Be honest with yourselves; awful character traits are the best. Who didn’t tune into Game of Thrones weekly to see what shady malevolence Joffrey Baratheon was up to?
Walter White isn’t the most vile reprobate to ever cross the small screen. He’s practically a household name, cheered and loathed in equal measure.
One of the most powerful and insanely popular scenes in the entire Star Wars saga is when Darth Vader enters a dark, smokey hallway on a Rebel ship and unleashes a hellish slaughter on the crew.
It’s not the everyday good guy who makes us perk up on the couch and lean forward in anticipation.
It’s the callous degenerate, the spiteful dictator, the bumbling father wrecking his way through life, or the selfish spinster, always undermining the best characters.
Why? Who knows?
This isn’t an exercise in psychological philosophy.
Some creative minds out there just know how to make a bad character fun by depicting their worst moments in the most entertaining ways.
Captain Jack Randall (Outlander)
Black Jack is a far cry from Tobias Menzie’s squeamish portrayal of Edmure Tully.
The aura of restrained violence follows Jack wherever he goes, but his malevolence is kept in check by his careful observations of those around him, especially Claire.
He wraps his sadistic hedonism in the red coat of an officer in service of Britain, leading through fear and control.
What makes Outlander’s Jack so compelling is his ability to remain consummately calm as he plucks every last morsel of physical, mental, and spiritual torment from his victims.
Worst, his most awful character traits remain beneath the murky depths of a cold stare.
There is truly no calculating how far he will go without societal restraint and his position as a British officer, though he is able to skirt the rules often enough.
Beth Dutton (Yellowstone)
Few characters on TV can conjure vitriolic levels of disagreement like Yellowstone’s Beth Dutton.
She’s either loved or hated, with little to no in-between. This is mostly due to her relationship with her brother, Jamie Dutton.
Beth is a strong-willed force driven by intoxicating levels of wealth, power, vengeance, and fear. Yes, fear.
Her emotional insecurities fuel her behavior, often driving her to push things too far. She’s one of those rare characters that garners a lot of attention despite lacking a character arc.
No one can disagree that Beth Dutton in later seasons is the same Beth Dutton from the first season. Her vulnerability draws the viewer in despite the fact that Beth will likely never change.
Homelander (The Boys)
The best depictions of awful character traits are the ones with disparate, underlying derivations. Homelander is exquisitely arrogant, pompous, and downright murderous when he doesn’t get his way.
It’s rare to see epic levels of narcissism and psychopathy present themselves in an entertaining manner, but Antony Starr pulls it off with zeal and unbridled enthusiasm.
Homelander’s sick character traits are wholly derived from his self-loathing, making him one of the most fascinating characters to enter the superhero genre in a long time.
He may be the anti-superman of The Boys’ universe, but he’s also the most fragile.
Theon Grejoy (Game of Thrones)
Theon (Alfie Allen) is an interesting dichotomy, even more so from the point of view of the fans.
How is it that a character who did terrible things but far less than the likes of Jamie Lannister and Sandor Clegane became so hated?
The answer is simple: cowardice. Though Jamie and Sandor were reprehensible in their own ways, both were warriors and loved as such.
Before Ramsey Bolton imprisoned and tortured him, Theon betrayed the most popular family on the show.
Post-betrayal, he was a broken coward, fleeing in the face of his own sister’s demise.
His awful character traits, before and after his fall, were so well depicted that Theon is one of the most reviled characters in Game of Thrones.
Jinx (Arcane)
Jinx is perfectly depicted as the young, cute character that everyone ignores — the one who messes everything up and destroys the lives around her (at least, from her point of view).
Unbeknownst to her friends, family, and allies, this clumsy, empathetic portrayal was really a cocoon. What grew within was a maniacal Arcane version of Harley Quinn.
Her unpredictability is her strength, and she is just as likely to sit and talk calmly as she is to blow up a skyscraper while hysterically laughing at the sky.
She’s a walking powder keg and fascinating to watch because you never know what she might do next.
The Ghoul (Fallout)
Not all awful character traits reveal themselves via a slow-burn character arc.
By all measures, Cooper Howard was a good family man who loved his wife and child. Two centuries later, give or take a few decades, and he’s a cold, callous killer with zero empathy.
Such a drastic change doesn’t normally work, but Fallout is not a normal, cut-and-dry series.
The Cooper Howard of love, hard work, and family witnesses his wife’s betrayal of humanity right before the entire world is engulfed in a nuclear holocaust.
Even so, the difference is jarring, and it works so well because his transition from family man to calculating, sometimes vengeful killer is left to the imagination.
Harmony Cobel (Severance)
Cold, lifeless granite and Harmony Cobel are one and the same until they aren’t — usually in shocking, explosive fashion.
Patricia Arquette plays the perfectly calm, emotionless Harmony that could teach Spock how to repress emotions.
That’s what makes her sudden outbursts so shocking and disturbing, like when she chucked a coffee mug at Mark’s head.
It came from nothing — explosive rage from a cold, reptilian creature slinking behind the dead eyes of a Luman Industries supervisor.
By the end of Severance, we witness a full-fledged meltdown. It’s shocking not just because it’s coming from a seemingly lifeless rock but because it’s difficult to fathom how this lifeless rock held it in for so long and with such ease.
Aemond Targaryen (House of the Dragon)
Ewan Mitchell has a fantastic range, going from a young warrior monk in The Last Kingdom to the most subtly intimidating, disturbing, and powerful force in the room as Aemond Targaryen in House of the Dragon.
Of Aemond’s many awful character traits, it’s his quiet, near-whisper dialogue that conveys the most threat. Sure, he’s petulant, jealous, and ambitious of his less-deserving brother’s ascension to the iron throne.
However, he has no qualms about roasting his brother alive hundreds of feet above the ground and watching him fall.
His youth and impulsive nature are his weaknesses, however.
His malevolent nature is less repulsively cruel than his brother’s, but his quiet insidiousness is somehow more terrifying nonetheless.
Sheldon Cooper (Young Sheldon and Big Bang Theory)
Not all awful character traits involve brutal oppression, murder, vengeance, and psychopathic tendencies.
Some are far simpler despite inhabiting an above-average intellect. Sheldon is the result of being different, though not necessarily in the worst ways.
Simply put, he thinks he’s more intelligent than everyone in the room. The problem? He is. That’s the most frustrating part about this character trait and why it’s so fundamentally annoying.
Ironically, this makes him the least-liked character on a show where he is the central focal point.
Fortunately, Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon both surround him with otherwise likable characters. If either were a young man (or a young boy) show, both would have failed.
There are far too many characters to list, so feel free to comment and tell us which characters you think exhibit the most awful character traits in fascinating ways!