The 10 Best Revenge Plots In TV Shows

The quest for vengeance, and all of the moral complexities that come with it, is a thematic well often visited by almost every dramatic television series. During this Golden Age of TV, we seem to prefer that our anti heroes and protagonists exist in the gray area between good and evil, and revenge is one of the easiest ways to explore that.

ABC's aptly-titled guilty pleasure Revenge is, as you might have guessed, all for weaving melodramatic tales out of its heroine's morally challenging thirst for vengeance, and while it has more than its fair share of soapy moments, we have to admit: It's fun. In honor of the second season premiere this Sunday at 9 p.m., Complex collected and ranked the 10 Best Revenge Plots In Television for your reading pleasure. But be warned: spoilers abound.

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Related: The Best TV Shows of 2017

Written by Frazier Tharpe (@The_SummerMan)

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Avenger: Lumen
Offense: Jordan Chase and his buddies are serial rapists and murderers

The revolving door of showrunners behind Dexter have had one thing in common: By and large, they aren't interested in the moral and ethical and themes one assumes would accompany a series that features a serial killer for a protagonist. From season three onward, each year the show pits its leading monster up against killers far more monstrous than he, amoral creeps so horrible—or so boring (Hey, Colin Hanks!)—that viewers can't help but root for them to end up on his carving table.

What lacks in complexity is usually made up for in entertainment, as evidenced by the revenge-tinged fifth season, which guest stars Julia Stiles. She plays Lumen, a Minnesota native who is welcomed to Florida by way of a serial gang-raping and murdering crew led by self-help guru Jordan Chase (Jonny Lee Miller). When Dexter inadvertently stumbles into one of their hideouts, he frees Lumen and vows to help her track and kill Chase and every other member of his twisted circle.

As previously noted, these are foes that are conveniently too heinous to let breathe, but once the season gets going the avenging is undeniably exciting as they prove themselves worthy adversaries of Dex, although the conclusion is a bit too predictable and neat. Hopefully the impending seventh season will dare to get a little messier.

Avenger: Emily Thorne
Offense: The Graysons framed her father for terrorism and later had him murdered in jail.

To recap Amanda Clarke's life, she and her Dad set up a luxurious shop in the Hamptons, where Dad was flourishing as an executive at one of the biggest companies in the world and secretly bedding boss Conrad Grayson's wife Victoria. Victoria unceremoniously showed her affection by helping Conrad shift the blame for funding a nationally-devastating terrorist attack on Papa Clarke, sending him to jail and young Amanda to a hard life spent in the system, and subsequently juvie.

Upon her release she discovers she's inherited billions of dollars, as well as Dad's journals explaining the who's and how's of the frame job. Years later she re-invents herself as Emily Thorne, the Graysons' new Hamptons neighbor and innocent girlfriend of their oldest progeny. In actuality, she's plotting a multi-layered, systematic takedown of the Grayson family and every single conspirator complicit in her father's wrongful imprisonment. In the between years she's reenacted the first 30 minutes of Batman Begins (No joke, she has a sensei.) while picking up other skills handy for avenging.

If that all sounds a little ridiculous that's because it unarguably is, but week to week it's so fun that the pleasure derived from watching Emily work isn't even guilty anymore. The acting is top notch, the sub-plots are appropriately melodramatic, and the twists are engaging to the point where the convoluted conspiracy is barely a factor. There's no telling how long the series can sustain the same revenge plot, but right now Emily Thorne is the sexiest avenging mastermind on TV.

Avenger: Sydney Bristow
Offense: Sloane had her fiancé murdered and deceived her about their agency's villainous nature

In addition to featuring one of the best revenge plots ever, Alias also boasts one of the best "undercover agent" arcs seen on television. The show follows Sydney Bristow (Jennifer Garner), a grad student who moonlights as a spy for Arvin Sloane (Ron Rifkin), director of a black-ops branch of the CIA called SD-6.

The thing is, Syd and every other agent on her clearance level have been hoodwinked, bamboozled, and led astray: SD-6 has no actual ties to the CIA and are, in fact, in league with the nation's greatest [fictional] enemies. This explains why Sloane's response to learning Sydney confided her true profession to her fiancé is to promptly have him whacked.

