TV and movie bad guys had a big 2018, with a number of them emerging that we all loved to hate, and some that we hated to love.
Arguably, there were also a few villains that were far too ambiguous to fall on either side, such as Michael B. Jordan’s Erik Killmonger from Black Panther, who many felt was not entirely in the wrong but rather just a bit misguided.
Videos by PopCulture.com
Then there were anti-heroes like Deadpool and Venom, both of which are neither fully good nor entirely bad.
Below, you’ll find a list of some great TV and movies bad guys from 2018 who were undeniably in the wrong, but we still loved them anyway. Scroll down to check it out and let us know in the comments who your favorite villain of the year was!
[Please Note: There may be spoilers for some films and TV shows.]
Michael Myers (Halloween)
Michael Myers is one of the most iconic horror movie villains of all-time, but normally we find ourselves rooting for the knife-wielding psychopath.
The newest Halloween film, however, brought back Jamie Lee Curtis’ Laurie Strode and added her daughter and granddaughter, as played by Judy Greer and Andi Matichak, respectively. Together, the Strode women proved to be a force of strength that Michael’s will was just no match for.
All things considered though, Michael still gave fans some brutal moments that were really exciting and reminded them why he’s such a legend.
Hill House (The Haunting of Hill House)
When it comes to TV shows, there was maybe no better villain than Hill House, from Netflix’s The Haunting of Hill House.
The massive, unsettling mansion gave us bone-chilling imagery and forced the Crain family to see and do unspeakable things. It also gave us a handful of other creepy villains by extension, such as the Bent-Neck Lady and the Bowler Hat Man.
Hill House may have been a possessed and murderous entity, but we fans could not help but be captivated by it every second.
Thanos (Avengers: Infinity War)
Thanos is a bad guy. No doubt about it. There are some who argue that from his point of view he was just trying to save the universe from itself, but anyone who so casually obliterates Spider-Man is a villain to the core.
Fans have been waiting for years for Thanos’ villainy to be fully realized and from literally the very beginning of Infinity War he is one of the most hate-able monsters ever to cross the Avengers.
While there is no telling what the 2019 follow-up will have in-store for the genocidal purple monster, one thing for certain is that moviegoers will happy to see him get served an intergalactic gauntlet-whopping.
Claire Underwood (House of Cards)
This will likely be a controversial choice, but there is a method to the madness, as it were. Claire Underwood is a bada—, that much is true, but no matter how you spin it, she is still villain.
She may have come out from behind the shadow of her decidedly much more villainous husband Frank, but she is by no means innocent as she went along with almost all of his illegal actions.
Claire also committed plenty of legitimate crimes herself. The final season of House of Cards saw Robin Wright’s character stem into the forefront by fighting her way there, but even to the very end she was a remorseless villainess.
The Indoraptor (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom)
To date, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is one of the top five movies of 2018, bringing in $400 million at the box office.
A big part of that is the films dino bad guy, the cunning and vicious Indoraptor. The Indorapter was created by splicing together the DNA of th Indominus rex (from the first Jurassic World) with Velociraptor DNA.
The result is the single most brilliant-yet-homicidal dinosaur to ever roam the grounds of a creepy mansion and its sub-basement science lab.
Dolores Abernathy (Westworld)
Westworld is a deeply complex and complicated television show, and Evan Rachel Wood’s death-dealing android Dolores is at the very center of the entire plot.
Discussing the story in depth would take far to much time, but suffice to say that Dolores begins a journey that has led her to preside over an android/human war contained solely within the leisure park, for now.
Blood and oil have been shed aplenty, with hubris seeming to be Dolores’ most dominate emerging quality.
August Walker (Mission: Impossible – Fallout)
Henry Cavill seems like one of the nicest guys in Hollywood, which made a great choice to play Clark Kent/Superman, but in Mission: Impossible – Fallout, Cavill trades in the cape for a mustache and comes to fisticuffs with Tom Cruise rather than Ben Affleck.
Frankly, Cavill as August Walker in the thrilling action flick is one of the best performances he has ever delivered (behind his tragically underrated role as Napoleon Solo in the 2015 remake of The Man from U.N.C.L.E.).
If this new turn in any indication, Cavill should start choosing bad guys roles much more often because he is absolutely fantastic at it.
Viktor Drago (Creed II)
One could argue that Viktor Drago’s (Florian Munteanu) bad guy status in Creed II is somewhat complicated, but there are some clear signs he was a full-fledged villain. Most notably, the fact that he blatantly fights dirty early on in the film, and then publicly ridicules Adonis (Michael B. Jordan) afterwards.
However, there are other factors to the character that develop over time which keep him from being entirely loathsome. Ultimately, though, we love Adonis Creed so much that it’s not hard to hate Viktor for his treatment of the boxing champ.
