Star Wars Live-Action Villains Ranked Worst To Best

In 1977 the little space opera from a galaxy far, far away took the moviegoing universe by storm, selling enough tickets to buy a fleet of Carillion-class Star Destroyers and changing the world in the process. Disguised as science fiction, Star Wars has continued to resonate across ages, cultures, and generations because at its heart Star Wars is truly a classic epic fantasy set in space. 

Based largely on the teachings of mythologist Joseph Campbell, Star Wars told a story as old as time, but set it in the future (or "A long time ago..."). Like myths of old, Star Wars is a timeless tale of wide-eyed heroes, dashing rogues, beautiful princesses, and of course, dastardly villains clad in black. You can't have a hero's journey without an assortment of powerful villains to defeat, and Star Wars had some of the best ever. There are many X-factors that played into Star Wars' unprecedented and perhaps improbable success — from John Williams' swashbuckling score to Harrison Ford's dry delivery — but without a doubt the first film and the series it spawned would not have succeeded without its colorful cast of bad guys. Many are some of the best bad guys ever, while others? Not so much. Who are these villains, and what makes them the best at being bad? You don't have to use the Force to find out. Here are the Star Wars movie villains ranked from worst to best!

Where do we begin with Watto? The bug-like baddie is a greedy Toydarian junk dealer and human trafficker who owned Anakin Skywalker and his mother Shmi in The Phantom Menace, and bears a striking resemblance to Gonzo, if the Muppet's life took a dark turn. Watto is also cringe-inducingly stereotypical. While Jar Jar Binks (who came off like a crude stereotype of Black men not seen since Stepin Fetchit) got most of the public's revulsion, we can't ignore that Watto is absurdly anti-Semitic.

Are we accusing George Lucas of peddling stereotypes? Not exactly, just tone deaf. It's most likely that Lucas' cultural references (for Star Wars especially) are the 1940s serials he watched growing up, and which took stereotypes for granted. While Watto does serve his purpose as a minor foil on Anakin's way to bigger (and less bigoted) things, he'd be much better if he didn't come across as so anti-Semitic. 

Star Wars' stormtroopers are the original Putty Patrol and Foot Clan — ineffective henchmen who serve as no more than a mere nuisance for our heroes before the boss arrives. They also have the worst aim in movies. So we were excited when Gwendolyn Christie, one of the breakout stars from HBO's Game of Thrones, was cast as a senior stormtrooper decked in platinum armor and wearing a cape. Maybe this meant something new for the iconic, but moronic, stormtroopers. 

Yeah, not so much. Christie was game, but her Captain Phasma was as irrelevant as any stormtrooper before. Her limited screen time in The Force Awakens basically amounted to bullying John Boyega's Finn before being put into the trash, an apt metaphor. The Last Jedi found Phasma doing nothing notable except falling to her fiery demise, an epic death scene for a character that did not warrant it. Christie deserved better and frankly, the stormtroopers do too. With Captain Phasma, the new trilogy's filmmakers were like stormtroopers themselves; they aimed for greatness and completely missed their shot. 

Even the most boring Star Wars characters at least have memorable names...and then there's DJ. Did Star Wars turn into a '90s sitcom? DJ is short for "Don't Join," representing this amoral arms dealer's ambivalence about the Resistance and First Order. DJ even reveals he's been selling the Resistance black-market weapons, because that's just what this timeless tale of Good vs. Evil needed: snarky moral relativism. 

While DJ helps Finn and Tico infiltrate the First Order, he shows his true colors and sells them out. So basically he's Lando, but without any redemption. DJ is an attempt at bringing a fresh take to the Star Wars mythos, but just comes off like a pastiche of edgy villains from other stories, kinda like plugging a Game Of Thrones character into Lord of the Rings. Benicio del Toro is game as always, but the would-be complex character winds up being as basic as his name.

Star Wars sure loves greedy junk traders, that's for sure. Case in point, Unkar Plutt, a corpulent Crolutian heavy from the desert planet of Jakku who pesters Rey "Don't Call Me Palpatine" in the first act of The Force Awakens. Personality-wise, he's basically indistinguishable from Watto from The Phantom Menace, except far less anti-Semitic. Plutt's blandness is disappointing, given he's played by scene-stealing English funnyman Simon Pegg, albeit hidden behind a hybrid CG/makeup costume. 

