20 Strongest Adventure Time Characters Ranked Worst To Best

"Strongest" is a hard title to pin down in pretty much any context outside of a simple weightlifting competition. Usually, when we talk about the strongest characters in a show or movie, what we really mean is who the best fighter is, which generally serves well as a basis for these discussions. But in the case of "Adventure Time," that question doesn't quite work because not all of the characters that exhibit great strength (whether that be resilience, metaphysical power, or just good old-fashioned muscles) are fighters. Many of the most powerful characters in "Adventure Time" never really participate in any proper form of combat, but they have abilities beyond many of those who actually fight. Then there are the characters who do engage in battle but never use anything that we'd consider "strength," relying instead on their intelligence to create weapons, or their magical abilities.

So, in our consideration of the strongest "Adventure Time" characters, we're weighing a number of different things. Who would win in a fight certainly looms large, but there are other things like which characters are beaten but continue to return, which ones have the greatest powers (whether those be combat powers or not), and perhaps most significantly, which characters simply cannot die? It's a surprisingly high number. So with all those considerations accounted for, let's dive into ranking the 20 strongest characters in "Adventure Time."

Ice King has significant magical abilities that he can deploy in a variety of ways, but what makes him land so low on this list is that he consistently gets beaten by a human teenager with nothing but a sword and a strong will.

We see Ice King's skills in combat against Finn and Jake in many early episodes of "Adventure Time," including "The Chamber of Frozen Blades," where we learn that he's studied the ninja arts of "​​Fridjitsu" and is able to create ninja weapons out of ice. We later see him using ice powers defensively to block attacks from Finn in their brief fight at the start of "When Wedding Bells Thaw" and to deflect fire attacks from Flame Princess in "Frost & Fire." "Frost & Fire" also sees Ice King hold his own against one of the most powerful "Adventure Time" characters in his fight with Flame Princess, if only because of his ability to imbue snow with sentience for a short time to create snow warriors.

But despite all those abilities, Ice King is easily manipulated, as we see in "Prisoners of Love" when Finn is able to trick him into coming into the cell he's locked the princesses in. His gullible nature is also shown in "Empress Eyes" when, despite not being hypnotized by the Empress vampire, he still does her bidding because she's pretty.

Lady Rainicorn doesn't get a lot of time to shine in "Adventure Time," but when she does, she employs a wide range of powers in a variety of ways, easily earning her a spot on this list. Her tenacity — especially when it comes to her family –also counts for a lot.

In "Lady Rainicorn of the Crystal Dimension," Lady sets off after T.V. when she's taken to the Crystal Dimension by Lady's ex, Lee. Early in the episode, she tears a portal through the fabric of reality into the Crystal Dimension with her horn. It's an impressive display of power and one that doesn't even seem to be hard for Lady Rainicorn. Once in her home dimension, we also see her play intimidate an old friend in order to find out where her child is.

In "The Creeps," we see that Lady Rainicorn is able to fuse people into her body and then phase through solid objects like walls with them. This power comes up again in "Lady & Peebles" when she and Princess Bubblegum go on an adventure to save Finn and Jake, and she's able to use the ability to transport both of them through cave walls. And as we see in "My Two Favorite People" and "Her Parents," Lady can shoot a beam from her horn that can change the colors of things, in addition to being used as a potential weapon.

Huntress Wizard is another character, like Lady Rainicorn and others on this list, who doesn't get much screen time over the 10 seasons of "Adventure Time." However, she makes every appearance count. She's perhaps the coolest character in the show due to her laid-back confidence and her many skills, and she's certainly also one of the strongest.

We get to see her hunting prowess in action in episodes like "Flute Spell," where she helps Finn capture a wild thunder boar for its tusk, and "The Wild Hunt," in which she again helps Finn by tracking down the mysterious Grumbo. In "The Wild Hunt," we also witness her boldness in action when she throws herself in front of the charging beast — a decision meant to help Finn overcome the guilt that's holding him back from killing it.

But beyond being a great hunter and a bold ally willing to place herself in danger, Huntress Wizard is also a skilled combatant. She's first introduced in "Wizard Battle" as a competitor in the titular battle, and in "Come Along With Me," she's one of the allies Princess Bubblegum gathers for war. She even remains to help fight GOLB when he appears, further proving her mettle.

Fern is essentially just a magically souped-up version of Finn, born of a merging of the Grass Sword and the Finn Sword as seen in "Reboot." At first, Fern is just Finn with all of the magical powers of the Grass Sword imbued into his being, as we see in "Do No Harm." Later, after Fern is transformed into the Green Knight by Uncle Gumbald between "Three Buckets" and "Seventeen," he's even more powerful. But it's not only Fern's physical strength and magic that land him on this list. It's also his cunning.

In "Three Buckets," we see Fern enact his plan to become the only Finn in Ooo. He uses Finn's trusting nature against him and is able to lure him to a dungeon where he locks him behind a stone wall. And in "Seventeen," Fern reveals his face to Finn in the middle of their arm wrestling competition to throw him off psychologically (which works perfectly).

In "His Hero," the first episode in which we meet Billy, he's described in a song as "the greatest warrior ever." We hear about his exploits, which include slaying an evil ocean, casting the Lich King down, saving a damsel from a Firecount, and also fighting a bear. Billy may not have magical powers, but of the non-magical characters in "Adventure Time," it's pretty clear that he's the strongest. After all, he's a warrior of legend who's considered to be the greatest ever.

