How the TV Villains bracket works
Rank TV villains without dragging anything into rows. You get one matchup at a time — Walter White or Cersei Lannister? Gustavo Fring or Negan? — and after 23 picks the bracket has a champion, with everything else placed by how far it got. By the end you have ranked all 24 without ever having to look at more than two at a time.
This bracket runs 5 rounds at the default 24-slot size (Round of 24, Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship), with every one of the 24 shows in the field. 24 is not a power of two, so 8 of them draw a first-round bye — spread evenly across the draw rather than handed to whoever happens to land at the top of it. Because the draw is shuffled, two people playing the same bracket rarely face the same matchups. You can also play it at 8 or 16 slots for a shorter or longer run.
23 picks, 5 rounds
- Round of 248 matchups
- Round of 168 matchups
- Elite 84 matchups
- Final Four2 matchups
- Championship1 matchup
Roughly 2-3 minutes start to finish.
All 24 entrants
All 24 entrants are listed below, including Walter White, Cersei Lannister, Gustavo Fring and Negan.
Walter White
Breaking Bad
Cersei Lannister
Game of Thrones
Gustavo Fring
Breaking Bad / Better Call Saul
Negan
The Walking Dead
Joffrey Baratheon
Game of Thrones
Kilgrave
Jessica Jones
Homelander
The Boys
Ramsay Bolton
Game of Thrones
Tony Soprano
The Sopranos
Benjamin Linus
Lost
Moriarty
Sherlock
Logan Roy
Succession
Villanelle
Killing Eve
Tuco Salamanca
Breaking Bad
Vecna
Stranger Things
Nellie Oleson
Little House on the Prairie
The Governor
The Walking Dead
Tywin Lannister
Game of Thrones
Frank Underwood
House of Cards
Lorne Malvo
Fargo
The Night King
Game of Thrones
Hannibal Lecter
Hannibal
Dexter Morgan
Dexter
Omni-Man
Invincible
Would rather group them than rank them? Open all 24 in the tier list maker and sort them into S, A, B, C, D and F tiers instead — same entrants, no matchups.
How everyone else ranked them
Aggregated from 13 completed TV Villains brackets. Win rate is the share of head-to-head matchups each entrant has won across every play.
- 1
Walter White
26W - 9L · won 2 brackets
74%
win rate
- 2
Omni-Man
17W - 7L · won 3 brackets
71%
win rate
- 3
Gustavo Fring
21W - 9L · won 1 bracket
70%
win rate
- 4
Homelander
15W - 8L · won 1 bracket
65%
win rate
- 5
Tony Soprano
13W - 9L · won 1 bracket
59%
win rate
- 6
Negan
6W - 5L · won 1 bracket
55%
win rate
- 7
Ramsay Bolton
9W - 8L · won 1 bracket
53%
win rate
- 8
Cersei Lannister
9W - 8L
53%
win rate
- 9
The Governor
9W - 9L · won 1 bracket
50%
win rate
- 10
Tywin Lannister
10W - 10L
50%
win rate
Getting a ranking you actually agree with
- 1Judge the whole run, not just the best season, or every prestige show wins by default.
- 2The default run puts all 24 shows in the draw. Short on time? Drop to 16 slots — a quicker run over a random 16 of them.
- 3Use undo the moment you regret a pick. One reflex answer in an early round can knock out a favourite before it gets going.
TV Villains bracket FAQ
How many shows are in the TV Villains bracket?
The pool holds 24 shows. A default run puts all of them in the draw and takes 23 picks across 5 rounds: Round of 24, Round of 16, Elite 8, Final Four, Championship. 8 entrants start with a first-round bye, spread evenly through the draw. Other field sizes are available too — 8, 16, 24 slots.
Which shows are included?
Walter White, Cersei Lannister, Gustavo Fring, Negan, Joffrey Baratheon, Kilgrave, Homelander, Ramsay Bolton, Tony Soprano, Benjamin Linus, Moriarty and Logan Roy, plus 12 more. Every entrant is listed further down this page with its artwork.
How long does the rank TV villains take?
About 2-3 minutes — 23 choices at the default size, or 7 if you drop to a 8-slot bracket. No account is needed, and you can abandon a run at any point without losing anything.
Can I turn the result into S/A/B tiers?
Both are here, and the bracket is closer to a tier list than it looks. It ends with a champion, a runner-up and then every other show grouped by the round it went out in — which is exactly a set of tiers, decided by 23 direct comparisons rather than by your first guess at a layout. What it deliberately does not do is claim a precise gap between two shows that never met. If you would rather place the shows into S through F rows yourself, the tier list maker loads all 24 of them at bracketranker.com/tier-list-maker.
Can I compare my order with other people's?
Every completed bracket feeds the TV Villains community results page, which aggregates win rates across all plays and tracks how often each of the 24 entrants takes the title. It updates continuously, so it moves as more people play.
What if a show I wanted is missing?
Use the bracket maker: add your own shows, name it, and share the link so other people play the same field. That is the route to take when this pool of 24 is missing something you would have picked, or when you want a version scoped to one era, label or franchise.