Borderlands Villains Tier List

Though most beloved for its fun, tight, looter shooter gameplay, the sarcastic, lighthearted tone of the Borderlands games has become one of the hallmarks of the franchise as a whole. And that flippant, devil may care tone has never been more obvious than in its villains. While some are definitely more narratively important than others, the best of them are a constant presence throughout the game, frequently calling in to the Vault Hunter’s ECHO to taunt them and make any number of demeaning jokes at the player’s expense.

But across the four mainline entries, their DLCs, and the Telltale games, there’s a lot of characters that can technically qualify as Borderlands villains. For ranking purposes, this list will only focus on primary antagonists with narrative significance, excluding enemies like mini bosses and raid bosses. The characters will be ranked more on how their characterization fits the tone of the games themselves and how effective they are as villains. While some of them definitely have better boss battles than others, this list is exclusively based on their characterization.

S Tier Borderlands Villains

Handsome Jack

This shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. Handsome Jack is not only the best Borderlands series villain, he’s up there with the likes of Glad0s, Albert Wesker, Andrew Ryan, and Sepiroth as one of the best villains in gaming as a whole. He’s the only one in the S tier because the gap between him and the competition is less of a gap and more of a canyon.

There isn’t much more to say about Jack that hasn’t already been said. He’s played masterfully by voice actor Dameon Clarke, who brings a confusing level of likability to one of the most evil people in the series. His prominent role in both Borderlands 2 and The Pre-Sequel give him a surprising amount of complexity as a character; Handsome Jack legitimately sees himself as a hero. Despite the fact he imprisons and torments his own daughter, he seems to actually care for her deeply.

But most importantly, he’s a worthy adversary. For all his jokes and fast talking, he’s still an incredibly intelligent, well-funded enemy who presents a strong challenge to the heroes. Even after multiple playthroughs, taking him down is still incredibly satisfying. Because after his layers of irony, sarcastic humor, and delusions of heroism are stripped away, Jack never seems to realize one important thing about life on Pandora: it ain’t no place for a hero.

A Tier Borderlands Villains

• Nisha Kadam
• General Knoxx
• Wilhelm
• The Calypso Twins

Nisha Kadam

While Nisha is technically a miniboss in Borderlands 2, her status as Jack’s girlfriend and a playable character make her important enough to the series to warrant being on this list. And because of her playability in the Pre-Sequel, players had a lot of time to get to know Nisha and see just who she is.

She’s seen in Borderlands 2 as the ruthless Sheriff of Lynchwood, but most of what’s known about Nisha comes from the PreSequel. In previous games, the playable vault hunters didn’t speak much. They had voicelines during combat, but they didn’t vocally react to major story moments. The Pre-Sequel changed this and players got to hear directly what Nisha had to say about a lot of the game’s events. And there’s no sugarcoating it: Nisha is wonderfully awful to her core.

She happily goes along with Jack’s descent into absolute insanity, and is the only one of the team actively egging him on as he continually gets worse and worse. She revels in violence, both warranted and unwarranted, and is happy to label anyone she doesn’t like a ‘bandit’ to justify herself. And to put the cherry on top of this comically evil sundae, she hates and kills puppies. Anyone who plays her knows she’s an incredible badass in her own right, but as a character, she’s the type of over the top deliciously evil human being the audience just loves to hate.

General Knoxx

In the transition between the original Borderlands and its much lauded sequel, General Knoxx walked so that Handsome Jack could run. Knoxx spends most of his DLC phoning in to the original four Vault Hunters, but unlike Jack, he’s not as interested in taunting. He’s simply done with everything and ready to get this whole thing over with.

Knoxx’s backstory is pretty interesting, as he was one of the first Borderlands antagonists to really get a fully fleshed out origin story, a trend that’s continued into the series nowadays with Jack, the Calypso Twins, and even Colonel Zarpedon getting some backstory to explain their motivations.

