History Now

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Top 5 Villains on TV:

So, just to mix things up a bit and keep things interesting for everybody, I’m going to do something fun today and list the top 5 greatest villains in television history. I know this has been done many, many times before, but in recent years lists like this have gotten… well, dull and predictable. We’re all sick of hearing about the Others or Cylon Number 3 or Sylar or the Borg. So, this list should be just a little different than what you’re used to.

One can hope, anyway, right?

5. Lilly Cane – Veronica Mars

As any fan of the underappreciated Rob Thomas show about a perky, quick witted, teenage blonde detective knows, Lilly Cane never makes an appearance on screen in anything other than a flash-back or a dream sequence. Why? Because a year before the show’s storyline takes place, the innocent Lilly Cane was murdered, sending her best friend Veronica’s life into spiraling shambles. Throughout the course of the first season, as Veronica tries to solve the mystery of her friend’s murder, we find out that Lilly Cane… Well, she was not so innocent. In fact, it becomes clear pretty quickly that Lilly is, in fact, the cause of most, if not all, the Mars family problems, and… Well, she just wasn’t a very nice person. Conniving bitch might be more accurate. 

4. The Replicators – Stargate Atlantis

While the format of the show itself may have thrown a kink into pacing of the Replicator story arc (not to mention a certain actress not reprising a certain role), whenever we got one of those great three-part episodes… Well, they were the high point of an always solid show. Unlike their SG-1 counterparts, the Pegasus Galaxy’s version of the Replicators were used for more than just super cool computer graphic battles, but also had a complex and, from a fan’s perspective, thought provoking story line. Also, any group that a certain Friendly Replicator Android (FRAN) might belong to… That’s a villain that deserves mentioning. 

3. Number 2 – The Prisoner

If you haven’t seen The Prisoner, you need to. Twin Peaks gets a lot of credit for its innovation and how it inspired current shows (like Lost and Veronica Mars), that’s just because these people haven’t seen The Prisoner. Unfortunately, the show, like most great shows that end before their time, we never got to figure out what was really happening. All we knew was that Number 6 was being played and whoever Number 2 happened to be that week was the one doing the playing. 

2. Lilah Morgan – Angel 

Unlike the other Big Bads of Angel and its parent show Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Lilah Morgan had a certain human aspect that was noticeably lacking otherwise. Mainly because she was human. Lilah was, by far, the best fleshed out villain on either show. She always stayed true to character and didn’t fall victim to the villain faux pas that plagued Buffy and Angel. If Joss Whedon ever got something wrong, it was that turning a good character evil and an evil character good is NOT character development. That, my friends, is called a plot device. Interesting plot device? On these shows, yes, it was very interesting. But you didn’t need to do that with Lilah. She always stayed true to character. She was always conniving. Everything she did was calculated to work against Angel, and she was one of the few people that walked the line between Wolfram & Hart and free will until the very end. The one thing you knew for sure, no matter what, was that if Lilah was on screen, plotting her plots, something interesting was going to happen in this episode. 

1. The Smoking Man – The X-Files 

For 9 years, nobody really knew what the hell was going on with the X-Files, but they did know one thing: Whatever it was, the Smoking Man was behind it.

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