TV characters driven by revenge at some point throughout their arc are a dime a dozen. There are far too many to cultivate a list of boring unknowns unless you need more than melatonin to get to sleep at night.
After all, a show that lasts more than a single season will usually have a vengeance arc in there somewhere. No, these characters frequently climb into bed with reprisal or bathe in the darkness of vindictiveness.
It’s hard not to cheer for the revenge path, even when it’s the antagonist who is dead set on it. Anyone who has ever had their car hit by a shopping cart in a parking lot can attest to the wrath of vengeful thinking.
([Helen Sloan/HBO], [Justin Lubin/Prime Video], [Courtesy of Netflix], 9Courtesy of Netflix], [ABC/Colleen Hayes], [Prime Video/Screenshot])
Revenge doesn’t spring from oblivion. Events carefully crafted to negatively impact a character engender empathy, even if the character in question isn’t the hero of the tale.
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There’s a certain joy in watching the dedication, pursuit, and ultimate joy of vindictive release. Only certain characters who pursue revenge are capable of presenting fans with this dark, cimmerian gift.
Here they are, in all of their furious and oftentimes violent glory.
Frank Castle – The Punisher
(Courtesy of Netflix)
No tale of vengeance is complete without Frank Castle, the brutally violent former cop who wreaks havoc and chaos throughout New York City’s shady, criminal elements.
Frank’s first foray into the MCU was actually pre-MCU, in Netflix’s Daredevil series, back before Disney decided to purchase the entire world.
Anyone familiar with Castle’s backstory will struggle to assign blame to him and him alone. Violence and Frank are close friends, thanks to his time in the Marines as a Force Recon Scout Sniper.
However, it was the mafia hit against his family, resulting in the death of his wife and child, that drove him to become the vigilante serial killer of criminals he is.
Frank is one of the most popular characters hell-bent on revenge on this list and many others.
James Reese – Terminal List
(Justin Lubin/Prime Video)
Reese and Frank Castle have much in common, though Reese’s world is grounded in realism. No one in red and blue spandex comes after Reese as he unleashes his inner vigilante.
The Terminal List follows a tried-and-true, old-school formula, with clear lines and demarcations throughout. It’s the same path The Punisher walked and thousands before him.
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There’s nothing like the insatiable need for revenge for the loss of your family and the gut punch that comes with losing them. It’s the easiest way to create empathy and get an audience to invest.
This time, instead of Force Recon, Reese is a Navy Seal and as effective at taking lives as most people are at taking out the garbage. Chris Pratt effectively sheds his Peter Quill persona and replaces it with a stone-cold killer for a fun, if predictable, watch.
Stewie Griffin – The Family Guy
Stewie’s dynamic may change on Family Guy from episode to episode, but his overall disposition is one of vengeance, usually against the person or animal currently defying him.
Of course, it’s easy to lose track of Stewie’s vengeful shenanigans when he does things like impregnate himself with the DNA of the family’s talking dog.
Stewie is one of those characters who takes revenge to epic heights, even crossing over into the Simpsons to wreak havoc on Bart Simpson’s bullies.
Attempting to assassinate his own mom, committing murder, and forcing Brian to consume the fecal matter from Stewie’s diaper are some of Stewie’s milder depravities. Fox features plenty of characters with revenge in mind, but Stewie takes the cake.
Uhtred of Bebbanburg – The Last Kingdom
(Joe Alblas/Netflix)
As the eldest son of a father who has fallen in battle, Uhtred is in a prime position to inherit his father’s keep and lands when the raiding Danes decide to capture him and adopt him as one of them.
His uncle, Ælfric, attempts to purchase Uhtred from the Danes if only to kill him and claim the seat of Bebbanburg for himself. Thus begins the long and bloody tale of Uhtred Ragnarson, warrior and rightful Lord of his father’s seat.
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Though Uhtred’s path meanders from time to time as he serves King Alfred, his goal is always to take revenge on his uncle and reclaim what rightfully belongs to him.
It takes 5 seasons and a movie for him to get there, however. Fortunately, all five seasons and the movie are worthy of a good binge.
Arya Stark – Game of Thrones
(Helen Sloan/HBO)
Arya suffers a similar fate to that of Uhtred, watching her father die at the hands of her enemies and standing by helplessly as her ancestral home changes hands many times—mostly into those of her enemies.