And yet, despite having defeated the Lich in the past, Billy is ultimately killed by the villain, who then takes over his body in "The Lich." It's a strange thing to consider for this list, as being defeated by the Lich certainly counts against Billy. And yet, for an extremely powerful entity like the Lich to have specifically chosen Billy's body as a host emphasizes just how strong he is.

Beyond Billy's many exploits and his great reputation, his spirit persists even after his death and is able to communicate with Finn, as we see in "Billy's Bucket List." This is just one more sign of his strength as a character.

For casual fans of "Adventure Time," it may seem odd that Princess Bubblegum's butler lands so high on this list of the strongest characters in the show. But despite his adorable appearance and manservant day job — one he is deeply committed to — Peppermint Butler really is one of the strongest characters in the land of Ooo. He's not very physically strong to be sure, but he's a powerful magic user and practitioner of the dark arts.

We first learn that he may not just be a great cook and attendant in "Death in Bloom." Peppermint Butler opens a portal for Finn and Jake to the underworld, and it's revealed that he's good friends with Death. In "The Suitor," we see him summoning the demon Ogdoad, who he hopes to get the key to the Shadow Dimension from. When he's interrupted in this pursuit by a gumball guardian, it calls him "Dark One." Perhaps the greatest single exhibition of Peppermint Butler's powers is "Nemesis," in which he faces off against Peace Master using powers of parallel dimensional travel and transmutation.

All this power is the result of hard work and study, which we see emphasized in "Ghost Fly" when Finn and Jake call him to perform an exorcism. It's also evident in the "Stakes" miniseries when he offers the main characters not only an array of weapons, but also his knowledge of vampires, both of which prove to be invaluable.

While some of the other vampires from the "Stakes" miniseries could arguably also belong on this list, the only one who has to be here is their leader: The Vampire King. Throughout the miniseries, his significant powers are put on display. These include telekinesis, which allows him to lift and choke other characters, as seen in "Vamps About," and destroy stakes being used to attack him in "Checkmate." "Checkmate" also shows us that he has the ability to teleport both himself and others, and that he can read minds and speak to people telepathically.

Vampire King is also an incredibly strong fighter, as shown in both "Checkmate" and the flashback Marceline has to their initial fight in "May I Come In." In the latter instance, despite Marceline having soul-sucked all the other vampires and absorbed their powers, the two still essentially come to a draw. It's no wonder that he's so powerful, though, as we learn in "The Dark Cloud" that he contains a potentially reality-altering amount of vampire essence. The titular dark cloud of vampire essence is then unleashed on Ooo and is only contained when Marceline sacrifices her mortality again to absorb it.

In addition to all his powers, Vampire King is also fearless and wants to face the unknown instead of simply repeating his past. "I'm not afraid of the unknown," he declares in "Checkmate." "My path runs straight into the void."

Marceline the Vampire Queen was born half-human and half-demon. Over the course of her vampire-hunting — both in the past and again throughout "Stakes" — she uses her inherited soul-sucking power to absorb the powers of the vampires she kills. Finally, she's turned into an immortal vampire herself after being bitten by the Vampire King (as seen in "May I Come In") and absorbing his pure vampire essence (shown in "The Dark Cloud"). To say the very least, she's got a lot going on when it comes to the "strongest" conversation.

Her vampire abilities vary greatly but are all useful to her in different contexts. She's able to fly and almost never fully lands on the ground, preferring to float, as we see in "Heat Signature." She also turns invisible in "Heat Signature," "Empress Eyes," and other episodes. Marceline is able to shapeshift — a power best shown in "Varmints" when she transforms into a wolflike creature and quickly learns to mimic the titular varmints and their abilities. To top it all off, Marceline can raise the dead to serve as her army, as we see in "Henchman."

Like the Lich and Hunson Abadeer, Prismo simply refuses to die. It certainly helps that he's another cosmic entity — a Wishmaster to be exact — who's able to manipulate time and space so that when he does die, he comes right back to life. The complex time manipulations through which he accomplishes this are seen in "Is That You?"

Before we even meet Prismo, he's described by Booko, a hologram creature that pops out of the Enchiridion to explain dimensions. Booko calls him "almighty," and this seems to be true, especially given his power to grant wishes and manipulate space and time. These powers also combine to allow Prismo to create new alternate realities, as we see when he creates the Farmworld reality in "Finn the Human" and "Jake the Dog." Unsurprisingly, he's also incredibly smart and fully acknowledges that his wish-granting powers often work like a Monkey's Paw unless the wish is extremely specific. 

The only reason Prismo doesn't land higher on this list is that he lacks a corporeal form and exists only as a shadow on the surfaces in his time room, so he can't engage any of the other characters in physical combat.

GOLB only significantly appears in one episode of "Adventure Time," but it's the extended series finale "Come Along with Me," so it certainly makes an impact. GOLB surpasses the cosmic entities that make up the last few entrants on this list and is in fact a deity. GOLB is the embodiment of chaos, GOLB is pure discord, and as Simon explains in a flashback in "Come Along With Me," its "presence is felt in every crevice where chaos lurks." A testament to GOLB's power is that the Lich refers to himself as "the last scholar of GOLB" in "Whispers," so GOLB is the ancient evil that the embodiment of all death worships and studies.

And while we certainly don't get to see all of GOLB's power — which to be fair might not even be possible given that it is so (literally god-level) powerful — we do get to see some of its abilities when it arrives in Ooo. It releases a gas that merges a number of Uncle Gumbald's cake warriors into a horrifying creature that's then able to add other living beings to its mass and create more monsters. GOLB is the ultimate antagonist of "Adventure Time" and is without a doubt the strongest character in all of the show.