Top 10 Most Shocking TV Villain Reveals

In this harrowing South Korean series, the winner of a series of schoolyard games gets millions. The losers are executed. Oh Il-nam was the game’s eldest player, and his fragility and diminished mental state made him easy to sympathize with. After a heart-wrenching game of marbles, we think we’ve seen the last of Oh Il-nam. But in the finale, it’s revealed that not only is he alive, he’s the wealthy mastermind behind the Squid Game itself. His deathbed confession to Gi-Hun ranks as one of the show’s most gripping plot twists.

Amy Adams plays Camille Preaker, a self-destructive journalist sent back to her hometown to cover two brutal murders. From small-town intrigue to the complicated mother-daughter relationships, the murder mystery was sometimes the least juicy storyline on “Sharp Objects.” But the revelation of the real murderer being Camille’s half-sister, Amma, was a stomach-churning last-minute twist. In the final seconds of the series, Camille discovers the perfect white floors of her sister’s dollhouse are actually the teeth she collected from her victims. We’re then treated to visceral glimpses of Amma committing her crimes as the credits roll.

This CW series inspired by telenovelas had everything. There were unplanned pregnancies, mysterious crime kingpins, steamy affairs, and murder. The drug lord known as Sin Rostro had a few villain reveals. In season one, Rose Solano revealed herself to be the big bad in a chilling scene where she buried her husband alive. In the next season, she hid her identity behind a fictional cop named Susanna Barnett. The deception included a pair of contacts, a voice modulator, and an actual life-like face mask she tore off in the season finale. That’s one convincing disguise.

This juggernaut of a series had mysteries within mysteries and was never short on revelations. But the reveal that among the survivors on the island was another group — the Others — was major. Henry Gale presents himself as an ally, but it turns out, he is an Other who was pretending to be a man who survived a hot air balloon crash. His actual name is Ben Linus, and his cover is blown once the body of the real Henry Gale is found. The back and forth between him and the survivors and his complicated arc make for one of the show’s most explosive and suspenseful storylines.

There’s someone for everyone. Joe Goldberg is a book lover, stalker, and killer who burrows his way into women’s lives, manipulates them, and ultimately, destroys them. In the second season, he sets his sights on Love Quinn, an heiress and chef. But near the end of the season, she reveals herself to be just as bloodthirsty as he is. She has her own trail of victims behind her. In true Joe fashion, this winds up turning him off. It’s one thing for him to be an obsessive stalker, but he gets the ick when he’s the one being pursued.

Phil Coulson was a standout supporting player in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but when the “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” came to TV, his world expanded. One of his fellow agents was Grant Ward, a black ops specialist who endeared himself to the team and to viewers. That all came crashing down when Ward’s true allegiance was revealed. Shooting down Victoria Hand and freeing John Garrett, Ward revealed himself as a double agent working for HYDRA. You know, the authoritarian terrorist group. Needless to say, this really complicated his relationship with the team.

Barry Allen’s adjustment to his life as a superhero wouldn’t have been nearly as easy without Harrison Wells. After becoming the lightning fast superhero, Barry learns how to harness and master his new abilities from Wells. It is Harrison’s particle accelerator that gives Barry his powers, after all. But midway through the first season, his assistant Cisco Ramon discovers his secret. Wells is revealed to be Eobard Thawne, the Reverse-Flash, and also the man who murdered Barry’s mother. Mentoring the Flash had been a long game to time travel back to his own time period. Unfortunately, Cisco pays dearly for finding out his boss’s secret.

It’s always the one you least suspect, isn’t it? The first season of this charming murder mystery comedy about a trio of podcasters solving a murder in their apartment building dropped a massive bomb on us in its penultimate episode. A misunderstanding involving a bassoon cleaner and a box full of adult toys leads the main trio to the real killer. The whole time it was Jan, the bassoonist and Charles’s love interest, who was behind Tim Kono’s murder. This, coupled with her lie about being first chair bassoonist, culminated in a pretty exciting whodunit reveal.

The self-absorbed Eleanor Shellstrop spends almost the entire first season of this charming sitcom thinking she has somehow been granted mistaken entry into “The Good Place,” a utopian afterlife. But it’s far from heaven. Michael, the supposed angel running this paradise, is constantly making mistakes that disrupt the daily afterlives of its citizens. But at the end of season one, Michael’s true nature and purpose is revealed. He’s actually a demon who has designed a very specific and well-disguised hell for the characters. The twist changed everything we thought we knew about Michael and the show itself.

How many villain reveals have a song to go with it? In the MCU’s love letter to sitcoms, “WandaVision,” Agnes was Wanda Maximoff’s quirky neighbor. Playing the role of both mentor and pest to Wanda, Agnes’s true nature is revealed in the seventh episode with a meme-worthy theme song. Even if you didn’t watch the show, you probably heard the Emmy-winning “Agatha All Along.” Agnes revealed herself to be a powerful witch named Agatha Harkness, as well as the mastermind behind the zany mishaps in Wanda’s life over the course of the series.

What TV villain revelation left you gasping? Tell us in the comments.