Whereas Handsome Jack and the Calypsos are actively trying to be funny, there’s something endearingly hilarious about Knoxx’s world-weary attitude. He’s got the same demeanor as a coworker who’s been at this just a bit too long and is so mentally and emotionally over everyone and everything. And there’s something very funny and even relatable about that. Everyone’s had “one of those days”, but for General Knoxx, it’s more like one of those decades.

Wilhelm

Just like his teammate Nisha, Wilhelm entered the series as a minor boss in Borderlands 2 and got a massive character glow up after becoming playable in the Pre-Sequel. What started as a generic cyborg enemy became a little bit more. Not a lot more, but Wilhelm’s relative simplicity is part of his charm.

Even with his added backstory and personality from the Pre-Sequel, Wilhelm isn’t all that complicated of a guy. He’s a ruthlessly efficient mercenary who loves robots. He loves robots to the point where he starts replacing his body parts with cybernetics. And that’s perfectly OK. Wilhelm knows exactly what he is in life: he’s a hired gun with a gimmick and the game never labors under the delusion that he wants to be anything more than what he is. He happily works for Jack because it pays well and funds his cybernetic addiction.

While this may not net him a spot this high on the list on its own, it’s important to remember one bit of off-screen lore that most players might have forgotten: Wilhelm solo’d the entirety of New Haven between the Pre-Sequel and Borderlands 2. He walked into town and laid the whole thing to waste by himself, including defeating the likes of Roland, Lilith, Brick, and Mordecai. And a cut line of dialogue from Borderlands 2 suggests that the only reason Wilhelm died to the Borderlands 2 Vault Hunters was because Jack poisoned him to make his plan convincing.

The Calypso Twins

There’s nothing worse than having to get on stage after an amazing act. The Calypso Twins get a really unfortunate rap in the Borderlands fandom solely because they had the extremely unenviable job of following up as main villains after Handsome Jack. The deck was almost always stacked against them from the start in that regard, with many reviews and think pieces constantly citing the Twins’ inferiority to Jack in terms of characterization. But if examined on their own merits, Troy and Tyreen have some things going for them as that get unfairly overlooked.

This is the first time in the series that the main villain has been a tag team of two different people. And it’s interesting to watch Troy’s jealousy toward Tyreen’s siren powers fester and grow throughout the story. Their backstory with their father, while not as fleshed out as Jack’s (who, to be fair, got a whole game to show his origin) is still a good addition to the lore and explains in more detail as to why they are such attention-starved adult children; they’ve both got a severe case of daddy issues.

Some of the critiques of the Calypsos are valid. Their streamer gimmick gets pretty tired at times and will definitely date the game in ways other entries don’t have to deal with. But there’s more going on under the hood with the twins than fans give them credit for. Once people realize that they were never going to replace Jack and were just doing their own thing, hopefully they’ll receive a bit of a reevaluation in the fandom.

B Tier Borderlands Villains

• Sledge
• Professor Nakayama
• 5H4D0W-TP
• Captain Scarlett
• Commandant Steele
• Aurelia Hammerlock
• Hugo Vasquez

Sledge

The secondary antagonist of the original Borderlands, Sledge is exactly what anyone would want from a bandit king. He’s loud, he’s strong, he’s got a preference for very spiky armor, and most importantly, he’s very, very dumb. The man speaks in the third person and named his hammer “Hammer,” so players know right off the bat he’s not a mentalist of any description.

While nowhere near as complex a character as someone like Jack, Sledge fits his archetype extremely well. He’s “The Barbarian” through and through. Each Borderlands game sets players off against new bandit factions, and of all the leaders of these myriad miscreants, Sledge is still easily the most memorable of the bunch. Sometimes all a story calls for is a huge muscle-bound bully who needs to be taught a lesson. And when that call goes out, Sledge is the type of guy who’ll answer before smashing the phone into a million pieces.

Professor Nakayama

Nakayama is a one-joke character. He’s a Handsome Jack fanboy dialed up to 11. Normally, that type of characterization would lose him points, but here’s the thing: he might be a one-joke character, but it’s a really good joke that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

As the main antagonist of Hammerlock’s Big Hunt and a minor NPC in the Pre-Sequel, Nakayama has precious little on-screen appearances across both games he appears in, so he never has time to get stale. He absolutely could not work as a standalone villain for a full game, but a few missions here and there with some jokes about his unhealthy obsession with Jack are more than welcome in moderation. And his death is one of the better meta jokes of the series.

