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| Good. But also Evil. It depends. |
Honorable Mention: Xena
Did you remember that she actually started off on Hercules as a murderous, evil villain in the first season? No? Well, now you've been informed that her backstory is that she went around murdering people for 10 years with her army in order to take over the world. She's basically a war criminal.
15. Sisyphus
The master of illusion. Depicted as a Loki-like trickster (sort of) who you can't trust. Eh. Don't even remember this guy.
14. Morpheus
Before there was a Morpheus in The Matrix, this guy was the god of dreams on Xena and Young Hercules. His powers are pretty weak sauce stuff like giving people nightmares or entering their minds while they're asleep. So he's more "Inception" than "Matrix."
13. Bacchus
Bacchus never appeared on the OG Hercules, but he was on Xena and Young Hercules. This is one of the weirdest and most disconnected characters to their actual mythological counterpart. Bacchus from actual Mythology is the same as Dionysus - and he's all about drinking wine and having fun. This character is basically just Satan. Red skins, horns, pointed beard, etc. He plays a lyre though. I guess that's one thing.
12. Darphus
Darphus appears in a few episodes and they don't even make an attempt to hide the fact that he's a ripoff of Clancy Brown's The Kurgan from Highlander.
11. Deimos
Actor Joel Tobeck played another villain, Strife, on Hercules. They kileld Stife off but liked the actor. Rather than just finding a way to explain how Strife came back, they bleached his hair blonde and said that this was a "new" character, Strife's cousin Deimos. Whatever. He was never anything more than a travel partner for Discord and a B-Team servant of more important baddies.
10. Aphrodite
The goddess of love is the second most frequently recurring god after Ares, she was initially an antagonist on the show, but quickly left that role to take on a more of a role as a "comic relief" character, and befriending the main characters. She still maintained a close relationship with big bad Ares though, so her role in the end falls somewhere in the middle between good and bad. So yeah, pretty notable character overall in the show, but not a particularly good "villain."
9. Apollo
The god of sunlight is a dickish, annoying jerk who frequently steps in to have mini bitch feuds with Hercules which involved things like challenging Hercules to a fight with the stakes being if Hercules loses he gets to kill a woman in cold blood. He also burned down a school. But just looking at this guy you can tell he's a douchenozzle.
8. Strife
God of Skirmishes, nephew of Ares (presumably Discord is his mom, but they never say so directly and age-wise the actors playing Strife is younger than the actress playing his mom). He's a little bitch who's always trying to prove himself to Uncle Ares by taking out Hercules. Fellow villain Callisto eventually kills him off
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| Her, but evil instead. |
Dahak, the One Evil God (more on him later) got Gabrielle pregnant. Gabrielle had a baby. She named her "Hope." Xena was not a fan of Gabrielle having a demon baby who would probably turn evil, so Xena was probably going to kill the demon baby (yikes). But Gabrielle sent Hope down a river in a basket (hrm... why does that sound familiar) and she underwent Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome and quickly grew up to become Gabrielle's identical daughter. As with Dahak himself, Hope is just a convenient/easy way to get the actress playing Gabrielle (Renee O'Connor) chances to also play evil characters.
6. Discord
Discord is Ares's sister and is basically just an S&M dominatrix who looks like she's 14 years old. She usually plays a supporting henchperson role to Ares. Xena eventually chops her head off. She appears in a lot of episodes though, often paired with Deimos of Strife.
5. Julius Caesar
Hercules and Xena never bothered being that historically accurate, and went around mixing up Ancient Greece with Rome, and even medieval history whenever they felt like it. So even though the reign of Caesar and the time when most of the Greek Myths are set are like 1200 years apart - they just went ahead and cast a Caesar character. With you? KARL FUCKING URBAN. That's right. Karl Urban also played the recurring character Cupid on the show, as well as the one-off characters of Mael and Kor. I guess because they just ran out of actors.
4. Dahak, the One Evil God
The "true" form of Dahak was a a guy in a fairly cheesy rubber costume that was part "Alien," part "Predator," and part "Godzilla." Fortunately, they barely used that suit and mainly portrayed Dahak in his seven appearances as an evil spirit who could possess others. That conveniently and cheaply allows them to just use other actors, including Tony Todd. He also possessed Iolaus, which is good because the actor playing Iolaus probably got playing the good guy - and could have a fun episode where he got to be evil. Dahak also got Gabrielle pregnant with a demon baby once, so there's that. That baby was Hope (see above).
3. Hera
Hera is always depicted as straight up evil in these shows, even though when you think about it she's Zeus's wife and Zeus was kind of a giant dickhole who kept cheating on her and sleeping with everyone and everything he could find. She's technically the main villain of the entire series, but she doesn't really appear in the show proper until near the end of the fourth season of Hercules. Up until that point she only appeared as evil glowing eyes and peacock feathers. I sort of liked her better when she was an unseen force of evil, always sending other minions to do her dirty work. By the time she showed up in physical form, I was just sort of like "meh, is that all?"
2. Callisto
One of the most notable recurring villainesses, she was depicted as a tight leather-wearing (they all were though, sort of) sadistic and murderous warlord. Yet she also had cheerleader hair. They killed her off multiple times on the show, only to bring her back. I guess that's easy to do when places like Hell/Hades are just a place you can go to and pick someone up and bring them back.
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| Sort of in the middle there. Yeah. Him. |
The god of war and the most frequently recurring villain on Hercules, Xena and Young Hercules. Once Xena was his protege, but then again Xena used to be evil in the beginning. He was also always trying to seduce Gabrielle because he was sort of missing the dots on that Xena-Gabrielle thing there. Basically, Ares always hated Hercules because they were half-brothers and daddy (Zeus) always favored Hercules more. Brilliant and scheming strategist and plotter. Also that goatee and haircut is hella cool. He was also played by Kevin Smith. No. Not that Kevin Smith.
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