After discovering she's been working for the enemy all along, Sydney returns to work—but not before going to the real CIA and agreeing to be a double agent, slowly but surely working to take SD-6 down. Did we mention this all happens in the pilot? You're going to want to add this one to the Netflix queue, trust us.

Avenger: Sgt. Nick Brody
Offense: VP Walden ordered an air-strike on a terrorist compound despite presence of children, killing captive Marine Brody's only friend, then lied about it on national TV.

A major point to keep in mind when watching Homeland is that hero Carrie Mathison is right: Rescued POW Sergeant Brody is plotting an attack against the U.S.—but he hasn't been brainwashed. He's really only after one man in particular, and that man just happens to be the Vice President.

During his eight-year captivity, Brody evaded death by becoming the English teacher and de facto manny to terrorist Abu Nazir's (the show's answer to bin Laden, played by Navid Negahban) young son Issa. Naturally they strike up a bond, one that Brody latches onto while captive.

Meanwhile, VP Walden has learned of Nazir's location and orders a drone strike, ignoring the compound's close proximity to a school. The result is a catastrophic explosion that claims the lives of dozens of children, Issa included. When Brody witnesses the VP give a live conference in America claiming no such attack occurred, he needs no convincing to agree with Nazir that dude has got to go.

As the second season of the Emmy-snatching hit series continues begins later this weekend, Brody, under the guise of an office-campaigning war hero, is one of Walden's closest companions (his attempt at suicide bombing him having failed). Precisely how he plans to exact revenge now remains to be seen.

Avenger: Holtz, vampire hunter
Offense: Angel, during his evil days, murdered his infant son, raped and murdered his wife, then made his daughter a vampire.

Is there a number of good deeds that can successfully redeem all the sins one has committed? That question is at the heart of Joss Whedon's underrated vampire series Angel, and it's most prevalent in the third, and best, season. For the uninitiated, Whedon's rules are simple: Vampires are soulless creatures incapable of anything less than evil, and the titular Angel was the worst—until he was cursed with a soul. Now he does good, while trying hard to forget about all the bad.

That bad manifests itself at the worst possible time in the form of Holtz, a vampire hunter whose hard-on for Angel during the 18th century (read: Angel's worse days) prompted Angel to brutally savage his family in retaliation. When a third party allows Holtz to time-jump to the present day, he immediately tracks Angel down, and upon learning that the vamp is now an en-souled hero with a child of his own Holtz turns his vengeance plans all the way up.

He ends up successfully abducting Angel's son to a demon dimension, where time moves at a faster rate. When the kid returns, he's a surly teenager (Mad Men's Vincent Kartheiser, perfecting his hateful sneer pre-Pete Campbell) whose been raised to hate his father, a payback much worse than death.

Avenger: Tony Soprano
Offense: Ralphie murdered Tony's horse and was generally an insufferable asshole.

There was really no other conceivable outcome for Tony (James Gandolfini) and fellow made man Ralphie Cifaretto (Joe Pantoliano). Despite working closely together and Ralph being one of the most reliable earners in the crew, his unapologetic wise-cracking and grating demeanor endeared him to no one, least of all Boss Soprano.

One of their rackets included horse betting, but while Ralphie only saw dollar signs, Tony genuinely cared for their race horse, Pie-O-My, and he cared quite a bit when the horse died in a stable fire, with all signs pointing to Ralphie as the culprit. Add that to Tony wanting desperately to go against mafia code and punish Ralph for brutally murdering Tracee the stripper, and their confrontation over Pie-O-My quickly becomes violent.

Tony avenges both Ralph's victims by strangling him and repeatedly bashing his head into his own kitchen floor. Not that it made a lick of difference to Ralph at that point, but T and underling Christopher Moltisanti then decapitated him and stuffed his head in a bowling bag to dispose of it, along with his hands, on a farm.

Avenger: Jax and the Sons; Opie
Offense: LOAN raped Jax's mother to get at the club; Clay murdered Opie's wife and later his father.

FX's visceral, uber-violent hit series kicked off its best season yet with a disturbing bang, when new enemy Ethan Zobelle and his League of American Nationalists (read: white supremacists) crossed the line, taking their beef with the Sons to the home front by attacking Gemma, matriarch of the club and front-runner for best character on the show.

