Stephen King's 10 Most Underrated Villains, Ranked

A little Stephen King villains have become cultural icons thanks to their ubiquity in their books or their broad cultural impact. Pennywise, Annie Wilkes, Randall Flagg, Christine and others are instantly recognizable thanks to their impact. Other Stephen King villains, however, are less well known. Whether it's because their ability to spread evil or their impact on the plot goes largely unnoticed, Some Stephen King villains are underrated despite being excellent.

Stephen King's villains range from human to supernatural, terrestrial or interdimensional entities. They can be inanimate objects, demons, immortal or deranged humans. Some of his villains are tragic, while others are completely irredeemable. Either way, Stephen King's best villain is the one who sticks around after the book ends, and despite being underrated, the villains on this list do just that.

10

Pink the Hat

Doctor Sleep

Although most of Stephen King's most malevolent villains are male (or at least male-coded), Doctor Sleep's Rose the Hat is one of the few incredibly powerful and genuinely terrifying female villains. As leader of the True Knot, a group of vampiric creatures who feed on the life force of children with the Shine, Rose weaves a silent swath of terror across the country for special needs children.

How fear makes the life force, also known as children’s “steam,” taste better, Rose has no problem terrorizing her prey in creative and cruel ways. Add this to the fact that she is not only nearly immortal, but also possesses psychic abilities, astral projection, telepathy, and the ability to read memories, and she is one of the most formidable antagonists in the Stephen King universe. She is like a poisonous butterfly with beautiful colors – fascinating and seductive, but ultimately deadly.

9

Room 1408

1408

It's a testament to Stephen King's ability to make anything scary he wants. so many inanimate objects and animals have been turned into villains in your books. Sometimes it was a building or location, but in the case of hotel room 1408 in the story “1408”, it goes further.

While the Overlook Hotel gets all the focus on Stephen King's most haunted location, Room 1408 could beat it for the nightmarish events contained within its walls. Unlike the Overlook, the hotel room adds a surreal, nightmarish layer to your hallucinations. It's so twisted that it's not entirely clear whether the malevolent entity controlling the room is a mere spirit or something much, much darker.

8

Director Norton

Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption

Although most of his memorable villains are supernatural entities or people possessed or influenced by supernatural entities, Some of his best villains have been good old-fashioned terrible human beings. One of them is Director Samuel Norton from the soap opera Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. Norton does not possess strange powers or inhuman abilities; it is simply deformed by the widespread corruption of those in positions of power.

What makes Warden Norton such a great villain, and arguably the best villain in a Stephen King film, is that men like him exist at all levels of power and in all eras. He is just an example of how easily absolute power corrupts absolutelyand how far a man will go to protect the secrets of his crimes. He's not a freak, but someone any of us could encounter in the real world, which is the scariest thought of all.

7

John Farson

Wizard and Glass

In countless Stephen King stories, a human being is manipulated by an evil entity to do horrible things, but Few have caused as much widespread destruction as John Farson. The omnipresent Man in Black/Marten Broadcloak, also known as Randall Flagg, is the most prominent and overarching villain in The Dark Tower series and the Crimson King is the all-powerful interdimensional entity of chaos and destruction that pulls the strings. But it is John Farson who moves the plot forward in a tangible and practical way, especially in the story that takes place before the main events of the series.

After all, it is John Farson who leads the rebellion that ends in the massacre of the gunmen and the fall of the shining capital of Gilead, under the orders of Randall Flagg and the Crimson King. Farson's men kill several of Roland's friends at the Battle of Jericho Hill, the gunmen's last stand, and, before that, Farson indirectly leads to Roland's first love, Susan Delgado, being burned alive at the stake. It is a testament to Farson's widespread impact that he is, directly or indirectly, responsible for destroying everything and everyone Roland loved.

6

Leland Gaunt

Necessary things

Stephen King undoubtedly goes to some very dark places in his books, but some character deaths are more heartbreaking than others. Likewise, some of her novels are darker than others, with the deaths being senseless, disturbing, or the ending being ambiguous enough to question the reason for her sacrifice. In the first handful of King's darkest novels is Necessary things, and that depends on the book's villain and puppet master, Leland Gaunt.

Like many of Stephen King's villains, Gaunt's evil is not contained in just one book; he also acts as an unseen antagonist in The Dark Tower series and soap opera The body. Similar to Kurt Barlow in 'Salem LotGaunt's evil is insidious and slow-growing, as he is revealed to be a demon who plants the seeds of destruction in a city to harvest the souls of his desperate clients. His ability to somehow know the darkest secrets of people's hearts is the source of his power, and he seems to be everywhere and nowhere at the same time. He is not defeated in the end, pointing out that he is just a demonic leech that moves to a new feeding spot when it sucks up the last one.

