17 TV Characters We Love To Hate

In every great television series there is one character (or sometimes several) that you don’t particularly like but feel compelled to watch.

Maybe they’re the villain or just a competing love interest, but the complex mix of emotions that results every time they’re on screen can be infectious, and even though you secretly hope for their demise, you can’t imagine the series without them.

Here’s a look at some of our favorite TV characters we love to hate. (Just remember, we do love to hate them.)

1. Joffrey Baratheon (Game of Thrones)

Joffrey Baratheon was key to making Games of Thrones the success that it is today. Joffrey claimed the throne after his legal father died, but he is really the product of an incestuous relationship between his mother and uncle.

He enjoys nothing more than humiliating others and is feared by everyone in Kings Landing, including his own mother.

His character is immature and cruel, and his sadistic tone makes him a compelling character to watch, even if his actions make you sick to your stomach.

2. Cigarette Smoking Man (The X-Files)

Talk about a worthy adversary! The Cigarette Smoking Man from The X-Files deserves to be on this list because he had a hand in everything that went wrong in Mulder and Scully’s lives.

From the second that Cigarette Smoking Man was introduced in the pilot episode, his silent and yet ominous presence started a storyline that brought with it the Syndicate and a push-pull relationship with Assistant Director Skinner as well as Mulder and Scully.

Every time Mulder got close to the truth, this man was there thwarting him. there were many times we wanted to yell at the screen and call him a long string of expletives, we couldn’t help but love when we came on screen, because when he did, things got real.

Honestly, if they’d “defeated” him any earlier (yes, this man is still alive) I don’t think we’d have ten seasons of The X-Files with significant talks for more episodes of the series.

One thing is for sure, this cockroach of a man is sure to haunt the television for years to come.

3. Dawn (Buffy The Vampire Slayer)

We’ve seen the trope about a long-lost sibling before, but Buffy the Vampire Slayer took it to a whole new level when they introduced Dawn in Season 5. Already out of high school, Buffy was in college and growing up, and fourteen-year-old added a bit of teen angst to the Scooby gang that wasn’t needed.

Dawn was a key of mystical energy, given human form by monks. She was what the Glory, the hell god, needed to get back to her own dimension. While Glory’s Season 5 arc was pretty captivating, it seemed like the Scoobies had enough to do without living through Dawn’s teen angst.

Season 5 also contains “The Body,” the completely scoreless episode where Joyce Summers died. So not only did the Scoobies have to deal with Glory but there was also a lot of grief going around.

Once Dawn discovered that she was a blob of energy she became even more insufferable after Joyce’s death, not seeming to understand that rules of Child’s Services still apply even if you are a blob of energy in human form.  

4. Kilgrave (Jessica Jones)

Kilgrave is a character with a lot to hate about him. Maybe the fact that he was played by David Tennant inches the needle in his favor.

Kilgrave met Jessica Jones and proceeded to use her to commit murder. When she walks away from him and leaves him to get hit by a bus, she thought her problems were over.

Nope. Kilgrave survived and started playing a twisted game with her, sending Jessica clients, giving her messages through little girls in the street, and then ultimately threatening the well-being of her best-friend Trish.

For all the horrible implications that Season 1 of Jessica Jones presented, we were drawn in by the hateful relationship between these two.

Yes, his powers are freaky, but that’s what made him captivating to watch.

5. Jo Wilson (Grey’s Anatomy)

Grey’s Anatomy has such a great cast, but the newest cash of interns that was introduced following the plane crash brought along a lot dead weight.

Of the five new interns, Stephanie and Jo were the two to persevere and are still alive going into Season 13. However, Jo has been one train wreck after another.

Jo was a character that hated Meredith Grey and didn’t seem to do anything to really alter their frenemies status. She spent the last season stringing Alex along by a string, turning down proposal after proposal, and then revealed that she was already married.

Let’s queue some more drama for this upcoming season, as if Alex walking in and punching DeLuca in “Family Affair” wasn’t already going to make that needle blip.

6. Thelonius Jaha (The 100)

Every character on this show has done despicable things. There are many lists around the internet ranking characters from The 100 by degree of evil, but one character who we’ve recently loved to hate was Thelonius Jaha.

The former chancellor beat Marcus Kane to redemption as the last of humanity rode the Ark to the ground. Then found a way to get to the ground himself with a missile. Upon reaching Earth he started hearing discussions about a City of Light and he leads some of the Arkers on a quest to find it.

