Rick and Morty just ended its 9th season and saw the return of some classic antagonists like Evil Morty. The sci-fi comedy is known for its one-off weird premises, but some recurring characters give the show a sense of epicness. The multiversal storylines, comebacks, and most importantly, the antagonists make the show a classic.
The following ranking of villains will consider factors like genuine threat to Rick, Morty, and the multiverse, good writing, impact on the overall narrative and mythology of the show, and their recurring capacity. One-off monsters or characters are not considered in the list. Here are all the Rick and Morty villains ranked from worst to best.
10. Fart
Jemaine Clement voices the gaseous being in the season 2 episode, ‘Mortynight Run’. Fart is not actually the name of the being; Rick just calls him that because he’s a gaseous cloud. It is the target of the assassination plot by Krombopulos Michael, whom Rick sells an antimatter gun to, and Morty develops a conscience towards, initially.
Fart appears friendly, even performing a song with Morty, which makes his reveal as part of a species dedicated to exterminating all carbon-based life genuinely unsettling. He ranks last because his menace is confined to a single episode and resolved quickly. He is a thematically rich villain, but his impact on the overall narrative is minuscule.
9. Abradolph Lincler
Abradolph Lincler is an unholy union of two of history’s most controversial leaders, Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler, despite both being on different sides of the spectrum. Rick creates the amalgamation in an attempt to build a morally neutral leader, and the character is introduced in the season 1 episode, ‘Ricksy Business’.
He crashes Rick’s party seeking his creator’s acceptance, loses a fistfight, and is later gravely wounded fighting an alien monster before surviving via a dark stinger gag. He ranks low because he’s more absurdist commentary on Rick’s carelessness than a credible antagonist. His presence makes things funnier rather than menacing.
8. Mr. Needful
Lucius Needful is the Devil in disguise in Rick and Morty. Appearing in Season 1, Episode 9, ‘Something Ricked This Way Comes,’ Mr. Needful runs a cursed pawn shop that ensnares Summer as an employee, using monkey’s-paw-style temptation to trap customers with wishes that carry terrible costs.
Rick, annoyed by the cliché premise, sets out to destroy him purely out of spite. And just as Rick was annoyed at the cliché, so are we, and that is why he ranks at 8th. The literal Devil and his shady dealings are too literal for a show that works best at subtlety and thematic metaphors.
7. Phoenixperson
Teased in a Season 4 premiere stinger and fully unleashed in the Season 4 finale, Episode 10, ‘Star Mort Rickturn of the Jerri,’ Phoenixperson is Rick’s old friend Birdperson, secretly revived by the Galactic Federation and rebuilt as a brainwashed cyborg soldier. He nearly kills Rick in single combat before Space Beth shuts him down.
He ranks in the middle for genuine emotional and physical menace, turning a beloved ally into a credible threat, even though he’s ultimately a victim reclaimed by Rick rather than a villain acting on his own agenda.
6. President Curtis
Andre Curtis made his first appearance in ‘Get Schwifty’, as the quirky POTUS who wants Rick’s help during a crisis. Soon he became an egoistic, power-hungry politician (surprise! surprise!) who went against Rick. He does not have raw power and is not fantastical like the other villains in the show. His villainy comes from his ego.
His willingness to weaponize the military against Rick, including full manhunts, shows real institutional menace. He ranks here for consistency across the series. He is a believable, grounded antagonist representing bureaucratic overreach, though never an existential threat to the multiverse.
5. Story Lord
Introduced in Season 4, Episode 6, ‘Never Ricking Morty,’ Story Lord is the conductor of a sentient ‘Story Train’ who traps Rick and Morty in a self-perpetuating narrative to harvest their story potential and break through the ‘fifth wall.’
Rick escapes only by having the pair pray to Jesus Christ, a deliberately absurd non-solution. Story Lord returns in Season 6’s ‘Full Meta Jackrick,’ escaping into the main series to confront his own existence. He ranks solidly as one of the show’s most conceptually ambitious villain ideas.
4. Tammy Guterman
Tammy Guterman entered Rick and Morty as a random character in the season 1 episode, ‘Ricksy Business’. However, she gets together with Rick’s friend, Birdperson, and it is later revealed that she is a spy. In the season episode, ‘The Wedding Squanchers’, she reveals her real identity as a Galactic Federation agent and seemingly kills Birdperson before he comes back as Phoenixperson.
Her betrayal weaponizes the audience’s trust in a beloved side character and sets off the fall of the Federation. She ranks high for genuine narrative shock value and for driving lasting consequences into the show’s emotional core.
3. The Pope
Introduced in Season 7, Episode 9, “Mort: Ragnarick,” the Pope emerges as a surprise threat after Rick tries to mine the afterlife for infinite energy. Using a manipulated Bigfoot as an unwitting assassin and later Rick’s own harvested energy, the Pope kills Rick, Morty, and Bigfoot repeatedly; Rick ultimately traps him in a Poké Ball.
This broke the show’s long-standing tension around permanent character death by killing the leads outright multiple times in one episode. He ranks highly for the sheer shock of his power level.
2. Rick Prime
For many seasons, Rick Prime was teased as the big evil of the show since he killed Rick’s wife. A killing referenced as early as Season 3’s ‘The Rickshank Rickdemption’ and shown in flashback in Season 5’s ‘Rickmurai Jack.’ He made his first appearance in Season 6 and was hunted and killed in Season 7, with the help of Evil Morty.
He ranks near the top as the emotional engine behind most of the show’s mythology, driving Rick’s decades-long rampage across the multiverse.
1. Evil Morty
The undisputed best villain, Evil Morty first appears in Season 1, Episode 10, “Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind,” as a quiet, eyepatch-wearing Morty secretly controlling a brainwashed Rick.
He’s later revealed to have been elected President of the Citadel of Ricks in Season 3’s ‘The Ricklantis Mixup,’ and his full plan comes to a head in the Season 5 finale, Episode 10, ‘Rickmurai Jack,’ where he shatters the Central Finite Curve to escape the multiverse’s Rick-dominated hierarchy entirely.
His calm intelligence rivaling Rick’s own, paired with a sympathetic origin rooted in mistreatment, makes him the show’s most complex antagonist.
| Rank | Rick and Morty Villain | First Appearance |
| 1 | Evil Morty | Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind |
| 2 | Rick Prime | The Rickshank Rickdemption |
| 3 | The Pope | Mort: Ragnarick |
| 4 | Tammy Gueterman | Meeseeks and Destroy |
| 5 | Story Lord | Never Ricking Morty |
| 6 | President Curtis | Get Schwifty |
| 7 | Phoenixperson | The Rickshank Rickdemption |
| 8 | Mr. Needful | Something Ricked This Way Comes |
| 9 | Abradolf Lincler | Ricksy Business |
| 10 | Fart | Mortynight Run |
Which Rick and Morty villain do you find the best? Comment below.
Rick and Morty is available to stream on Hulu.