If nothing else, Nakayama deserves a boatload of credit for creating and preserving the Handsome Jack AI. This digital ghost was a stroke of genius (from both Nakayma and the writers) as it allowed Jack to persist after his death in Borderlands 2. This AI made Telltale’s Tales from the Borderlands one of the studio’s most memorable titles and more importantly, paved the way for the series’ most popular villain to return in the future.

5H4D0W-TP

Most fans remember 5H4D0W-TP from his ungodly difficult boss battle at the end of Claptastic Voyage. Just the mention of his name is enough to send shudders down a Pre-Sequel fan’s spine as they remember the forty minute-long slog his battle would often end up being. So much so that it’s easy to forget what he stood for as a character.

In context, 5H4D0W-TP wasn’t even a villain. He was simply trying to protect Claptrap from Handsome Jack who very obviously did not have the robot’s best interests in mind. He started his digital “life” as a bit of code that would turn the bumbling robot into a hyper-competent, hyper-lethal vault hunting machine. But in typical Claptrap fashion, this didn’t pan out, and he ended up being suppressed until the events of the DLC.

5H4D0W-TP doesn’t do a lot as a character. He’s the guy the player has to pursue and kill for the DLC’s story to happen. But his genuine love and concern for Claptrap is endearing, especially after playing through a whole DLC full of nothing but characters ragging on the funny little robot. He even gives his last vestiges of life to ensure Claptrap survives Jack’s destruction of his production line.

Captain Scarlett

The first DLC villain for Borderlands 2, Captain Scarlett seems like she’d be hampered by her gimmick: she’s a pirate that will betray the player and she doesn’t even try to hide it. And for some people, that type of character will quickly overstay her welcome. But others will appreciate the comedic lampshading of the cliché pirate tropes.

Captain Scarlett is the world’s most honest pirate while still being an unabashed villain. There’s something confusingly endearing about that, though it may just be the charm given to her by her voice actor. Colleen Clikenbeard voices a lot of characters in the Borderlands franchise, including mainstays like Lillith and Moxxie, but Scarlett reigns as one of her most underrated roles in the series.

Commandant Steele

Commandant Steele is the first major antagonist of the series and, sadly, the most paper thin of the big bads of Pandora. She serves as a foil to the original group of Vault Hunters, giving them a reason to try and locate the Vault of the Destroyer with some level of quickness.

Aside from Lillith, Steele is the first siren introduced to the series. Unfortunately, the game doesn’t do much with her. Steele suffers heavily from being the first villain of the series. Gearbox was very clearly finding their footing with what it wanted to do with the games and Steele just doesn’t have a ton to her. Even later entries don’t do much to elaborate on her further to retroactively give her some more depth. The poor girl doesn’t even get a boss fight at the end of her own game, getting unceremoniously gutted by the Destroyer mid-sentence.

Aurelia Hammerlock

Aurelia is a strange case. Like Nisha and Wilhelm, she’s a playable Vault Hunter turned villain in a later entry. Unlike her Hyperion-affiliated teammates, however, the writing surrounding her later heel-turn doesn’t make too much sense.

Aurelia debuted in the Pre-Sequel as a haughty aristocratic ice queen who seemed every bit the villainous character one would expect to work for Handsome Jack. But over the course of the game, she has something of a character arc. She very clearly voices her distaste for what Jack is doing, in direct contrast with Nisha and Wilhelm who just go deeper and deeper into sadism. Aurelia walks away from the Pre-Sequel very much on the right path, with many fans at the time speculating she’d reemerge as an ally in future installments.

So it’s easy to appreciate the sentiment Aurelia mains had when they really didn’t care for her appearance in Borderlands 3. It seemed as if her development from her debut game was totally thrown out, and then she was unceremoniously killed off. It almost seemed as if Gearbox realized she was a narrative loose end that needed trimming, and it took the fastest way possible to resolve her storyline.

