he has like fucked them over time and time again. And you alluded to this earlier, this idea of like, how do you keep convincing people to follow you? And there's something so what I love about him versus all of the other like hot blondes or whatever we have on the list is like Ben Linus does not have like sexual charisma going for him, just as Juliet. You know what I mean? Like that's not his thing. He's not like big and tall and brawny. He's like small and was ignored and neglected and passed over and all this. You know, what about me? What about you? You know, like my favorite moment? All this sort of stuff, right? So like, Jacob, you fuck. All of all of that is

so interesting. What is it about Ben Linus that is so captivating, that is so compelling that that that you don't think the castaways are idiots every time they fall for it. They somehow do in it and you're like, it makes sense that they do. Because how is good old Benline is going to get out of this one is a fun game to play? What percentage of his screen time does he spend

with his face battered and bloodied and bruised because people have beat the shit out of him because he's such a piece of shit? It's a lot. Pretty high. It's a lot of the show. And I just love that, like, so when they introduce Ben Linus, and to me, the show does not become the show until Ben Linus shows up. But when they introduce Ben Linus, the thing that the writers and Michael Amerson have talked about is, like, they introduce him as a character.

And they were like, if this guy isn't hitting, we have a plan B for who this, like, leader of the others is going to be. If this guy who are interesting as Henry Gale does not work out, we can just kill him off, no problem. according to Michael Emerson, according to the writers, it was his delivery of, you guys got any milk? It's a great one. To Jack and Locke is like what cemented him on the show. It's just like this really like innocuous little line and the way he delivers it with just such a like, I'm here.

I'm a nice guy. But like, also I'm very scary. Oh yeah. But I have talked you into giving me cereal. You guys got any milk? It's like, so good. So good. Also, Lost, you know, as we think about this idea of the villain versus the anti-hero, the whole premise of the show Lost is you don't know what makes a person a person.

You don't know what got them here. What is their origin story, right? And as we learn more about Ben's origin story, it is both dimensioned and disturbing. Yeah. R.P. Roger Workman. but also the the idea of lost is like a forced empathy machine

of like we're understanding this person. I have a couple of villains coming up where like that is not the case and that is not the point. Yeah. Yes.

But it's interesting when you do that as this as well. Right? And so like I love Ben Linus. I think he is a top tier creation of the last 25 years. We love Lost.

We will defend him. Ben lost towards the haters at any time. But like, even on the level of lost, you know, there are other characters that we, you know, Locke and Sawyer and all these other characters that we revere, but there's just something about Ben Linus that is so singular. Yes. Great word. In terms of what Michael Emerson does.

I had seen Michael Emerson before Lost on the TV show The Practice where he played a serial, like a Hannibal Lecterque, like serial killer. Yeah. And what I love is like he took notes of that. But there's just something else entirely going on. with Ben Linus here where he's not just lecturing his way through this. And I just, I love him. I love that piece of shit, Ben Linus. One of the best television characters of all time, period.

Villainsless, sure, but could have been any number of things and he would belong here. This was the one where I was like, no matter what happens today, no matter what anybody has up their sleeves, we will both have Ben in the top three. It was the only thing I felt absolutely sure. I didn't have enough faith. I should have believed in you more. I don't know why I didn't think you'd have Ben Linus. I don't know. Not only do I have him at number two.

I will say it was a real, like a real, real torment in the soul, like coin flip between Ben and my know. I feel really good about what I ended up doing at number one. I stand by it, but it feels right to Edna Thrones. Yes. Though I think Ben would have belonged there, certainly. that like dry wit the quiet simmering intent this idea of like a character with a plan always but then like the cold petty cruel nasty jealous manipulative man and the pain within and the insecurity within and the doubt the way that he always treated other people like his pawns like his playthings and then had to confront what it meant that he was that for somebody else. Like, what about you?

It's just an all, all time moment. All time moment. And I really never get tired of revisiting that scene with Ben and Jacob and just like, what an absolute evisceration it is of a character's self-deluded sense of grandeur. But what makes it so compelling ultimately is it's like, it's about a need, a really relatable need to believe that you have. have a purpose, right? And then...

