Villains Rankings - Part 2
12 - Cigarette Smoking Man (5 pts.) - rankings (7, 9, 1)
It was intended to refer to the likely longterm result of his tobacco habit, but this conspiratorial character's second sobriquet, "Cancer Man," is in many ways more apt. He and his shadowy Syndicate ate away the system from the inside, preparing the planet for alien invasion with a ruthless, decades-long cover-up — which, ironically, only Mulder and Scully managed to uncover. Played with weathered gravitas by William B. Davis, he is perhaps the prime example of the mastermind model of TV villainy.
11 - Arthur Mitchell - Trinity Killer (6 pts.) - rankings (3, 4, 14)
Talk about killer casting. Actor John Lithgow had long walked the line between manic and maniac in his performances, comedic or otherwise, but his role as Arthur Mitchell — the so-called "Trinity Killer" was — saw him leap that line in terrifying fashion. Initially seen as a family-man role model, he's revealed to be Dexter's most prolific and disturbing murderer — evil in a way not even our homicidal antihero can stomach. This makes him the titular killer of killers' most formidable target; it also places the people Dexter cares about in grave peril, as he learns to his lasting devastation.
10 - Marlo Stanfield (7 pts.) - rankings (4, 8, 5)
And now an object lesson in evil, courtesy of a purloined lollipop. By the time Marlo Stanfield waltzed out of a convenience store with a stolen sucker, he'd already been established as the crime drama's most ruthless gangster yet — an underworld wunderkind capable of giving both the Barksdale organization and the Baltimore P.D. a run for their collective money. But we wouldn't learn how ruthless until the shop's guard, half-apologetically, told Stanfield he couldn't let that kind of brazen rule-breaking slide. Marlo has the man executed. His crime: the audacity of expecting to be able to do your job without criminals, white-collar or otherwise, enriching themselves by destroying you for it. "You want it to be one way," Marlo tells him. "But it's the other way." If there's an epigraph for David Simon's entire lament for the American city, there you have it.
9 - Stringer Bell (8 pts.) - rankings (3, 8 , 5)
######, is you taking notes on a criminal ####### conspiracy? (Not in the Rolling Stones list)
8 - Ben Linus (9 pts.) - rankings (10, 11, 3)
Like the magical mystery island that changed the lives of those aboard Oceanic Flight 815, Michael Emerson's performance as Ben Linus warped reality around him. Originally cast as a for a brief arc as a castaway who may or may not have been one of the sinister Others, the actor brought such a twitchy, soft-spoken intensity to the work that showrunners Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse reimagined the role as the series' Big Bad. Kidnapping, torture, mass murder, the sacrifice of his own daughter — there was nothing Ben wouldn't do to protect the Island from those he deemed unworthy of its secrets.
Yet his nerd-turned-bully demeanor contained a perverse charisma — particularly when played off his odd-couple relationship with Terry O'Quinn's John Locke, the Professor X to his Magneto — that slowly won audiences over. By the end of the series he was almost a co-protagonist, granted a shot at redemption he probably didn't deserve. A series is only as good as its bad guys; Lost had its problems but Linus wasn't one of them.
