TV Villains Who Wouldn't Stay Dead

Olivia Pope's family drama merely begins with believing her mother died in a plane crash over 20 years ago. Last season, Kerry Washington's character learned that the death was faked and her mother was being held captive by her potentially MORE villainous father, Rowan.  


Mama Pope reappeared in Scandal's season four fall finale, out of her B613 cell but still in handcuffs. She expects her daughter to "handle" her situation, but Olivia refuses, leaving her locked up and returning later to ask for advice about Papa Pope. 

"Girl, you need to move on," Olivia's mother dismisses her unsympathetically. "He ruined you. Cry me a river, Livvie. Whatever."

The nemesis of Benedict Cumberbatch's titular main character in Sherlock, Moriarty's alleged death was the lynchpin of the shocking events of the show's second-series finale. 


After luring Sherlock to the rooftop of St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Moriarty tells Sherlock that his friends and colleagues will be killed by his assassins unless Sherlock himself commits suicide. Only Moriarty has the fail-safe, as he tells Sherlock, "As long as I am alive, you can save your friends." He then shoots himself in the head and falls to the ground.


Sherlock also fakes his suicide at the end of the second series, but is revealed at the beginning of the third series to be alive and well. It's not until the conclusion of series three that Moriarty resurfaces, his image broadcast across every screen in London, uttering the creepy caption: "Miss Me?"


BBC One recently tweeted an official Sherlock photo, teasing the new series, which may deal with Moriarty's "reappearance."

After coven Supreme Fiona Goode (Jessica Lange) is threatened by telekinetic witch Madison Montgomery, she confesses to Madison that she is dying and Madison is in line to be her successor. To accomplish that, Fiona explains, Madison will have to kill Fiona in the same way Fiona killed the Supreme that came before her. She hands Madison the knife to do the deed, but Madison initially refuses and in the ensuing scuffle, Fiona cuts Madison's throat.


The other witches in the coven find Madison's body in the attic and resurrect her, keeping it a secret from Fiona. Kyle (Evan Peters) finally strangles Madison to death, but not before Madison gets one of the best comeback lines of all time.


"Surprise, bitch," she tells Fiona when she reappears in the Supreme's master bedroom. "I bet you thought you'd seen the last of me."

At the end of Smallville's seventh season, Lex Luthor uses a powerful orb to collapse the Fortress of Solitude on himself and Clark Kent (Tom Welling). He is missing for part of the eighth season and presumed dead, though Tess Mercer (Cassidy Freeman) discovers that Luthor is still alive and keeping tabs on Smallville.



After forcing Lana Lang (Kristen Kreuk) to absorb kryptonite in order to deactivate a bomb threatening the Daily Planet building (thereby keeping her away from Clark Kent/Superman forever), Luthor is blown up and killed when Oliver Queen (Justin Hartley) plants one of his own kryptonite bombs on his medical transport.



Yet, even after all that, one of pop culture's most famous villains is STILL. NOT. DEAD. In season 10, it is revealed that before his death, Luthor had manufactured clones of himself in order to heal himself and used parts of the clones to create one perfected version. The clone is brought to life, and attempts to kill Tess, but not before she inflects him with a neurotoxin which erases all of his memories. The series ends on a flash-forward, which reveals Lex Luthor as the newly-elected President of the United States. 

The classic case of "good guy gone bad," Shaw initially joined the team during the show's third season to help Chuck (Zachary Levi) and Sarah (Yvonne Strahovski) battle the Ring. However, when Shaw realizes that Sarah is the agent who killed his wife, he flips on the team and abducts Sarah in an attempt to murder her as payback to the CIA for his wife's death. Chuck follows the two and shoots Shaw in the chest, causing him to fall off a bridge to his assumed death.



Unfortunately, Chuck forgot about another classic TV trope: He didn't check to make sure the guy he just shot off a bridge was actually dead. Shaw reappears a few episodes later to seek his revenge. The character resurfaces again in season five, escaping from jail to take Sarah hostage once again. At the show's finale, Shaw is locked up again, but ultimately never killed.  

Imprisoned for trying to frame the CSI team in season three, Casey returned in season six to exact his revenge on detective Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo). After fighting in a lighthouse in Amagansett, Danny pushed Casey out the window, where he fell to his supposed death.



However, later in the episode, it is revealed that Casey survived the fall and made his way to Danny's apartment, where he held his infant daughter hostage until he was shot and killed by Danny's wife and fellow detective Lindsay Messer (Anna Belknap).

A member of the Others and a trusted lieutenant of main series villain Benjamin Linus (Michael Emerson), Bakunin was first thought to be killed when John Locke (Terry O'Quinn) pushed him through the island's sonar fence, but survived due to the fence's non-lethal setting. He was believed to be killed AGAIN when Desmond Hume (Henry Ian Cusick) shot him in the chest with a spear gun, but survived long enough to detonate a grenade outside the window of the Looking Glass station, drowning Dominic Monaghan's character Charlie Pace.

One of television's most famous cliffhangers was the mysterious shooting of Dallas' villainous oil tycoon J.R. Ewing on the classic soap. "Who Shot J.R.?" became a cultural phenomenon as fans of tried to guess Ewing's fate as well as the identity of his killer.



CBS kept fans guessing during the summer of 1980 until the show's fall premiere that year revealed that Ewing's mistress, Kristin Shepard (Mary Crosby), shot J.R. in order to frame his wife, Sue Ellen (Linda Gray). While the series ended it's initial run in 1991 with another cliffhanger gun shot, Hagman's character survived two reunion movies and a TNT revival before ultimately staging his death as a shooting to frame long-time rival Cliff Barnes (Ken Kercheval).