You're chosen. Yeah. I have a hand to play in something greater, right? I should make these decisions on behalf of everybody. I should be the one who decides. I love to with Ben, and I think, like, part of why he's a great top of the list figure for a House of R, villains' pot in particular is because he is, like, so deeply, deeply, deeply rooted in many of the stories.

magical, mystical, lore-centric, spoiler, I'm moving the island. Like, you know? It's not like he's not an active participant in that aspect of the show. He is very much so. But so many of his most memorable scenes are,

I have to carry the weight and the guilt of what might happen to somebody I cared about. I'm just in a hatch or on an operating table. Like, I'm just a dude in a room with another person. And the only thing at the end of the, the day beyond our respective suspicion or ambition is like that we're two people who are trying to figure it out. And it's just really, really breathtaking to watch across every season. And where we find Ben at the end felt really, I think, really right.

I think, yeah. Okay. So two things. I want to come back to that in a second. The way in which Michael Emerson can play things big and small and imbue both with... there's, so his, his notion that Juliet belongs to him, right? And which he literally screams at her, right? You're mine, right? But then he also does things like, guess I'm out of the book club, which is a top-tier Ben Linus line for me, but that's inside of there, right? He comes out, finds out that Juliet is conducting the book club without him, and he says,

guess I'm out of the book club, which is also him screaming, you're mine. Both of those things are true, right? there's once again he has escaped captivity when some of our characters are in sort of the barracks situation you just watch him walk past Sawyer and Hurley with his like blankets folded and he's like see you guys at dinner and they're just like how did he get out of this one man

like how did he do it? So good. As for his ending this is why despite his flirtations with like anti-hero status and stuff like that the spoilers for lost. Yes. Ben not going into the church is one of my favorite things that happens on that show. And so like redemption arcs are cool and we love redemption arcs. And he has one of a sort, right?

He will go on in an act of service. Yes. To atone for what he did. Yes. But he doesn't get to go into the church. Got some things to work through. Right? And so that arc is still arcing.

And we don't see him to the end of it. And so that's important. Very much so. Yeah. Great character. Great. Fantastic stuff. Okay, so we're at your number two, which is my number five.

Heath Ledger's, the Joker, the Dark Knight. Have you heard of him? So not Bain. Just to double check. Not Bane. Not Bane. Okay. All right.

Why is it Heath Ledgers, the Joker? Okay. We talked, this is like, you and I were dancing around this when we had our Lex Luthor conversation. Yes. I feel like we were actually just talking about the Joker. Yes. We were like, can we do Heath Ledger's Joker on this list and not have its stand for all the Joker? Correct.

And, you know, especially in the – Heath Ledger's not even the only actor to have won an Oscar for playing the Joker in the last 25 years. So, like, there's a lot here to talk about. But in terms of that idea of, like, the existing expectations of who the Joker was, like, Heath Ledger's 27 when he comes into this role. And no less than Jack Nicholson has, like, in the not-too-distant past. really owned the Joker. Mark Hamlin in animated space, right? Joker on the page. Like all is that, the Joker is huge.

And yet Heath Ledger comes in and just absolutely owns that character. No one would put Jack Nicholson's Joker, which is incredible above Heath Ledger's Joker. Like, you don't even have to love everything that Nolan did in the Batman space. Ledger's Joker is undeniable in terms of this creation. And also, this is something I was thinking about this morning and last night, and I was wondering if it was like too ghoulish to mention on the side of this podcast. But knowing what we know about how Heath Ledger threw himself into this role and the fact that he passed away soon after and this idea of like him, his dedication to this role, we know because we have his journals of the time that he spent locked away for a month to create this. art is by most accounts sort of inextricably linked to the end of his life. And so the idea that the Joker took Keith Ledger from us is like something that I think about a lot when I think about this version of the Joker. Sorry, not to be like a downer here, but like that's part

of it, right? We were talking about this, even on the rewatchels, we were talking about sneakers. Like, that's one of River Phoenix's last movies. And so then it just becomes something else entirely. Sure. The Oscar is a word posthumously, so it just becomes something else. It's something that cost this person dearly his art. And what he created here is just extraordinary. The way in which he drew from, again, because we have access to his journals, hyenas,

ventriloquist dummies, clockwork orange, like all of these things that he pours into the mix here, the way that he like smacks and chews and devours his way through this performance, the way in which he's like, there's this like hunger and appetite. And then there is this like mockery of what we've talked about again and again and again of do you want to know how I got these scars, right? Right. This backstory. This like, why is Spike the way he is?

Why is Loki the way he is? Why is Ben the way he is? Yeah. And it's just sort of like, no. Yeah. This guy is just chaos. Some men just want to watch the world burn, right? Some men want to amassed a giant pile of money and just light on fire.

