Who is the true villain in Riverdale?

In Season 1 of Riverdale, the show was mostly preoccupied with the love triangle between Archie (KJ Apa), Betty (Lili Reinhart), and Veronica (Camila Mendes), and cheerleading catfights. Things have changed a lot since those more innocent days, however, and nowadays, Riverdale has a lot more on its plate. Forget high school romance drama – the characters on the CW show have to contend with drug dealers, incestuous murder plots, and evil cults who harvest human organs. So it goes without saying that the show has more than its fair share of villains, baddies, and ne’er-do-wells. But are all villains created equal? Hardly. Here are the best that Riverdale has to offer.

10. Francis Dupont

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Respect for Francis Dupont (Malcolm Stewart) for being an old-school, classic antagonist – in a town full of masked villains with ridiculous names, it’s sort of refreshing to have one who, yes, is a serial killer, but could otherwise pass as an ordinary human. During the story arc where Jughead (Cole Sprouse) ends up attending an elite prep school that, like any historical WASP organization, has more than its fair share of secrets, we meet Francis. He’s introduced as the writer of a popular book series and serves as a mentor to Jughead as he pursues a writing career of his own. Of course, he also happens to be responsible for orchestrating a series of murders going back decades and secretly conspires to sabotage Jughead. But look, no one’s perfect.

9. Ethel Muggs

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Ethel Muggs (Shannon Purser) is sort of like the Ann Veal of Riverdale villains: “Her?” She starts off as just another generic Riverdale High School student – quiet, unassuming, and totally unremarkable. But then she gets extremely invested in the Gryphons and Gargoyles game, becoming obsessed with the Gargoyle King who has been tormenting the town. She’s certainly not as bad as the ringleader bad guys on the show – instead, she’s a classic follower, willing to make decisions that hurt people in service of others. Still, Ethel is not beyond redemption, and while she steps into villain territory at times, it’s difficult not to empathize with her.

8. Penny Peabody

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With as many criminals as there are on Riverdale, it was probably only a matter of time before we’d see one working within the justice system. That’s where Penny Peabody (Brit Morgan) comes in: A respected attorney who frequently worked with the Southside Serpents, she initially comes across as a kind-hearted warrior for the downtrodden. But her legal help comes at a price, and she’s not above manipulating vulnerable people to her own ends. At one point, she cons Jughead into doing a drug run for her by playing on his love for his incarcerated father, then blackmails him when he complies. On a show with gargoyle kings and creepy cults, she taps into real-world villainy, making her one of the most frightening characters Riverdale has to offer.

7. Hal Cooper

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At first, Hal Cooper (Lochlyn Munro) seems like just another overbearing parent in Riverdale, the father of girl-next-door Betty. But there’s more than meets the eye, darkness lurking beneath his wholesome suburban dad shtick. Throughout the course of the second season, there’s a masked serial killer who wreaks havoc around town, committing murders and attempted murders with an unseemly frenzy. Many of his hostile actions seem particularly aimed at Betty Cooper, which makes it something of a surprise when we learn that the Black Hood is actually her father, Hal. Raised from childhood to have a fanatical focus on punishing his Riverdale neighbors for their perceived sins, Hal brings a sort of Se7en style energy to the show, demonstrating a clear escalation of Riverdale from being about a town with a singular murder mystery to the frankly disturbing den of iniquity it will eventually become.

6. Hermione Lodge

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When we first meet Hermione Lodge (Marisol Nichols), Veronica's mother, and married to an even bigger baddie, Hiram (Mark Consuelos), she comes across as the reasonable one. She moves Veronica away from the city and back to her hometown to protect her from the fallout of her husband's crimes, which makes her seem like a protective, dutiful mother. And while that may be true, it isn’t long before we learn that Hermione has a few tricks up her sleeve as well, and a Machiavellian streak a mile wide. There’s a reason why she and Hiram were together for so long, after all. Over the course of the show, she proves herself to be a master manipulator, willing to commit a variety of crimes as she looks out for her own self-interest above all else. Still, her villain status changes from season to season, and as Riverdale progresses, she eventually becomes more of what we might consider an anti-hero.