In Season 3, he becomes the disciple of an artificial intelligence called A.L.I.E. and he starts recruiting people into “The City of Light” by giving people “The Key.” The key was a chip they had to swallow which gave A.L.I.E. access to their minds.

Over the course of the season the desperation to recruit people led to Thelonius using coercion to recruit people.

We can say that this version of Thelonius is different from the Thelonius we knew in Seasons 2 and 3, but he was the impetus for this loss of free will. Can his character recover from this? We won’t know what happens until The 100 comes back mid-season.

7. Victoria Grayson (Revenge)

For fans of ABC’s Revenge, it’s more than likely that you had some conflicted feelings about this Hamptons matriarch. Victoria Grayson, played by Madeline Stowe, was the beautiful wife of Conrad Grayson, a billionaire businessman.

Her affair with David Clarke is the axis of the story. When Conrad discovered that he’d given money to a terrorist group and the paper trail could be traced back to his company, Victoria offered David up as a patsy.

David kept a series of journals while in prison that led to his daughter Amanda assuming the fake identity of Emily Thorne. Her mission: to make the Grayson’s pay.

Of course, she’s going up against a lot of money, and Queen Victoria knows how to play her games. In fact, she’s been doing it a lot longer than Emily has. From outing her husband’s affair with her best friend to exposing what Victoria really thinks about her second child, Charlotte, Emily’s games are met with just as much ferocity.

Yes, while we root for Emily Thorne to get her revenge, the deep animosity that they had for each other was what kept us watching.

It also made it hard to imagine the show without her, because if she died anywhere before the series finale, the show would have been over.

8. “The Governor” (The Walking Dead)

 The second half of Season 3 introduced The Walking Dead fans to a man who went by the nickname “The Governor.”

The mentally unstable leader assumed total control over the town of Woodbury. Not only did he lead with an iron fist, but he exhibited a number of peculiar behaviors, including keeping his daughter’s zombified corpse in a special room and holding sparring matches that he insists are fun but are really barbaric in nature.

Fans of The Walking Dead, will tell you that The Governor is pretty evil, but if you google “Why do people hate The Governor in The Walking Dead” you will find articles in which David Morrissey comes to his character’s defense, and even one where he talks about being booed at Comic Con.

The compelling villain was ultimately killed in Season 4, but he had a great ride, and he will forever be a character that The Walking Dead fans will love to hate.

9. Laurel Lance (Arrow)

Dinah Laurel Lance from Arrow was a base-breaking character with many fans wanting her dead, gone, and replaced since Season 2.

In Season 1, Laurel was the main love interest of Oliver Queen and their relationship came with a ton of baggage. Oliver constantly cheated on her and when his ship.

The ghost of Sara looms between them, as does the fact that Laurel has moved on with another man. Her complex feelings about the man she loved rubbed some fans the wrong way.

Over the course of four seasons, she’d developed a drinking problem and struggled with addition and picked up her sister’s role as Black Canary. No matter what seemed to happen to this woman, and let’s be honest, a lot did, you have to admire the way she kept bouncing back until her death in Season 4.

Whatever your feelings towards Laurel Lance, you have to admire the way she bounced back after each time she was kicked down.

10. Oscar (Blindspot)

Blindspot is about a woman found naked in Times Square with her body completely covered in tattoos and no memory of who she is or where she comes from. They call her Jane Doe, but her origins were unknown.

That was, until a man named Oscar showed up and killed the CIA director in order to save her from waterboarding. Oscar then provided what seemed like progress. We learned that apparently the memory wipe was Jane’s plan and that she really is Taylor Shaw, but all of his information felt hollow.

Despite claiming that he cared about Jane, Oscar never revealed any information that could actually help Jane in her mission. So it wasn’t surprise when the season finale led us back to square one. Jane’s identity was a set up and Oscar had lied to her.

Oscar’s body was left to burn and although we were happy to see him go, we will miss the mystery he provided in discovering Jane’s identity.

11. Scorpius (Farscape)

Scorpius is the primary villain of the space opera Farscape. The Scarran/Sebacean hybrid was abused in childhood by his Scarran keeper and seeks their complete destruction.

On the path to doing so, he sets his sites on the series hero, John Crichton, who possesses wormhole technology that’s locked away in the recesses of his mind. Scorpius tries several times to extract the information and hunts Crichton relentlessly as he does so.