Honestly, we kinda think JJ Abrams was just pulling a prank on Pegg by having him work in the scorching desert in a fat suit. A SyFy writer actually argues that Plutt was "The most important Star Wars character of all time..." because he inspired Rey to leave Jakku, but we're not buying it. Maybe Unkar Plutt would be more memorable if they had kept the deleted scene of Chewie ripping his arm off.

Jango Fett is the lesser of the Fetts. While his son/clone Boba Fett is an iconic villain, Jango Fett's inclusion in Attack of the Clones felt like fan service. Yes, he's one of the most consequential characters in the series, as he was the Mandalorian template who was used to clone the Stormtroopers. But why did he have to be Boba Fett's "dad?" It made the Star Wars universe, which encompasses an entire galaxy with millions of planets and billions of characters, seem small. 

It was also a borderline ret-con that was supposed to add depth to Boba Fett, but we liked him better as the mysterious, loner badass with no backstory. Since we can't blame Boba without breaking a Star Wars geek code, we'll take it out on Jango. He's okay, we guess, but personality-wise he's virtually indistinguishable from his "son," and a repeat is always less exciting than the original.

Some Star Wars villains conquer galaxies, others murder millions, and some are just huge bullies. Take Sebulba, the Dugian pod pilot from The Phantom Menace. 

Anakin Skywalker's adversary in the Boonta Eve Classic pod-race, Sebulba pulled out every trick he could muster to keep the kid down. As a Dug, Sebulba walks on his hands, but his feet also function like hands, giving him a peculiar gait which evidently didn't interfere with his pod-racing abilities. 

As Anakin's slave master Watto tells Jinn: "He always wins!" Not this time, jerk! While Sebulba snuffed several other pilots in the pivotal race, he was bested by Anakin, who won the race and his freedom. Sebulba wasn't an all-time great villain because he wasn't meant to be; he was just filler foil for Anakin. In the Star Wars universe even characters with minimal screen time can shine, but Sebulba is not particularly charismatic, so he was just kinda served his need and faded into obscurity.

Every villain is a hero in their own story. Well, not every villain (Jabba knows he's a bad dude/slug and doesn't give a flying Kowakian). Like Lang, the Magistrate's Captain of the Guard for Morgan Elsbeth in the Season 2 episode of The Mandalorian, "The Jedi." We don't know much about Lang's backstory from either the show or other sources, a rarity in Star Wars mythology, though Mando speculated Lang was once part of a military faction. 

Maybe Mando just recognized the actor who played Lang — Michael Biehn, most famous for playing the intense Kyle Reese in The Terminator. Biehn has had the "noble soldier with an edge" schtick down pat since the mid-1980s, and he brings it to Lang. What he lacked in screen time, he made up in presence.

Droids are a huge part of Star Wars. George Lucas even said the series was told from R2-D2's POV. However, droids are usually there to be adorable (BB-8) or comical (C-3PO). It's rare they make memorable villains. Yes, the droid army were the villains in the Clone Wars (albeit via Senator Palpatine's behind-the-scenes shenanigans), but as far as one singular droid, the field is scarce. 

Then there's IG-88B and IG-11. While they're "different" characters, robots are basically the same. Both are heavily featured in Star Wars comics, novels, etc., but as far as the live-action series, IG-88B was one of Boba Fett's rivals in capturing Han Solo, while IG-11 competed with Mando to capture The Child in The Mandalorian. IG-11 got more screen time than IG-88B, and gave fans a glimpse into what a cold-blooded (make that no-blooded) bad guy the IG's can be.

Every hero needs their villain, and every villain needs his sniveling weasel. The sniveling weasel is the bad guy equivalent of the good guy's "best friend." Enter General Hux. While we got hints that General Hux might be more than your typical toadie, and perhaps even a threat to Kylo Ren's second-in-command status, it never went anywhere. Their clear animosity was an interesting and unexpected contrast to the "every bad guy gets along" nature of the original trilogy. Alas, that potential was never really explored, and by the time Snoke was killed by Kylo Ren in The Last Jedi, General Hux was relegated to being a punching bag for Kylo Ren, and a punchline for the audience. 

