Live Poll: Best TV Villain of 2025

@GabrielFox​  Many polls are going to be at least somewhat subjective and there's no way to get around that unless we decide that the contents of every poll must come from an outside source. No one has ever even suggested that, at least not that I know of, and that would be often impractical and also not as much fun. Regardless, that's not Paok's doing. Also, his name is already on the poll as the author so he's not misrepresenting anything. Besides, Paok  takes suggestions so you certainly could have suggested characters yourself or disputed any specific character. (We're all working with incomplete knowledge: no one can see every movie and every TV series and that's one of the reasons for these threads: to share information.) And to be fair, Paok is probably one of the most generous and accepting of suggestions of everyone on this Board. Your comment sounds like an attack* and while everyone has bad days and most of us have probably acted on irritability at times, this all works so much better if we try to be respectful of others and remain mindful that, like it or not, this is a community venture.

If you would rather we not do "Best" polls the way that we've been doing them before Paok ever made a poll, there's certainly a way to address that. You're certainly welcome to start a thread about that but leaving a comment that's directed at one particular person isn't at all productive, may be counter productive, and may upset the person on the other end. 

*I do realize that many of us have different first languages and things can easily be lost in translation, even among people with the same first language,  so I apologize if I misinterpreted anything. 

@Peter_pbn​ corrected

@Pencho15​ all of them added, thanks!

@NYVKE​ That would be a shame, there are some good villains there.

Vecna is this decade's Walter White (/Joker/Thanos).

@NYVKE​ I got bored with Stranger Things after season 2 so I never got the pleasure 

@rubyfruit76​ All right I'll take your word for it. I am currently watching it but I'm just in episode two so I don't know yet what's coming. Maybe the leader of the drug traffickers is an important villain?

@Pencho15​ I don't want to spoil anything else but as of one and half episodes to go, there's someone who may not be what they seem but I don't yet know who that is or the details. But where I left off, the biker gang, and specifically Perry and Jayson are the antagonists and much more villainous than Robbie. That's not a spoiler, though: the leaders of the biking gang quickly become  much more important and their menacing ways aren't ever hidden. The next person will be a surprise, though -- but for practical reasons, it can't be Robbie. I am also still very curious about the leader of the drug traffickers, as well: Where I am, he still hasn't been completely fleshed out. But apparently there's also someone who seems to be on the side of the angels but is working both ends. They've narrowed it down to four people. Let's chat again when we've both finished watching it and compare notes. : )

@rubyfruit76​ Robbie deleted

@Aris_Athanas​ and @Pencho15​    Oh geez, silly me: I went investigating and walked right into a spoiler, lol. Curiosity killed the cat. It nonetheless didn't answer all questions so, Paok, if you want to wait until Friday (when probably only Face-Offs will go live), I'll finish watching Task then and have a better sense of who exactly are the most villainous. When I went investigating, though, I did confirm that it's not Robbie and yes, Jayson and Perry are good candidates but there are a couple of others, one or two who may trump even them. Like this writer's other work (Mare of Easttown, for example), it seems there's a lot of moral ambiguity, a lot of morally grey characters, and unfolding levels of antagonists up until the very end. 

Whoever that final villain is, it may be better not to include him or her to avoid spoilers in the poll

Here are Jayson and Perry from Task to include

Another possibility from a series I just started watching:

Benito Mussolini from Mussolini: Son of the Century

@Pencho15​ added