5. Gargoyle King (Chic)

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On the one hand, you have to give this guy some credit: It isn’t easy evoking fear throughout Riverdale with a name as ridiculous as the Gargoyle King. And on top of that, he is a legitimately spooky character, first appearing to Betty and Jughead in the woods looking much more like a character on The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. You also have to appreciate his commitment to the bit – by the time the modern-day residents of Riverdale encounter the Gargoyle King, he had been part of town mythology for multiple generations (albeit with different antagonists operating in the role of Gargoyle King over the years). That’s persistence! And with a loyal band of followers ominously known as the Gargoyle Gang, he’s clearly got a certain appeal that would put him standing head and shoulders above other Riverdale villains.

4. Clifford Blossom

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Where to start with good old Clifford Blossom, right? His character is at the heart of the first season’s whodunit: On the Fourth of July, his son, Jason Blossom, died under "mysterious circumstances." The Blossoms are the most prominent family in all of Riverdale, the owners of a lucrative maple syrup business going back generations, and the death of their only son sends shockwaves through the community. But the one person who was perhaps less than surprised about Jason’s death was his own father, Clifford. Why? Because he’s the one who killed him. After discovering Clifford’s use of the company as an avenue for drug trafficking, Jason confronted his father, after which the elder Blossom shot him in the head and staged his death as an accident. What with all the criminal activity, it’s pretty clear that Riverdale’s favorite son is maybe not such a great guy. Cold and ruthless, Clifford Blossom is a fundamental part of a classic Riverdale mystery, back when the show was firing on all cylinders (and before it went gloriously off the rails).

3. Evelyn and Edgar Evernever

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A lot of Riverdale villains have an inexplicably creepy, incestuous vibe, but these two take the cake. Edgar (Chad Michael Murray) is the leader of a cult ominously referred to as The Farm – he sells himself as some kind of new-age guru, but illegally harvesting human organs is where his real passion lies. Evelyn (Zoé De Grand Maison) initially seems like a harmless transfer student – until it’s revealed that she’s pulled a major Never Been Kissed on the Riverdale High populace, and is actually a fully adult woman posing as a teenager in order to lure her fellow students into the cult. And what’s worse? She introduces Edgar as her father when he’s actually her husband. There are probably scarier villains on Riverdale, but these are the only two capable of making audiences experience a full-body shudder of revulsion.

2. Penelope Blossom

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If we’re going to list Clifford Blossom as a villain, we probably need to include his wife/adopted sister Penelope (Nathalie Boltt) too. While Clifford comes across as a Scooby-Doo bad guy in the first season, Penelope is the far more insidious threat, with a hand in the major outbreaks of violence that plague the second and third seasons of Riverdale. Not only did she do a psychological number on her children, but over the course of the show, she would also prove to have murderous instincts that outshine any of the other villains. Poison was her go-to move, leading to an impressive body count and frequently combined with the appearance of suicide so as to avoid suspicion falling on her. Although she’s not a baddie we’d like to tangle with, you have to admire her steely-eyed determination, and let’s be real – a lot of her victims had it coming, anyway.

1. Hiram Lodge

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There are plenty of bad guys in ridiculous masks with ridiculous names who wander the streets of Riverdale – that’s not Hiram Lodge’s vibe. He’s the shadowy presence that operates behind the scenes, maintaining an (admittedly thin) veneer of respectability while running what amounts to a criminal empire. A prominent businessman, he uses his company, Lodge Industries, as a front for all manner of drug deals and other nefarious activities. He begins the show on trial for embezzlement and fraud, and his crimes only become more egregious from there. Not only does he play mind games with the youth of Riverdale, including his own daughter Veronica and her closest friends, but he’s directly implicated in the attempted murder of Archie. He may have been mayor of Riverdale for a time, but it says everything we need to know about Hiram Lodge that his character arc ended with his daughter literally running him out of town at gunpoint.