The Rise of Skywalker nearly redeemed General Hux (as a character and perhaps as a hero as well) when it was revealed he was the spy who had been informing the Resistance. His motivation made sense: he had to stop Kylo Ren by any means necessary. But The Rise of Skywalker was more concerned with Kylo's redemption narrative, so Hux was quickly blasted away by Richard E. Grant's General Pryde, an "insert new Grand Moff Tarkin here" who is such an inert character he doesn't even make this list. Kudos to Domhnall Gleeson, who does a pretty splendid job as a sniveling weasel. Shame that's all he got to do.

Maybe it's his German accent, malevolent mannerisms, or propensity to speak in vaguely disquieting platitudes about the pointlessness of existence, but Werner Herzog makes a great villain because he does all that stuff anyway. Of course, his long-time collaborator, the late Klaus Kinski could have told you that. As the godfather of the New German Cinema, seeing the ruthlessly independent, anti-authoritarian director Werner Herzog in a Disney-owned Star Wars property is so surreal it borders on satire. 

And yet, he's just so good as the mysterious Mandalorian villain The Client. Herzog built his considerable cinematic legend on being a madman, but his screen persona is more subtle and methodical, which works for The Client, an associate of the Galactic Empire who hires Mando to kidnap The Child. Who would want to kill Baby Yoda!?! Werner Herzog. We're not sure we'd be as into The Client if he were played by someone else, which just proves how brilliant casting Herzog was.

Morgan Elsbeth is one bad dudette, and not just because she ran afoul of longtime fan favorite Ahsoka Tano. As Elsbeth told Tano: "The lives of these citizens mean nothing to me. Now, because of you, these people will suffer." Not the most populist speech we've heard, but as the Imperial magistrate of Calodan on the planet Corvus, Elsbeth didn't need to worry about re-election. 

Elsbeth hired Mando to kill Tano in the Season 2 episode of The Mandalorian, "The Jedi," but he teamed up with the Jedi instead to defeat and unseat the tyrant. We learned from Tano that Elsbeth lost her family during the Clone Wars, and her rage fueled her drive to help with the construction of the Imperial Navy. Elsbeth certainly caught our attention, and we're hoping to see more of her down the line, hopefully in service to her master, Grand Admiral Thrawn.

Perhaps the biggest victim of George Lucas' mediocre prequel trilogy was Darth Maul. With his Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon grace and  snarling, Satanic visage, Darth Maul is probably the best part of the prequel trilogy. He was certainly the most threatening, with a double-bladed lightsaber he handled with the ease of a professional baton twirler. No wonder Darth Maul seemed like the most popular Halloween costume for three years running; dude's a badass. He stalks the heroes in The Phantom Menace like a predatory animal, creating dread every time he appears. You're legitimately scared the characters won't get out alive. And Qui-Gon Jinn does not, as Darth Maul impales Jinn to create the prequel's first, and maybe only, emotional moment. 

Imagine what could have been: Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker seeking vengeance against the vicious apprentice to the shadowy Darth Sidious who murdered their mentor, before Anakin Skywalker finally succumbs to the Dark Side and murders Darth Maul, becoming Darth Vader in the process. Alas, George Lucas had other plans, as Kenobi quickly disposed of Darth Maul just minutes after Jinn's murder, avenging and replacing his defeated mentor. Turns out Darth Maul was still alive as he returned in Star Wars: Rebels and as leader of the criminal organization Crimson Dawn in Solo: A Star Wars Story. Hopefully he'll get a proper storyline (and a higher place on this list) in the Kenobi series on Disney+.

Following his terrifying, unforgettable turn as Gus Fring in Breaking Bad, casting Giancarlo Esposito as The Mandalorian's "big bad" Moff Gideon may strike some as predictable or cliche. We disagree. Nobody is as good at being bad as Esposito, whether he's selling chicken wings and methamphetamines, or slaughtering innocent civilians in his single-minded pursuit of The Child. While Esposito's Fring was the strong, silent, psychotic type in Breaking Bad, his Moff Gideon is the classic, mustache-twirling villain, which is absolutely perfect for a space western like The Mandalorian. 

