Ramsay Bolton Voted “The Actual Worst” Character On Television
By Ani Bundel
As 2015 rolls towards a close, it’s that time of year for “Best and Worst” lists of the year gone by. We expect Game of Thrones to land on many of those countdowns–and they already have, from Entertainment Weekly, to Rolling Stone, to The Guardian. What we don’t expect is that the show will find it’s way on to Worst Lists of 2015… until The Atlantic came along with a poll that seemed tailor-made for characters of Game of Thrones to win.
“The Actual Worst” has been running on their site since the beginning of November, and it’s been pretty entertaining to see who knocks out who. (Full disclosure: I voted in every round.) Game of Thrones found itself with a couple of contenders in the “Plain Evil” bracket–King Joffrey Lannister, err, Baratheon and Ramsey Bolton, nee Snow. They weren’t the only one with more than one character, House of Cards had both Frank and Claire, fellow HBO show Girls nominated both Marnie and Hannah. Parks and Rec had Jeremy and Tammy, Orange Is The New Black both Piper and Vee, Hannibal had the title character, and Mason, while Breaking Bad had three: Gus, Todd and Walt. But in all cases, they ran in different brackets. Only The Walking Dead managed the same feat as Thrones, with two characters nominated in the same category (Carl and Andrea, in “Just Excruciating”), but both were knocked out int he first round by stronger contenders. And with only Hannibal making it to the top of his category, beating out Walt for “Star of the Show,” that meant that no two characters from the same show went up against each other–except for Game of Thrones, where Joffrey and Ramsay beat out all the contenders to face off in a head to head in the quarter finals.
Once Ramsay beat out Joffrey for the title of “Plain Evil,” it was a cake walk to the final round, since the winner was facing Andrew Scott’s Moriarty from Sherlock, a character either of them would have easily beaten–in Ramsay’s case, after skinning him alive. Somehow poor Fitz from Agents of SHIELD found himself winning “Just Excruciating,” which put him up against Hannibal, ensuring the famous cannibal a spot in the finale. (“Being eaten alive by the competition” never seemed such an apt phrase.)
If Joffrey had made the finals instead of Ramsay, it might have gone the other way–though Joffrey is a not only a spoiled brat, but insane, it’s hard to see him beating Hannibal, especially with the audience having been reminded in his death scene that, whatever his behavior, Joffrey was just a teenager with too much power and not enough parental controls. Ramsay on the other hand, is not only a grown man, but one who revels in his evilness, which made this a heck of a fight. But though Hannibals’ blurb was strong (“He’s a special kind of serial killer who likes to cook and eat his victims after they’re dead, prepare them as gourmet meals, and serve them to guests.”) it was Ramsay’s genuine wildcard behavior won out (“In a show about why people in desperate times do terrible things, Ramsay Bolton does the most terrible things for no reason at all.”)
Congratulations Ramsay Bolton. When you return to our screens next year, hiding the fact that your wife has run in terror, and preparing for yet more battles (in which we pray you are defeated), you return knowing that you sir, are truly the Actual Worst Character on television. Never change.