15 of The Walking Dead’s most vile villains ranked

5. Gareth, Leader of Terminus

Who is he: He’s a cannibal, who ran a community of cannibals. Almost immediately after the group’s brawl with the Governor at the prison, Gareth captures Rick and his group of survivors and puts them in a storage unit until the citizens of Terminus got hungry or something. Eating people for survival in the apocalypse is a pretty drastic approach for a zombie apocalypse. Given the circumstances, there was never a viable or even resourceful reason for Terminus to become cannibalistic for the sake of nutrition or survival. They lived in a warm, vegetative environment. They were perfectly capable of growing and yielding fruits and vegetables for the entire group. Even in the case of dwindling meat-based protein sources. Seriously, Gareth’s villainy origin (i.e. voluntary cannibalism) isn’t realistic or excusable, which makes it all the more terrible and gross.

Worst act of villainy: Beyond eating people when there was really no reason to resort to eating people, his most villainous moment was tracking down Rick’s group to Gabriel’s church and eating Bob’s leg after he’d been bitten by a walker. Bob knew he was going to die regardless, but they didn’t even kill Bob before they cut off his leg and started to eat it.

Weakness: Somehow, Gareth thought it was a great idea to plead for Rick to spare his life… all after he had threatened Rick’s infant daughter, held them hostage in a human-sized lunchbox, ate one of his people, and attempted to kill and eat the rest.

Redeeming qualities: Apparently, Gareth used to be a benevolent leader until a villainous group of people overran Terminus (off-screen of course). Granted, becoming a cannibalistic society after one bad run-in with another group of survivors sounds like a non-sensical reform to their society. Not to mention the fact that it sounds like Gareth wasn’t really fit to lead anyone if that’s his drastic response to one sour apocalyptic interaction.

First appearance: “A” (season 4, episode 16)

Last appearance: “What Happened and What’s Going On” (season 5, episode 9, in Tyreese’s hallucinations)

Death: Killed by Rick in Gabriel’s church, in a brutal but well-deserved fashion.