5

Mrs.

The fog

Stephen King has a knack for creating believable religious fanatics; he takes dogmatic belief and turns it into a sharp weaponextending it beyond the point of reason and sanity. Their religious fanatics are often the end result when a person surrenders their entire being to a higher power and lacks the ability to separate reason from insanity. Margaret White from Carrie is the most notable, but Mrs. Carmody from the novel The fog is in second place and, in some ways, surpasses Margaret.

Although Margaret White's bigotry is confined to her daughter, which is bad enough, Mrs. Carmody's religious fervor impacts her community as she begins to convert the survivors' mass hysteria into followers of her murderous cause. Carmody symbolizes how someone with a little charisma, misguided conviction, and twisted morals can take advantage of the most vulnerable to spread a poisoned gospel.

4

Patrick Hockstetter

THIS

Of Stephen King's powerless human villains, Patrick Hockstetter might be the most purely evil. It's a recurring refrain when experts or witnesses discuss serial killers, that there is “nothing behind [their] eyes.” Patrick Hockstetter is one such case, as chilling and accurate a depiction of a psychopath becoming a serial killer as anything set on a page. There's something inherently wrong with Patrick, and that error jumps off the page.

Patrick's murder began early when, at age 5, he suffocated his little brother in his sleep. All over THIShe tortures and kills animals and dreams of doing the same to people. If he hadn't been killed by Pennywise at such a young age, he absolutely would have become a serial killer and murdered many people in horrible and gruesome ways. Whether you believe in the concept of a soul or not, one thing is certain: Patrick Hockstetter has no soul, a void where empathy and morality should be.

3

Raymond Andrew Joubert/Moonlight Man

Geraldo's game

While many of Stephen King's villains are terrifying, Raymond Andrew Joubert, aka Moonlight Man from Geraldo's game It's just scary, and that could be worse. As a necrophile and serial killer, Joubert is who Patrick Hockstetter would have turned into if Pennywise hadn't murdered him. Although Gerald Burlingame is the novel's overall antagonist, Joubert is arguably worse because he is much more evil – and unlike Gerald, he is not killed at the beginning of the novel.

The scariest thing about Joubert isn't so much the character himself, although he is undoubtedly twisted and sick, responsible for several murders. The scariest part is that Jessie, with fear and waking nightmares, mistakenly thinks that Joubert is just a figment of his imagination only to discover later that he is very real. The vulnerable Jessie being so close to a serial killer without having defenses against him is a terrifying scenario, the complete loss of control scarier than most monsters in King's stories.

2

Harold Lauder

The position

Although the main villain The position (and the entire Stephen King universe) is, of course, Randall Flagg, he has many antagonistic subordinates to do his dirty work for them. Of these, Harold Lauder is the most fascinating, an incel figure before the concept of incels even existed. His exaggerated sense of his own intelligence, along with his conviction that he “deserves” Frannie's love, turns into bitter anger when he doesn't get what he thinks the world owes him.

Harold's betrayal of the group and blowing up several characters with a bomb is one of the most shocking moments in any Stephen King book. Harold Lauder's great tragedy is the redemption he was denied at the end of his life. As he lies dying, betrayed by Nadine, Harold finally accepts that all his decisions have led to this point, offering a glimpse of the better man he could have been if he hadn't been manipulated by Randall Flagg.

1

Lloyd the bartender

The Shining

The Overlook Hotel is almost a character in itself in The Shiningthe huge sleeping pile that wakes up when Jack Torrance enters its bowels. Home to several evil acts over the years, the Overlook has been immersed in this energy and now houses numerous ghosts, malevolent entities, demons and, long after the events of The ShiningPink the Hat. Of these ghosts, it is Mr. Grady, aka Janitor, who is most responsible for manipulating Jack Torrance into a murderous lunatic.

Yet, Lloyd, the ghost of the hotel bartender, may be the most evil and manipulative spirit in the hotel when he comes disguised as a friend and an ear to listen. Without a doubt, Jack wouldn't have been so easy to manipulate if he hadn't fallen off the wagon and started drinking again, and Lloyd is the hand that keeps handing him the cup. All the while, he does so with a smile, listening to Jack's increasingly dark ravings and encouraging him that he is right. It's an insidious manipulation that's harder to detect, which makes him one of the most effective and underrated villains in the world. Stephen King book.