Right. That is not what the Joker is here to do. The Joker is here to make us confront something about ourselves. Yes. Because he is convinced that man is inherently flawed and weak. And he wins. In the Battle for the Soul of Harvey Dent, the Joker wins. In the Battle of the Soul for Larger Gotham, you could say that Batman wins.

But in the battle for Harvey Dent, the Joker wins. And that is enormous and undeniable. And so ledgers, the look of it, his insistent on applying his own makeup, you know, all of that sort of stuff is so keen and so key. But like, I don't know, this is just seismic. Yes. In terms of like when you, when people like to talk about the greatest villains of all time, like the most obvious list of the greater villains of all time and you have like, of all time. And you have like lecturers on there, you know, or whatever people like to put nurse ratchet on there. Like there are these like biggies that are just sort of like,

let her just slide on, like slid onto that list. Oh, yeah. Inside of, again, inside of a space where this expands beyond genre. Oh, yeah. To like people recognize this is one of the greatest performances of all time. Which again is why like this was at my number one for a while. Yeah. Until I flipped it down to two.

But like I think also when we think about the, you know, this is 2008. Right. When we think of the Nolan Batman movies and what they were. were reflecting inside of the U.S. at the time. And this idea of like our bafflement in trying to confront the notion of evil, this idea of

like Bush era post 9-11, evil so vast that we feel like we can't understand it. Yeah. That, you know, our very cities are at risk because of it. That is an emotion that Americans were

feeling at this time, you know, is why we get Potter looming so large and Lord of the Rings looming so large in conjunction with that time period. And so the Joker is part of this of like, don't even try to understand this. Some men just want to watch the world burn is like just there's just no denying how important this is and how much it reflects that specific time in the last 25 years, but then that like resonance outside of the 25 years. So guess what it's good.

I don't know if anyone has ever said that before. But it's a good performance. Quite. I think that if we were ranking the performances, this would be number one, I think, without question. Without question. The additional degree of and weight of, and obviously this is true for the Nolan Batman films in general,

but, you know, Joker most emblematic of this, the degree of prestige that, not the, prestige. Not the prestige, though. That's also some excellent Nolan, as we've recently discussed, that it granted to superhero movies to the genre storytelling at large, you know, set the bar, became the bar, still is the bar. But this idea of something that is like as iconic and feels untouchable, but also is as is as influential as it is iconic is, I think, an interesting space, right, where something feels like it will always be the standard. And yet the fact that other so many, I mean, the list is, like, to try to enumerate it, we'd be here all day of, like,

performers who said, this is the thing. This became the text that I studied then to figure out how I was going to bring my villain to the screen. The fact that Ledger's Joker became something for so many other, not just performers, but then creators to aspire to, right? That it, part of the joy of comic book and superhero storytelling is that we can revisit these worlds and these characters, but also part of the really, like, frankly, mandate to embrace when you're making one of these things is find something new to say and something new to do, right? And the fact that that's something that people have like such a sterling example now to aspire to is really important. Like it genuinely important in terms of allowing us all these

years later to be sitting here talking about the stuff all the time, right? And I really love, like, I love that you call it the hyena thing. Like that like animalistic prowl and the way he moves and the darting of the tongue, right? All of it. But the. The. Unhinged, deeply unhinged, obviously, unpredictable, covetor of chaos aspect of it. I think the thing that still always strikes me the most is what you've beautifully articulated, that there's a fact set that you can't access, right?

It's my sandbox. And I love, too, thinking about what you were saying earlier in the pod, because I obviously agree with everything you said about Bush era, post-9-11, and, how how firmly these films, this trilogy and the renderings

of these characters inside of it exist in that moment in time but also like you watch this, you pop this movie in now and you're like, this is an in-cell era

villain, right? And so there will always be a new way for this version of the Joker to feel contemporary and of that moment and time, both. Incredible.

So I felt really low for me to have, but like I, again, I'm just like, it's favorite. Yeah, it's favorite.

And favor performance, certainly, but, you know, maybe just a little less of a Joker head. This was the one that I knew we would both have. Like, I, how could you not? Yes, yes, yes. I felt that Ben Linus was an absolute lock and Joker was an absolute lock. I should have. I should have. The last thing I'll say about Heath Ledger's Joker is that I was watching a Christian Bail interview where he was talking about it.

