It’s thrilling to sit down with a TV drama or spy thriller like The Night Agent and get fully engrossed in the story. There’s a lot of stealth activity, death, and destruction, but exciting entertainment value, too. This is further solidified when the character playing a skilled assassin becomes a stand-out on the show.
Such is the case with many TV assassins who are not only talented at their ruthless jobs, but terrifying as well because of it. They hunt their victims down, often with the person being none the wiser that they are about to meet their end. Each has their own methods, but some are particularly terrifying.
10 Villanelle – ‘Killing Eve’ (2018 – 2022)
Villanelle from Killing Eve is one of the most dangerous types of assassins because she doesn’t initially appear like one. She can blend in beautifully, coming across as an average young woman. That is, until she attacks. When she does, she almost always gets her mark, killing in the most brutal ways, and feels no remorse for what she has done.
The character, who works as an assassin for The Twelve, is so electric that the former MI6 agent who investigates her, Eve, ends up developing a romantic and sexual connection with her. Villanelle is cold and brutal, yet she can also be playful and fun, which makes her even more terrifying.
9 Dale and Ellen – ‘The Night Agent’ (2023 – )
Dale and Ellen from Netflix’s latest most-watched spy series The Night Agent are both cold and calculating killers. They see completing a mission of killing someone as simple as others do going for groceries or stomping on a spider. They are skilled and determined, having no interest in learning why the person they set out to kill is being killed. It’s just a job to them.
However, what makes them so terrifying is their yearning to live a normal life. Especially Ellen, who spoke of living in a home in the suburbs and even raising a child. It’s a terrifying thought to think the pair could reside in a normal neighborhood, posing as an average married couple with their neighbors none the wiser.
8 Peter Quinn – ‘Homeland’ (2011 – 2020)
Unlike other TV assassins, Peter Quinn from Homeland has a conscience. When he accidentally kills a young boy or believes the person he set out to kill doesn’t deserve it, Peter struggles internally. The fact that he internalizes all his emotions leads him to make rash and impulsive decisions and suffer through a lot of personal turmoil.
Peter Quinn feels deeply for people and has a moral sense of what’s right and wrong. But what makes him dangerous is that he is so confident in his own skills that they even scare him.
7 Jaqen H’ghar – ‘Game of Thrones’ (2011 – 2019)
With the unique ability to take on the likeness of virtually any person, Jaqen H’ghar from Game of Thrones is the type of assassin who can get up close and personal with his victims, and they would be none the wiser. He can disguise himself as just about anyone, giving him the name of Faceless Man of Braavos.
Jaqen H’ghar trained for years to perfect his supernatural ability. Yet his calm demeanor never gives people any indication that he might be a threat. His intense loyalty to the Many-Faced God means he will listen to whatever he is tasked to do and do it without breaking a sweat.
6 Jane Doe – ‘Blindspot’ (2015 – 2020)
What’s more terrifying than an assassin who knows their own abilities is one who can’t even remember them and is rediscovering them as she goes. This is the case with Jane Doe from Blindspot, who wakes up with a duffle bag in the middle of Times Square with no recollection of who she is and how she got there. It turns out, she was a pretty skilled fighter with knowledge of just about every martial art.
Seeing Jane kick, punch, flip, and attack enemies suggests that to her, it’s like riding a bike. Once she gets back on, she is just as fierce and deadly as she once was.
5 Bucky Barnes – ‘The Falcon and the Winter Soldier’ (2021)
Even though Bucky from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier has a good heart, he can’t help but revert to his animal instincts and the soldier he once was after being brainwashed. Initially working for Hydra to help eliminate their targets, he knows combat and how to be stealthy, and even has a cybernetic arm. He is proficient in using a multitude of weapons and was put into a cryogenic state after every kill so that he would seemingly last forever.
It’s almost as though Bucky, played by Sebastian Stan in one of his best roles, has been programmed to be a soldier and a killer. One of the reasons he can’t resist this instinct each time he is awoken to complete a mission is that he doesn’t remember his prior life. In that respect, until he reunited with Steve Rogers, a.k.a. Captain America, and began remembering snippets of his life, Bucky Barnes was nothing more than a killing machine.
4 Kai Jin – ‘Wu Assassins’ (2019)
How could any enemy possibly have a chance against an assassin who has the abilities, and memories, of a thousand monks? Such is the case with Kai Jin, an unsuspecting chef who discovers he is the last in the long line of assassins. He becomes the chosen one, tasked with eliminating the dangerous Wu Warlords.
Kai can harness all types of fighting styles, adapting as needed to any fight by impersonating the specific monk he’s channeling. This means he can not only succeed in a fight against a single warlord, but he’s also able to take on many at once.
3 Ray Shoesmith – ‘Mr Inbetween’ (2018 – 2021)
Unlike other assassins who live in the dark, avoiding any type of human connection, Ray Shoesmith in the underrated series and Australian black comedy-crime drama Mr Inbetween is living a double life. He’s a family man by day with a girlfriend, ex-wife, daughter, and terminally ill brother to care for. Like a light switch, he turns his emotions on and off for work and his personal life, though inevitably, they begin to bleed into one another.
Mr Inbetween isn’t as intense as other TV shows that center around assassins. But the way Ray seamlessly jumps from one side of himself to the other makes him just as scary.
2 Nikita – ‘Nikita’ (2010 – 2013)
There’s no one more terrifying than an assassin who has a personal vendetta. That’s the case with Nikita in the series of the same name, a young woman who escapes from a secret organization that forced her to work as an assassin and killed her fiance. She uses her intense training and incredible skills against them to take down the people who took her life from her.
She spent three years in hiding on Nikita, waiting for the perfect time to strike. She is ruthless, reverting to the younger, troubled self that got her seemingly rescued from Death Row in the first place.
1 Kali, a.k.a. Eight – ‘Stranger Things’ (2016 – )
Kali from Stranger Things isn’t a hired assassin like many other TV assassins. But she has taken it upon herself to complete a self-professed mission to get rid of all the people who wronged her as a child. These include people who helped keep her captive and tested on like a lab rat when she was at Hawkins, and those who played a hand in tearing her away from her birth parents.
What makes Kali especially terrifying is her special abilities: she can make people hallucinate, seeing things that aren’t really there. It’s easy to see how this power can not only help her achieve missions but also protect her from harm.
