Ranking Stephen King’s 10 Best Villains of All Time

Stephen King has a vault full of novels, novellas, and short stories. Some are vivid, sprawling epics. Others inspired Academy Award-winning movies. One hallmark of his writing is his gift for memorable villains, whether they’re human or creatures from another world.

King makes great villains because he makes most of them sympathetic, no matter how vile their motives or actions. “Even bad guys (most of them anyway) see themselves as good — they are the heroes of their own lives. Giving them a fair chance as characters can create some interesting shades of gray — and shades of gray are also a part of life,” he told Writer’s Digest in 2009.

Halloween is almost here, and Amazon’s Carrie adaptation was just renewed for season 2. To celebrate, here is our official ranking of Stephen King’s 10 best villains of all time.

10. Kurt Barlow

In Salem’s Lot, King took on one of horror’s oldest conventions, the vampire. Even so, the novel feels like King through and through. Novelist Ben Mears returns to his hometown of Jerusalem’s Lot, Maine, to write about the Marsten House, a haunted place that’s the source of one of his great childhood fears. He discovers that a strange man named Kurt Barlow has moved in.

Barlow is a vampire posing as an antique buyer. He slowly and steadily preys on the town’s residents and converts them. King modeled him on traditional vampire figures like Dracula, so he comes across as distant and chilling, with a dispassionate approach to killing. King also uses him well, since Barlow appears sparingly and to great effect.

9. Henry Bowers

It runs well over a thousand pages. Readers have no trouble remembering Pennywise at the center of the killing in Derry, but a less prominent villain like Henry Bowers can slip through the cracks.

Bowers torments the Losers Club, and he’s one of King’s most terrifying everyday villains. He’s racist and sadistic, and he gleefully terrorizes his classmates because of his upbringing and his father’s influence. As the novel progresses, Henry falls under Pennywise’s spell and gets even worse. Over the course of the story, he carves his name into a kid’s belly, poisons a classmate’s dog (R.I.P. Mr. Chips), and commits murder. He still remains a tragic figure and a perfect example of a life ruined by Derry’s corruption.

8. Mrs. Carmody

Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Mass borrows some of King’s best elements. Bev Keane, played by Samantha Sloyan, is one of the best villains in Flanagan’s career, and she feels written from the outline of Mrs. Carmody, the religious zealot in The Mist.

The novella follows David Drayton and his son Billy, who are trapped in a supermarket shrouded by a mist that hides all manner of Lovecraftian horrors. The people in the market are understandably panicked, and Mrs. Carmody makes it worse. She takes advantage of the chaos to turn shoppers into a congregation, makes herself into a kind of prophet, and preaches that the mist is God’s judgement.

7. William Wharton

The Green Mile is not one of King’s scary stories, but it’s among his most disturbing. Paul Edgecomb, a death row supervisor in a 1930s prison, narrates the novel. He tells the story of John Coffey, a man with magical healing powers who arrives at the prison after being convicted of murdering two girls.

Frank Darabont’s 1999 film remains a highlight in the history of King adaptations. Its villain, William “Wild Bill” Wharton, has become a recurring figure in my nightmares. Sam Rockwell plays him as gleeful and sadistic. He’s the true killer of the girls, which makes him a great foil to Coffey.

6. Chris Hargensen

King isn’t a writer most people associate with female characters, yet his first novel started with a girl getting her period. Carrie has a great origin story. Partway through writing it, King decided to throw it in the trash. “I don’t know anything about girls’ locker rooms,” he told PEOPLE. His wife, Tabitha King, rescued it and encouraged him to continue.

One of the book’s most awful and sharply drawn characters is Chris Hargensen, Carrie’s high school bully. Chris is intelligent, wealthy, and popular, and she leads the students who make Carrie’s school years so terrible. She’s behind the tampon-throwing incident in the shower and masterminds the unforgettable pig’s blood prank at prom.

5. Margaret White

If Chris Hargensen is Carrie’s school bully, Margaret White is her bully at home. King often uses several villains in one story, each serving a specific purpose in the larger narrative. Chris is firmly rooted in the real world. Margaret reinforces the story’s supernatural element through her faith, seeing the devil in her daughter’s telekinesis.

Chris pushes Carrie to her breaking point, but Margaret is the one who breaks her. The face-off between mother and daughter is the story’s final confrontation and carries the most emotional weight. Margaret stabs Carrie at her weakest and severs their already strained bond.

4. Jack Torrance

Jack Torrance is one of King’s most personal characters. To write him, King drew on his own fear of himself as a father and his struggles with alcoholism. The character is vividly linked to Jack Nicholson’s terrifying performance, but King’s version of Torrance is just as frightening, even if his villainous transformation is more gradual.

King has more empathy for Torrance than Stanley Kubrick showed in his film. He expands on Jack’s traumatic childhood and the guilt he feels after hurting his son Danny while drunk. In the novel, Torrance still terrorizes his family (with a mallet in place of the movie’s axe), but the story ends on a redemptive beat. As the Overlook Hotel goes up in flames, Torrance breaks free from his demons and lets Danny escape.

3. Randall Flagg

King has many famous villains, but Randall Flagg is the one he has written about the most. Flagg appears in The Eyes of the Dragon, The Stand, and the The Dark Tower series. He has become an Easter egg for King’s readers because of his many aliases, most of which share the initials R.F.

Flagg is a sorcerer with a prominent role in the Kingverse. His background shows a human who became monstrous by choice. He changes slightly depending on the novel or story, but he’s always charming and power-hungry, out to fulfill his ends no matter the cost. What makes him so engaging is how much fun he’s having.

2. Annie Wilkes

Before Pennywise overtook pop culture as King’s de facto villain, Annie Wilkes was a major contender. She has no scary clown makeup and no superpowers. Annie is an old-school killer and the primary antagonist of Misery, made famous by Kathy Bates’ incredible performance in the 1990 movie.

At the start of the novel, Annie is introduced as the savior of novelist Paul Sheldon, who has been in a near-fatal car crash. She acts like a sweet woman and patiently nurses him back to health. Things turn when she learns the fate of her favorite character from his books. The discovery leads to Sheldon’s torture, and Annie forces him to write a new novel where she gets what she wants.

1. Pennywise

Pennywise is the first villain that comes to mind whenever we talk about Stephen King. It’s understandable. The name comes with an image: a happy clown with a playful voice, white makeup, and a painted red smile and nose. There’s also a terrifying maw filled with sharp teeth.

Thanks to Andy Muschietti’s movies and the TV show Welcome to Derry, Pennywise has become one of the biggest monsters of the contemporary era and a fixture at Halloween parties. It’s mostly associated with its clown form, but Pennywise is an entity from another world that shapeshifts into its target’s worst fears. Unlike most of the characters on this list, Pennywise has no concern for humanity or sympathy. It embodies pure evil and sits in a league of its own.

Source: Polygon