And he was like, you know, he was talking with great reverence and respect for like having work. with Heath, this is many years later, but he was like, he was like, you know, when Chris and I put together this Batman, we talked about how the Batman villains always overshadow Batman and how we want to make sure that that didn't happen. He was like, and then I was watching Heath do what he did, and I was like, oh, great. Oh, no. No one's going to give a shit about Bruce Wayne in this movie. So, yeah. Stay tuned for Bain. I think I should do my number one, and then we should close with Thrones. That's what I think. Tell us. It's suiting. It's fitting here. I think that. Potter and Throids at the top. This is my Harry Potter pick.

Yeah. Let's just roll that beautiful bean footage. Let me make this quite plain. You have been told that a certain dark wizard is at large once again. This is a lie. It's not a lie. I saw him. I fought it. Detention, Mr. Potter.

Oh, Dolores Sumberge. Amelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge. Great pick. This is, this was the first name I wrote down when we decided to do this. Amazing. Tell me why. And then I was like, I never thought she'd be number one at my list and then she wound up at number one on my list.

And I should say, so like, as you alluded to in your Potter entry, like, this current chapter of Potter fandom that we're living in with Joe Rowling has made it like hard to talk about Harry Potter without all the associations that come with it. And I felt like this is a really good way to talk about that. Because like some people might argue that the greatest villain Joe Rowling created what's herself right now. Absolutely. Yeah. But there are, that is not necessarily why I immediately thought of Umbrage. I immediately thought of Umbrage because of the moment of history we're living in now. This idea, and actually you can take politics, out of it, though it seems impossible to do, this era of misinformation.

Sure. This era of, especially with like the advent of AI, the most recent development of like SORA AI, like one of my number one Instagram Reels I watch right now is this guy who just like shows you an AI creative video and then shows you what to look for to know that it's AI because it is becoming harder and harder and harder to know if what we're looking at is real. And propaganda has always been a thing. misinformation has always been a thing.

But it's becoming, there are tools now that just make it so much harder to know what is true and what is right. That's taking politics out of it. Putting politics back into it, the idea of, you know, this political functionary, right? The senior undersecretary to the Minister of Magic. Dolores Umbridge, simpering her way through this story. Yeah, there's this Shakespeare quote that I, that was really hard for me to wait to, to drop it because it's one of my favorite. Hamlet about Claudius, one can smile and smile and be a villain. This idea of her smiling, simpering, pretty little pinkness around this rot and this just like absolutely nasty wielding of petty power.

A petty power that is so incontrovertible inside of the, order of the world that she functions in, that even Dumbledore can't, or I would say won't, like, fight against it inside of this part of the narrative, right? The idea, Voldemort, obviously hugely important, Belatrix, like there are huge villains inside of the Harry Potter world. There's something scarier to me about this character who is closer to our reality than those other supernatural characters. You know, for book folks, just seeing, like, him together, like, is, is, is chilling. But Amel de Staunton, I think, is incredible in this role.

Yeah, sensational. And I think that, like, I, when thinking about something that represent, you know, if you ask me when this film came out, is this going to be your number one list, number one villain on a list, you know, looking back to 25s, I was like, no. But thinking about where we are, I'm just like, this is such an important creation. an important person to think about inside of what we are currently living with. Stephen King, creator of many important villains, has this pretty famous quote, The Gently Smiling Dolores Umbridge with her girlish voice,

Toad-like face, and clutching stubby fingers, is the greatest make-believe villain to come along since Hannibal Lecter. Here's what Joe Rowling said about, Lorce Umbridge, which feels deeply ironic. Yeah. A lack of real warmth or charity. Umbrage's desire to control to punish and to inflict pain

all the name of law and order are, I think, every bit as reprehensible as Lord of Olomor's unvarnished espousal of evil. Interesting, Joe, and last of that least, I will say, uh, I have a quote from C.S. Lewis. about, well, like, there's the, the Hannah Wrent, the idea of the banality of evil, right, to describe things that happened in the Holocaust. This idea of what Umbridge does for the greater good, which is something she invokes, right? C.S. Lewis wrote, of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent, moral, busy bodies.

The rubber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep. His cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. Dolores, assigning lines and detention. Yeah, I must not tell lies. Telling you that the thing you saw with your own eyes is not true makes her so sticky in my mind and heart right now. Will this be true if we live long enough to do of the half century?