Honestly, giving Moff Gideon nuance would be wrong — the dude wants to steal The Child's blood! No shades of gray there, he's literally harvesting the cutest character ever, like if someone used Baby Groot for firewood. Esposito knows his role and plays it to perfection, harkening the Star Wars series back to its roots as a "Good vs. Evil" fantasy epic in space.

Boba Fett may be the most successful bit player in movie history. 

Yes, he is the badass bounty hunter who captured Han Solo. For decades, however, that felt watered down by one of the weakest death scenes in the series, with Han accidentally sending Fett flying into the mouth of the Sarlacc. Yet, despite his minimal screen time, he was undoubtedly a fan favorites. The reason? Maybe it was all that detailed armor, or the weaponry we barely got a chance to see in action. It seemed, for sure, there had to be a story behind it all.

So, Disney+ launched their streamer with the wildly popular The Mandalorian, and Boba is back. While its main character is a different guy who only looks a bit like Boba, it could now easily be retitled "The Boba Fett & Baby Yoda Show." It was only appropriate when Boba Fett showed up in Season 2, finally getting his redemption and showing that no malfunctioning jetpack could take him down. He has returned as the anti-hero we all wanted for decades, and closed the season by blowing away Bib Fortuna to steal the throne of his former boss, Jabba The Hutt. Already an icon, Boba Fett will always be cooler than a Carbonite deep freeze.

Give George Lucas and crew a round of applause for creativity — Jabba the Hutt was a stroke of genius. Lucas took the slovenly, gluttonous crime boss trope popularized by Sydney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon and Marlon Brando in The Godfather, and turned the volume up to 11 to create a truly vile and disgusting slug monster. With his slimy body, deep baritone, incomprehensible language, and bone-chilling chuckle, Jabba the Hutt truly is a triumph of the imagination, and the kind of creation you can only see in Star Wars. In the original script Lucas only described Jabba as ""the grossest of the slavering hulks," and in the initial concept art he originally walked on two legs. Thankfully the production team went full slug, creating one of the series' most memorable villains as a result. 

While Jabba was vanquished in the first half of Return of the Jedi, his myth was built up over the course of three films so that by the time Jedi arrived moviegoers could only imagine what this mysterious Jabba could be. While this sort of buildup frequently leads to disappointment, Jabba was better (or worse) than fans could have dreamed. Including a slithering CG Jabba in the Star Wars: Special Edition was a mistake, as Jabba should be too fat to move and shouldn't have been introduced that early. But no matter. His Jedi appearance is enough to earn him a top spot.

Darth Vader, duh. Darth Vader is not only the greatest villain in Star Wars; in our opinion he's the greatest movie villain ever (with all due respect to Dr. Hannibal Lecter and Norman Bates — seriously, please don't eat us). There really is no competition. Sure, there's Joker, who's so popular his prequel became an Oscar-nominated, billion-dollar hit. But Darth Vader is so popular his prequel became three blockbusters, earning billions despite being pretty bad. That's saying something. 

With his towering frame, black, robotic armor, unsettling, unforgettable wheeze, and especially the grim, ominous baritone of James Earl Jones, Darth Vader is made to populate nightmares. He's also good at everything: commanding armies, wielding lightsabers, piloting TIE fighters, playing twisted mind games, and using the Force, but without it ever seeming over-the-top or contrived. But what takes Vader to the next level is his pathos. The descent of a noble hero into a corrupt villain, and back again, is one of the greatest character arcs in pop culture. Ever. Anakin Skywalker was the Chosen One born to restore balance to the Force, but succumbed to the power of the Dark Side and ruled as a genocidal tyrant before being redeemed by his children, fulfilling the prophecy, and defeating the Sith. Hey, it may not quite be Shakespeare, but damn, we'll take it. For these reasons and so much more, Darth Vader is the greatest Star Wars movie villain ever.