Wicked Witches: Ranking the Top 5

Which Witch is the Wickedest?

Witches get a bad rap. Humanity has told stories of people with magical powers as long as we’ve been telling stories, but magical women always draw the short stick. Spells protected them from patriarchy and led to sorceresses being portrayed as wicked and untrustworthy.

From Circe to Agatha Harkness, wicked witches have struck fear through power, allure, and cunning. Where there’s a witch, you’ll find heroes standing in her way. So who are the Top 5 Wicked Witches? Let’s find out.

Honorable Mention: Glinda

Series: The Wizard of Oz
Played By: Billie Burke, Ariana Grande

WHOA! Torches and pitchforks down, folks! I know you were expecting someone a bit more green, largely because she defines this archetype, but there are two sides to every story. The Witch of the North may not be the wise mentor you think she is.

When Dorothy Gale landed her house on the Wicked Witch of the East, Glinda appeared immediately to greet her. She spread Dorothy’s fame as East’s murderer, even leading the Munchkins in celebratory song. When West arrived at the crime scene, Glinda used magic to force East’s most powerful artifact, the Ruby Slippers, onto Dorothy’s feet. Her death threat then forced West to retreat. 

Glinda instructed the now endangered Dorothy to follow the Yellow Brick Road and find the Wizard of Oz for help returning to Kansas. Dorothy’s journey resulted in West’s death and her outing the Wizard as powerless. He left Oz and Glinda reappeared, revealing that Dorothy could have escaped at any time. This isn’t framed as something she had uncovered. She knew. Glinda could have sent Dorothy home at any time. So why didn’t she?

Let’s do a headcount. East and West are dead. South goes unmentioned. Dorothy and The Wizard are gone forever, the former believing her entire adventure was a dream. Dorothy’s companions are placated by trinkets. Without any figurehead, the power vacuum of Oz has only one claimant.

As I often ponder,

Not one curse cast
nor a single punch thrown
now cunning Glinda
sits on the throne.

#5 Amora the Enchantress

Series: Thor
Played By: Sophia Di Martino, Kari Whalgren

As our old, catspaw-loving pal Glinda once said, “only bad witches are ugly.” Fairy tales love to make wicked witches grotesque through warts, odd-colored skin, snakes for hair, or old age. Beautiful witches are vain and often their looks are diminished as illusion. In this sorceress’ hand, beauty is deadlier than any blade.

Amora is an Asgardian sorceress and the goddess of beauty. She is famed throughout the Nine Realms for her looks and courted by most men who see her. Amora only has eyes for Thor, both from a desire to become Asgard’s queen and genuine affection. It helps that he’s one of the few who can resist her charms.

The Enchantress often works with other villains to kill Thor when he spurns her. She just as often teams up with Thor against mutual threats. She’s very fickle. When not obsessing over Thor, she also battles Dazzler about her singing voice. The Enchantress is a frequent enemy of female heroes because her charms aren’t as effective on women.

Amora is able to make most men fall in love with her via magic, often turning superheroes into her enslaved champions. She can also drain life force with a kiss, cast spells, and has super strength. Amora is smarter than she appears, but not immune to her own powers and could give Narcissus lessons on self-love.

Fun Fact: Amora is one of the few Thor characters to lack a mythological counterpart. If anything, she’s an Asgardian Aphrodite. Some stories have hinted that she was Freyja and other famous Nordic women.

#4 Wicked Witch: The Queen of Fables

Series: Justice League
Played By: Wanda Sykes, Janelle James

It’s interesting how often women play the villain role in fairy tales. Evil queens, ugly hags, cruel stepsisters, and of course, wicked witches. Distill them all into one person, and find this monarch staring back.

Tsaritsa was an interdimensional sorceress and tyrant. Princess Snow White sealed her in the Book of Fables, changing her into the embodiment of all Evil Queen characters in fiction. Tsaritsa was freed in modern times and transformed Metropolis into a fairy tale world. She became obsessed with Wonder Woman and Superman because she couldn’t tell them apart from Snow White and Prince Charming.

The Queen of Fables placed Wonder Woman into an enchanted sleep and unsuccessfully seduced Superman. The Justice League fought rampaging fairy tales while searching for her weakness. Wonder Woman awoke with a kiss from Aquaman. The League trapped the Queen of Fables in the U.S. Tax Code, which was so boring and dry that she couldn’t weaponize it.