This being FX, her brutal gang rape was much more than implied, and although her son Jax doesn't find out until the final third of the season, viewers spent the entire season waiting with bated breath for these scumbags to get their due. When they finally did, the moment was cruelly, yet realistically, less-than-cheer-worthy (Jax coolly pumps LOAN rape-leader A.J. Weston full of lead in a tattoo parlor bathroom stall after kindly allowing his young son to walk), as the retribution only led to more problems for the Sons, and more death.

Revenge is a frequent theme on SoA, and one of the series' long-bubbling plots came to a boil after a three-season simmer when perennially beleaguered club member Opie discovered president Clay murdered his father in cold blood. That's in addition to accidentally having Ope's wife killed back in season one, when the ATF set him up to look like a rat.

When Opie called Clay on all the damage he'd done to his family, and Clay called that little incident "ancient history" we wanted to shoot the guy ourselves. Unfortunately, plot mechanics called for Clay to continue living and scheming, resulting in Ope becoming a terrible shot despite a two-foot distance, and ultimately ending his tragedy-filled servitude to the club in the only way that made sense by that point.

Avenger: The Man in Black
Offense: A lifetime of Mom-fueled sibling rivalry compounded by Jacob inadvertently turning him into a...smoke monster.

By the end of the series, it made sense why LOST began teaching us about "long cons" as early as season two because, as it turns out, the whole series was rooted in one. In the season five finale it was revealed that our castaways were, in the grand scheme of things, chess pieces in a centuries-old sibling rivalry, between godly brothers that by some convenient mystical rule, couldn't actually kill each other.

Thus, the villainous, shape-shifting Man in Black conspired and succeeded in assuming the identity of poor, gullible John Locke, who was low-key the perfectly positioned person to engineer brother Jacob's murder. As it turns out, Jacob anticipated this move and had plans beyond it—but that didn't stop MiB-as-Locke from vehemently kicking him into a fire pit anyways.

The moment where we realized John Locke was no longer really John Locke stands as one of the coolest twists on television, and despite any faults you may have with the series, the superiority of the writing and acting during that particular scene cannot be debated—considering we had only just met Jacob and MiB in the first scene of the same (two-hour) episode.

Avenger: Jack Bauer
Offense: President Logan spearheaded a conspiracy that claimed the lives of former President David Palmer and CTU co-workers Tony and his wife Michelle—three of Jack's closest allies.

Jack Bauer kicked off his Emmy-winning, and arguably strongest, hellish day with a thirst for revenge. That's because the season boldly opens by bumping off three of his closest friends/main cast members/fan favorites in the first 15 minutes as part of one big assassination plot. When the bad guys try to pin it on him, Bauer emerges from exile as a vengeful killing machine, cutting a bloody swath through a large conspiracy that leads him all the way up the ladder to...the President of the United States.

As ridiculous as that was, the twist was grounded by Gregory Itzin's masterful performance as the sleazy Commander-in-Chief and Jean Smart as his horrified First Lady, both of whom received well deserved Emmy nods. But the real star was Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series Kiefer Sutherland himself, who gave all the neck-snapping and double-tapping meaning and gravitas unseen during other 24 seasons, anchored and fueled by the death of his only friends and confidantes, save trusty sidekick Chloe, of course.

Avenger: Gustavo Fring
Offense: Don Eladio murdered his friend and partner, Max.

Breaking Bad is Walter White's show, but for a brief time during he and Gus's face-off we weren't quite sure who we wanted to win. That's because when the series' scope expanded to Gus's tragedy-filled back-story, you couldn't help but fist-pump for the villain when he successfully wiped out the Mexican cartel that coldly murdered his partner-in-crime years ago.

The sheer commitment to the plan alone is terrifyingly impressive. After bowing down to the cartel for decades following Max's murder, and scoring a minor victory by secretly setting up the hitmen Cousins, Gus presented a false olive branch in flying Jesse to Mexico to teach the cartel the famous Heisenberg recipe. To celebrate the renewed partnership, the Don, his lieutenants, and Gus toast with a bottle of Zafiro tequila brought by the Chicken Man himself.

Minutes later, Gustavo excuses himself to the bathroom, where he calmly forces himself to vomit while outside everybody that drank the tequila keels over and dies. That's right, dude poisoned himself all so he could lay waste to his enemy and his entire network in one fell swoop. It's a shame that he only had like, one week to enjoy it before before this happened.