Will Dolores be my number one? I hope not. But right now, she's my number one. And I just, I think she's an incredible creation. I think it's incredibly ironic for Joe Rowling to have created her. And I think Amelda Staunton is incredible in this role. So here she is. Fantastic pick.

Co-assigned in full. Yeah, I mean, we've talked about this on a few pods recently, but in all respects, the villains, the heroes, the dark, the light, like, J.K. Rowling, completely, willfully, actively, repeatedly losing sight of the message of her own story is such a deep and harmful and painful and painful tragedy for so many people who specifically found in this world belonging and acceptance and an embrace in contrast what you would hear from umbrage or

Voldemort that I can be whoever I want to be and now she is out there with her overt bigot bigotry and transphobia telling people they don't get to decide who they are it's it's so horrific like it just is it's appalling so well stated here we are My number one is from Game of Thrones. I have prepared a clip. Okay. And it features both of the characters who you think I might be picking. So even when I play the clip, you won't know.

Any man who must say, I am the king is no true king. I'll make sure you understand that when I've won your war for you. Can I explain? Yes. You did pick the one that I was hoping and is my number one. I picked Tywin Lannister. You picked Simon Lannister. Yeah.

I got scared for a second. You thought I was going to pick Joffrey. I actually thought maybe you picked Jamie and I was like so like, no, I would never. No, I would never. You pick Loki. True. You know, like, whatever. Anyway, Taiwan is the pick.

It would have been my number one had I chosen it. But we had this like weird back and forth where we were trying to feel out. It feels to me with respect to like Ramsey Bolton, who I think is a great villain or Roos Bolton who is a great, but just great. with no respect to the Knight King who did not war in consideration at the end of the day, I think there were like three actual contenders for me for the Game of Thrones pick. And they were Joffrey, Circe, and Tywin. Three generations, baby. Exactly.

Something there about cycles and what we passed down and inherit. And so I guess we can, you know, you've already beautifully articulated the Circe case. But I guess they're all kind of in the brew, in the mix together. Why Tywin instead of Joffrey? because I do think there's a chance that people are listening to the pod like neither of you pick Joffrey that's whack

let me explain maybe not I should give the bad babies more credit I hope they're saying that's whack I hope in 2025 they're like that's wack you

Taiwan as we as we just saw he sent the king to bed without his dinner Alzheimer but more broadly than that right like he had to come and clean up all of Geoffrey's messes

and rule his kingdom for him certainly I think he can go scroll for scroll, Raven scroll for Raven scroll with Joffrey on the devastating death front. Like I see your Ned beheading and I raise you the red fucking wedding, you know? Joffrey, fantastic villain, undeniably so. Mean, petty, cruel, but Tywin was beat for beat so much scarier to me. The calculating nature of Tywin Lanster from the first moment that we meet him in that tent with Jamie,

skinning, blood on the hand. peeling back the fur and the skin and the layers, talking about what family means without ever understanding that in full and true. The way that Taiwan related to the idea of control, what Taiwan thought about control, either on an individual level, a house level, the realm, the way that he was so comfortable,

understood, not only comfortable being in the shadows, but understood that that's where you could really exert your power, not sitting, sprawling like Jophe. on the Iron Throne, that wasn't the place to be or the way to do it, the quiet menace that really dictated the state of play and the affairs in the realm. You know, I always love, this was how, like, this was how the season three was, like, marketed, basically around this idea. I always love that, Tierra, and quote, seven kingdoms united in fear of Tywin Lanster, and how,

like, for the really richest, ripest stretch of thrones, how true that was. what a force and what a presence he was. And I think that like the moments where we glimpse however briefly something fleeting but redeeming about Taiwan, like say the stretch of bonding very organically and authentically with Aria at Heron Hall, all those moments ultimately serve to do is bring the like nefarious absence of what he ever gave to his own family further to the fore. And I think that the greatest indictment of Taiwan is not what he did. did to the realm, though that was, we've got some notes. That was bad. That was bad, but to his own

family. Like, trying to control the kingdoms when you can't keep your own house in order. And you can go kid by kid and beat by beat. And obviously, like, we've loved talking together and with all of our other Thrones pals over the years about the Taiwan Jamie relationship and every moment from that first scene, you know, become the man you were always meant to be. And this idea of, like, who decides that for somebody? Like, what do you know about the people that you would deign to say that to and think you got to make that decision for. And everything for Tywin being about, like, you know, the idea of legacy and the weight of the family name without him ever really considering who the people inside of his own family wanted to be or what they were doing with their time or with