The Queen is immortal, ageless, and can cast many spells. Her favored tactic is summoning mythological monsters to fight for her. As an embodiment of stories, Tsaritsa inherently follows fairy tale tropes. That makes her self-defeating because the Evil Queen always loses. However, as long as her stories are told, The Queen of Fables will always return.

Wait… CRAP! We just retold her story!

HAHAHAHAHA! I LIIIIIIIIVE!!!!

#3 Wicked Witch: Delilah Briarwood

Series: Critical Role
Played By: Matt Mercer, Grey Griffin

Why do magic users seek power? Poorly written ones are seeking power, but strength is only a means to an end, not an end in itself. Love and desperation fuel this wicked witch’s desire for power.

Delilah Briarwood was an archmage whose husband, Sylas, died from illness. She studied forbidden necromancy to resurrect him. In her dreams, the Lich God Vecna offered that spell in exchange for her eternal loyalty. Delilah agreed and was taught a ritual that transformed Sylas into a vampire.

The Briarwoods were ordered to perform a ritual beneath the city of Whitestone. They posed as foreign nobles and ingratiated themselves with the ruling De Rolo family. Delilah and Sylas led a coup that killed all but two De Rolos and conquered Whitestone. They were killed by adventuring party Vox Machina while performing the ritual, but returned to plague the team several times.

Delilah is a necromancer who specializes in battlefield control spells. She dispels magic, weakens enemies’ minds, and paralyzes foes so that Sylas can feed on them. Her favorite spell is Finger of Death, a lethal curse that reanimates victims as zombies. Delilah was murdered three times and still retained enough power to serve as a warlock’s magical Patron while pursuing another resurrection.

#2 Wicked Witch: Maleficent

Series: Disney
Played By: Elanor Audley, Susanne Blakeslee, Angelina Jolie

Upsetting a wicked witch is rarely wise. You’ll be turned into a newt if you’re lucky. But pissing off Disney’s devilish fae sorceress is borderline suicidal.

Maleficent is a wicked fairy who wasn’t invited to Princess Aurora’s christening and cursed the newborn to die on her sixteenth birthday. Another fairy changed that curse to eternal sleep until Aurora shares True Love’s Kiss with a prince.

The curse worked and Aurora fell asleep. Maleficent battled valiant Prince Phillip to prevent him from saving her. The fairy’s black magic was on full display, with lightning blasts, flight, divination, and a forest of thorns attacking the knight. When that wasn’t enough, Maleficent transformed into a dragon. She was only defeated by the intervention of three good fairies who enchanted Phillip’s sword to pierce her heart.

Beyond Sleeping Beauty, Maleficent is Disney’s go-to Big Bad for crossovers. She took the lead in Micky’s House of Villains, Descendants, and Once Upon a Time. Maleficent became a much greater threat in the Kingdom Hearts franchise, leading Disney villains and armies of soul-eating Heartless in a genocidal campaign to conquer the multiverse.

#1 Selene

Series: X-Men
Played By: Kota Eberhardt, April Stewart

Wicked witches are often powerful, but this one takes the cake. Why merely be a sorceress when you can also be an immortal, a psychic, a vampire, and a Mutant?

Selene Gallio was born in Europe 17,000 years ago. Her tribe discovered that she could absorb life force and willingly sacrificed themselves to empower her. Selene spent millennia accruing magical knowledge, life force, and manipulating cults for amusement. She resurfaced in the modern day as the Black Queen of the Hellfire Club.

Selene fought several superheroes, shrugging off multiple deaths and imprisonments as minor irritants. She made a play for godhood by absorbing souls bound to the destroyed Mutant nation Genosha. Selene was murdered shortly after reaching apotheosis and subjected to a spell to destroy evil spirits. That spell failed and she later resurrected, ticked off but no worse for the wear.

Life force fuels Selene’s powers, including the standard physical boosts, telekinesis, telepathy, pyrokinesis, and immortality. Adding seventeen millennia of magical knowledge on top of that combo is just mean. Selene isn’t invincible. Overuse of her life force reserves, poor emotional control, vanity, and a crippling fear of aging give heroes all the openings they need to kill her for a while.

Which witch do you think is wickedest? Is there one more deliciously evil than these? Tell us in the comments.

Image: © 2013 – Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Jared Bounacos

Jared Bounacos has written for Movie Rewind since 2016.