After one of Game of Thrones‘ most significant events, the Red Wedding, Arya pursues vengeance that topples lords, shifting the balance of power throughout Westeros. She’s one of the few characters with a very long revenge arc, covering eight seasons.
Arya isn’t one to blanche at the sight of blood. Out of all the characters on this list, with the possible exception of the demented Stewie, murder bothers her the least.
It’s difficult to tell how much of her humanity remains in the end. Death, violence, and retribution consume her ambivalent, overly friendly disposition, as vengeance so often tends to do.
Emily Thorne, aka Amanda Clarke – Revenge
(ABC/Colleen Hayes)
As revenge tales go, it’s usually close family members who assume room temperature as an inciting incident. In the case of Revenge, Amanda’s father didn’t have to die. Instead, the FBI kicked down the door to their home to arrest him for a crime he didn’t commit.
In Amanda’s case, her father was only the catalyst, and the succeeding four-season revenge quest was more about what Amanda went through as an aftereffect.
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Thrust into institutional care by her plotting psychiatrist, Amanda didn’t exactly experience a healthy upbringing. The foster care system is notoriously sketchy, and Amanda ends her childhood years in juvie.
It’s not hard to imagine what follows. Foster care and juvenile detention are such fun and loving places to grow up in, after all.
Couple that with an apprenticeship to Satoshi Takeda, training her in all the loving, caring arts of vengeance, and Amanda becomes Emily Thorne.
Suffice it to say that Emily Thorne is not the sort of woman who enjoys cuddles and romantic fireside chats.
Assane Diop – Lupin
(Courtesy of Netflix)
Who said the best revenge tales only come out of Tinseltown? Lupin is a French mystery thriller well worth watching, even if you have to read the subtitles. In many ways, Assane’s story parallels Amanda Clark’s.
With his father dead in prison for a theft he didn’t commit, Assane is alone at the age of fourteen. Assane grows up on the streets, learning the fine arts of thievery and becoming a master of his craft.
Lucky for Assane, a lifetime of stealing prepares him for the path of vengeance against the Pellegrini family, the responsible party behind his father’s arrest, imprisonment, and eventual death.
This three-part series charting Assane’s retribution is Netflix’s most-watched non-English series. It really is that good.
Phara Keaen – Foundation
(Courtesy of Apple TV+ (Screenshot))
There’s nothing quite like kindling a vengeful spirit by having your home planet bombarded with neutron bombs. Galactic empires tend to do these sorts of things, of course.
Phara manages to survive despite losing an eye and a good deal of blood. As you can imagine, Phara harbors a fairly deep resentment of the empire and spends the rest of her very long life opposing them at every opportunity.
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Becoming the Grand Huntress of War certainly helps, and Phara uses her sharp, tactical mind well. Unfortunately, her path of vengeance, chaos, and violence blinds her to disloyalty, betrayal, and micro-politics.
Vengeance tends to do that, and though Phara had a very legitimate reason to pursue the destruction of the empire, those reasons died with her on Terminus.
Billy Butcher – The Boys
(Prime Video/Screenshot)
Fans of Karl Urban would love to see him in the infamous Judge Dredd helmet once again.
But alas, Billy Butcher will have to do, for now. Billy’s catalyst for vengeance is pretty morbid. It’s The Boys, after all, where just about everything is fairly morbid.
Butcher is the archetypal vengeance, monkey-on-one’ s-back antihero who becomes the thing he hates to destroy the thing he hates. This is confusing but understandable in a way, if not wholly condoned.
Billy is the leader of The Boys, a team of vengeance-minded vigilantes. Homelander effectively destroyed Billy Butcher’s family by raping his wife, resulting in her pregnancy.
As the soon-to-be mother of a prospective supe, she was secreted away to give birth and raise the child. This led to Billy believing her dead or missing.
As you can imagine, this didn’t give Billy happy thoughts, and he soon turned his malicious intents on Vought.
When well-written, the vengeance arc is empathetic. That’s why Thanos is thought to be one of the best villains in the MCU universe. Having lost his homeworld, the force driving him is understandable, even relatable.
It makes the protagonist the ultimate hero and an antagonist, an evil that some may find reason to root for.
What do you think? Are there any characters bent on revenge that should be on the list? Let us know in the comments below.
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