CarterMatt Awards 2017 results: Who is the winner of Best Villain?

Welcome to the CarterMatt Awards results! Throughout the final days of December we’re going to be sharing with you the end results of one of the greatest editions of these awards ever since we first started them six years ago. Hundreds of thousands of you voted, making this edition incredibly competitive and also a total blast to conduct. We hope that some of your favorites end up being among the winners this year!

One of the new categories this year was Best Villain, and this award was clearly spawned out of the sheer number of great bad guys who are out there on TV right now. We live in such a comic-book culture, one in which we can often check off different boxes for various heroes and adversaries on TV shows. We root for some and root against others; what makes a great villain is that you want to hate them. It’s no fun to just be indifferent to a character!

Luckily, we were able to pick out a field of great villains who were incredibly wicked, extremely charismatic, and a heck of a good time to watch. All of them were fun and we’re thoroughly excited that voters took to this category.

Ultimately, though, there could only be one villain to make it to the top in the end…

Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies) of Outlander is the winner of Best Villain

You can argue that some of Black Jack’s most notable work was prior to 2017 and it would be hard to fight you on it. He was relegated more to a small appearance in the season 3 premiere, but given that this was a new category it only felt appropriate to honor Black Jack for his entire terrible legacy of villainy. The episode “To Ransom a Man’s Soul” from season 1 still stands out as one of the best performances from both Menzies and Sam Heughan over the course of the entire series; what makes Black Jack so horrifying is the callousness in which he abuses. He has no moral compass or sense of honor; yet, he is able to project that whenever he sees fit. He’s a monster in sheep’s clothing and Menzies plays him with so much terror that you grow visibly uncomfortable any time he is on screen as the character. (This is all somewhat ironic given that Tobias’ next project is The Terror.)

While Menzies may be done with Outlander (for now — flashbacks/dream sequence appearances are always possible in theory), he leaves behind a brilliant legacy and some masterful performances. We all may hate Black Jack, but we’re never going to forget him and that is precisely why he’s such an outstanding villain.

Black Jack won this award easily with 74% of the vote. Meanwhile, Murdoc from MacGyver (David Dastmalchian) was in second place with 17%.

Are you happy with this CarterMatt Awards victory? Be sure to share in the comments!