Hugo Vasquez

A far cry from the physically dangerous and imposing villains rounding out the rest of this list, Hugo is a rank and file Hyperion middle manager from Tales from the Borderlands. He’s featured relatively sparsely in the game’s story, but serves as Rhys’ arch rival in the corporate hellscape that is Hyperion post Handsome Jack. While not nearly as interesting or dangerous as the other villains featured, Hugo has one incredibly strong thing going for him: a top-shelf and utterly hilarious vocal performance from the one and only Patrick Warburton.

C Tier Villains in Borderlands

Zarpedon

Colonel Tungsteena Zarpedon is easily the weakest of the Borderlands series’ primary antagonists. While she is directly opposing Jack to prevent his rise from power, she’s chosen to do so by endangering millions of innocent lives, squarely putting her in a villainous role. Despite her noble intentions and a very sympathetic backstory, she’s just a very one-note, dry character from what’s shown directly on screen. The only thing casual fans will remember about her is the incessant mocking of her (admittedly) very silly name.

Katagawa Jr.

Katagawa Jr. is the same brand of corporate mustache twirler seen with Vasquez, but without any of the inherent likability or charisma brought by a Patrick Warburton performance. Katagawa Jr. has a very cool boss fight and solid loot drops, but that’s not what this list is all about. As a character, he’s relatively flat and seems to exist solely as a means to have that epic boss encounter. His inclusion in Borderlands 3 is a fun way to show the corporate culture of Maliwan, but outside that bit of world building, he’s a fairly forgettable character.

Butcher Rose

Rose has a common problem with Borderlands DLC villains in that she has a lot of potential for a better fleshed out character, but she doesn’t have the time to shine by virtue of the DLC being a very truncated story. Her story with her grandmother is a deeply personal one, and she’s a lot more human than a lot of other Borderlands villains. Hopefully, she gets a chance to return in future installments to really reach her full potential.

Eleanor

Eleanor is a fairly standard villain for a DLC. Her cosmic horror theming is very cool and seperates her from some of the lesser characters on the list, but it only goes so far. Her relationship with and devotion to her husband is also more touching than most would expect from a Borderlands game, but the comedic tone of the games was never going to let her really develop those feelings or aspects of her character. It would negatively impede the fun factor of the DLC, and it was the right call, as Love and Tentacles is one of the better DLCs of the franchise.

Colonel Hector

Hector is a strange one. Coming from a surprise Borderlands 2 DLC released in advance of the third game, a lot of people never played his story due to the fact they were just done with Borderlands 2 at the time of release. And that’s a shame because the DLC does a lot to set up the events of the third game. Hector even ends up destroying Sanctuary, a feat even Handsome Jack was never capable of. But beyond that boastworthy achievement, he’s on the forgettable side.

Piston

There’s not much to say about Piston. He’s a muscular guy who cheats at games. He’s not particularly funny, his design seems relatively bland in comparison to other characters in the Borderlands universe, and he’s just not terribly interesting as a character. And although this list does not factor in boss fights, it’s hard to separate Piston from his boss encounter in the Badass Crater of Badassitude, which is widely regarded as the most brutal fight in any of the Borderlands titles.

Dr. Ned

Dr. Ned was the first of the DLC villains in the Borderlands franchise and, much like Commandant Steele, it shows. It’s clear the studio didn’t really hit its stride writing villains until General Knoxx. Dr. Ned is a one-note villain whose one joke runs thin very quickly. It doesn’t help anything that his zombie-themed DLC is questionably canon at best.

Vallory

Vallory is a supporting antagonist in Telltale’s Tales from the Borderlands. A crimelord much in the same vein as the Kingpin from Netflix’s Daredevil series, she mainly serves as an offscreen threat for most of the game’s runtime; a looming ominous consequence for the heroes to face should they fail. She has very little screen time before getting killed outright, meaning there’s not a lot to chew on in terms of her character outside of her being August’s overbearing mother.