each other, like the great delicious irony of that. You know, something like a moment we love and cherish so deeply. Jamie Gifting Brianne, the sword, right? Oathkeeper. Like, it's a moment that is so full of heft and the ability to like find something with somebody else that allows you to better believe in what you can achieve because they saw something in you. And the irony of like that's a sword that Jamie is able to give to Breanne is able to unlock a moment like that with because his own father was like, well, a man with no family like needs a sword. Goodbye. You're dead to me. We're done. Right. Circe. All of the arguments. over the years. I won't be your brood mayor. You will. You'll do your duty. The season four

trump card that she issues to him is one of my favorite Thrones moments. How is that possible? What am I saying? Of course it's possible. How can someone so consumed by the idea of his family have any conception what his actual family was doing? We were right there in front of you and you didn't see us. One look in the past 20 years. One real look at your own children and you would have known. And then of course that brings us to Tyrion. the castorly rock horror house scene? Is there a more painful moment in all of Game of Thrones? Then Tyrion going to his own father and having him say

you are an ill-made spiteful little creature full of envy, lust, and low cunning, men's laws give you the right to bear my name and display my colors since I cannot prove that you are not mine. And to teach me humility, the gods have condemned me to watch you waddle about, wearing that proud lion that was my father's sigil and his father's before him. But neither gods nor a man will ever compel me to let you turn castorly rock into your whorehouse. And then, of course, the trial and Tyrion with the crossbow on the privy

and what Tywin Lannister's legacy ultimately really was. I think that the show, and I say this is like a real admirer and lover of season six, which is like quietly my favorite, as you know, just because it has some of my favorite episodes, even though I think three and four are the best. The show was never quite the same after Charles Dance and Tywin and Lanister were gone. But, like, Westrose is not the same. The fact that, like, a plot,

a significant subject of conversation for some of our main characters is the power vacuum left behind by Tyman Lanister and how there's not a single person who can rule it. You know? Yeah. Absolutely. I agree.

Like, once Charles Dan, Like, also, Charles Dance's performance here, like, we've talked about some incredible performers here, but, like, you would not say Michael Emerson, Imelda Staunton, Heath Ledger, or whatever, you would not ever accuse them of being, like, restrained necessarily in their performances, right? But there's something so quietly dignified. Not that he never raised his voice, but he's never going big, right? He was just controlled and restrained and like tall and broad-shouldered and terrifying. And I just love Tywin Landister so much. I'm so glad that we both agree that this is like, this is it. This is it.

It really is. It would have been my number one. I'm glad it feels right. I agree. I almost move Ben up to number one. I was like, I just can't take Taiwan out of the number one spot. I can't do it. It feels right.

Fantastic. Should we rapid fire some honorable mentions? We've hit a lot of them as we've gone. Yeah. We've hit the Thrones alts, I think. Yes. No case to be made for your own great joy, sorry. Nope.

Marvel. Other Marvel alt, so Thanos. Thanos. Magneto in the X-Men franchise, obviously. Yeah, Magneto. Green Goblin, Doc. Doc. Netflix version?

Kate. Kingpin? Kate and Thor. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Netflix Kingpin was on here for me. Kilgrave? Kilgrave.

Our guy. Yeah. Really good. we hit our Star Wars Alts Did you consider Man of Black for Lost? It was just Ben. It was just always going to be Ben. Hot Sauron, who fucks?

Okay, so yeah, this was actually... It's weird to not have Sauron, but like, this was my big, like, kept moving and on and off the list. But it's just like Sauron is like a thing. Yeah. That looms, but is not... We need to see the end of Rings of Power because I think this like classic villas because obviously the trilogy, the films are this century.

So just even the I-H-S-R-R-N. I almost put the I-S-R-R-on. But there's not enough. I agree. There's not enough, I mean, obviously as an idea. Yeah. And what Sauron represents, certainly iconic all-time. But I did, with Rings of Power and during the chat,

Halbrand and Anatar plus the classic Sauron. That's enough, I think, to make the case. But I think that my hope is that when we finish our rings of power journey, we're like, this has to be on the top 10. This is also a reason, partially because I let Spike stand in for all of, but, like, Sam Reid's Listat, I really consider putting that on the list. This is, like, actually one of my favorite, like, performances and characters. But Listad is, of course, like a questionable villain.

at the end of the day. And then also that show isn't over. So I just... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't think Homelander's going to go in a direction that I'm unsurprised by it. So that's like... That one felt safe. Mrs. Coulter from His Dark Materials. Great pick. Not the film version with respect. But Ruth Wilson. But Ruth Wilson on the HBO series. Azula. Azula was also...