His endless pursuit of the Crichton’s wormhole technology also leads the hero to make some horrible decisions­–like deciding he would be a statue for several years rather than be handed over to Scoprius.

In the third and fourth seasons, Scorpius eventually becomes an anti-hero, joining the crew of Moya while Crichton still harbors a deep distrust towards him.

But, let’s be honest, if someone tried to farm your brain for memories you couldn’t access, you’d probably distrust them too. 

12. Tess (Roswell) 

When Roswell introduced Tess Harding, she became a very polarizing figure. Introduced as a new love interest for Max, many fans hated her while others would eventually come to love her.

This resulted in an internet war between the Tess supporters and the Tess haters. There were websites and campaigns against her character, which often got very heated.

It didn’t help that Tess did everything to keep Max and Liz apart, including actual mind control and tricking Max into impregnating her. She earned another strike when she killed Colin Hanks’ character.

The fact that Tess sacrificed herself in the finale; may be the best thing she ever did.

13. Sam Healy (Orange is the New Black)

When we were introduced to Sam Healy in Orange is the New Black’s first season, we knew his world view was slightly warped. The well-meaning councilor had a lesbian agenda, keeping an eagle eye out for any signs of “lesbian activity.”

Sam is notoriously bad at his job. Even Brook Soso told him so very plainly after her suicide attempt in Season 3. We’d be lying if we didn’t thrust our fist in the air and tell her that she’s completely right.

As much as we may have disliked his prejudiced disposition, the third and fourth season gave us a little glimpse into Sam’s life. We got to see his mother who ran away after undergoing electroshock treatments and we saw Sam searching for her.

We even got to see him care for a mentally ill inmate named Lolly. The relationship was beautiful, but ultimately led him to same realization we’d known all along.

The last shot of Sam in Season 4 left him checking into a psychiatric institution. We’ll have to wait and see if he comes back for Season 5.

14. John Locke (Lost) 

It’s hard to explain why John Locke from Lost is on this list unless you’ve seen the entire series. In Season 1, John Locke seemed a little odd. He was a sympathetic character but he was also really optimistic and really hopeful about all the mysteries of The Island.

He is ready to look a new life with a miracle he has been given in the eye and take on all the new challenges. This continued for a couple of seasons.

By Season 6, John Locke was a mere shadow of that grateful person we knew and loved, and as the season inched onward it looked like there may be no redeeming him.

Yet, Locke’s storyline kept the series going and brought it to a satisfying conclusion that answered all the questions. Do you really think that would have happened if the castaways had stayed on the nice, safe beach?

15. Wesley Crusher (Star Trek: The Next Generation)

It might seem unfair to put Wesley on this list. He is a teenager, doing teenager things, but from the second episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, “The Naked Now” he was proving that the adults were incompetent.

Let’s also remember that “Encounter at Farpoint: Part I” told us that Picard’s worst nemesis is children, so why he would let a teenager loose on the bridge, or on his ship?

Not only is he designed to be the person who saves the day plenty of times, but in “Datalore” they managed to create the “Shut up, Wesley” line, which has become a meme!

16. Rachel (Orphan Black)

With a nickname like ProClone, you know that she’s destined to be on this list. Rachel is the manipulative Project Leda clone that was raised by scientist.

What makes her different than the other Leda clones is that she was raised self-aware and meant to work in the corporation that created the project.

Throughout four seasons of Orphan Black, Rachel seems to have played just about every angle for personal gain. Even when it seems like she’s about to help the sestras she’s usually comes out ahead in the end.

17. Gaius Balter (Battlestar Galactica)

In the reboot of Battlestar Galactica, Gaius Balter had us screaming “don’t trust him!” at the screen every week.

In the miniseries, which depicted the Cylon nuclear attack against the twelve colonies, Baltar is revealed to be an unwitting accomplice. His first reaction isn’t so much about the fate of the world, but his own fate.

Which will most likely involve being charged with treason!

Not only did his character make a horrible first impression in the scenes where he begs his Cylon girlfriend to tell him how she plans to get off the planet, but he continues following the orders given to him by a hallucination of said girlfriend.

This continues for two years, until they find “New Caprica,” and where Gaius then surrenders to the Cylons.

While we loved watching Gauis lie like a rug, there was just no way that could ever trust this guy, and his constant instinct for self-preservation is what lands him on this list.

Do you have a character that you love to hate? Is that character on this list? Let us know in the comments below! 

[poll id=”77″]

More