Really high on my list. I had Azula on my list at one point, actually. I had her on my list as well. And I felt like it would be really fun to have an Avatar The Last Air Fender pick. So Azula was an honorable mention. Frontman from Squid Game. Despite how Squid Game ended, I think Frontman is really a great villain. Nathan from Ex Machina. Yes.

Pennywise. Not for me, obviously, because I'm not capable of consuming. Maybe if it Part 2 had been better. But what Bill Sarsgaard does with Pennywise is just like, I wouldn't know because I can't. I'm too scared. Horrifying. Too scared. Pixar.

Here's what I'm going to throw out for you from my Pixar pick. Ernesto de la Cruz from Kroes from Kroo. Coco. Oh, really good. Yeah. I love Coco. Me too. That movie is incredible. I fucking saw it like a baby when I saw that for the first time. Um, Aubrey Plaza in Legion. Ooh, that's a really good one. Yeah. Oh, I like that one. Blackjack Randall from Outlander. Oh, tough. Yes. Couple walking dead contenders. The governor would probably be my nominee. Let's see what else. We already did. I'm going to go for Mission Impossible. I know we don't agree on this, but I'm going to go Solomon Lane.

Okay. I know you're not. Support you. Not the entity. I really like Andrew Scott's Moriarty. Yeah. And Sherlock, it's just incredible. You know, because we have established as House of Our Canon,

the Gladiator and the Gladiator films count as House of Arcore. I'll put Comitus out there. Okay, great. Is Sherlock House of R? I'd like it to be. Okay, me too. It's on time. It feels right.

You know, I felt like late in honorable mentions. I think the turn toward from villain to hero came too much of the movie is actually like, this is a good guy we're rooting for to make the case. But Matt Max Jerry Road, our guy and I call Knox. Those start as a bad guy. I did think about a Morton Joe, but it, like, I love Morton Joe, but it's just like it's not, it's not top ten material. Yeah.

Any other honorable mentions. That's all I got. I mean, we've already talked about most of my fantastic stuff. We did it. We did it. We did. Had a great time. We had a great time.

Thank you. Let's your list. Yeah, yes. Here's a refresher. 10 through 1. David from the alien franchise. Adam from Dark. Grand Admiral Thron from Star Wars, Rebels,

Homelander from the Boys. Six from Battlestar Galactica. Heath Ledgers, the Joker from the Dark Knight. Voldemort from Harry Potter. Loki from the MCU, Ben, Linus from Lost, and Tywin Lannister from Game of Thrones. Give me yours. The Min Identity from Dr.

Who? Homelander from the boys. Animated Darth Mall from Clomores and Rebels. Lady Jessica, Atradis, Circee Lanister, Killmonger from Black Panther, Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Benjamin Linus from Loss, Heath Ledger's Joker, and then Amelda Stanton as Dolores, Unbridge. Great stuff. For the last few weeks, I've been thinking about how we said on the hype meter pod that we'd recap R10 through 1 and then didn't. It has been haunting you. There we do. We did it. Bad babies, let us know what other best of the century so far. Pods you want us to do? Yeah.

I can't believe you didn't have X. Can't wait for those comments. Please. Favorites. Comment below. This was a blast. It was joy, a delight. I had just a wonderful time talking about all of these deeply complex, sometimes outright, terrible figures.

Sometimes figures on an arc. And I cannot wait to be back with you literally tomorrow. though it will post a couple days after that. Later for the bad babies, but yeah, tomorrow for us. Bobby. I know. Until then. Thank you.

Thank you, too. His name, we've been staring at it the entire time, and yet I almost forgot. Just a reminder. Mike a wargon. Not only is Worgs once again stepping in to help us out. Always a treat. He's here in person today. Oh my gosh.

I mean, the whole ringer crew is here. It's true. An in-person pod with Wargs. What a thrill. What a delight. Thank you to Wargs. Thank you to John Richter. Thank you to Arjuna Ramga Powell. And thank you to Joomi and Denneran for his work on the social.

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