There are always big chances in DC Comics for villains to find redemption, even when they have been deadly villains. Lex Luthor got a chance to join the Justice League. Riddler got an opportunity to be a hero at one point. Even Captain Cold was able to turn his back on crime during his career, showing that he could be a hero. However, while these are cases where the villains were evil, with Luthor as the worst of the worst, they all had a chance for redemption when they realized that there was something out there even worse than themselves. That said, some villains have done things so evil that even if they fought on the side of good, they don’t deserve redemption.
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From villains who have hurt children to villains whose only desire is to destroy everything, here is a look at the DC villains who don’t deserve redemption, even if they get a chance.
8) Mad Hatter
The Mad Hatter is a Batman villain who has committed such heinous acts in his past that there is nothing he can do to redeem himself. This goes all the way back to his start, when he took on his name based on the Alice in Wonderland character. To fit with his sick fantasies, he bought a girl named Alice from child traffickers and murdered her, which caused her older brother, Samuel Young, to become the vigilante known as Anarky to get revenge.
Mad Hatter then murdered a woman named Alice, whom he had a childhood crush on, when he learned she grew up to become an alcoholic and drug addict, and then murdered countless people when he failed to turn them into new versions of Alice. While he deals with mental health issues, which he has had since he was a child, his crimes, starting with killing a child, show that he deserves no chance for redemption.
7) Reverse Flash
Reverse Flash might be the most petty villain in DC Comics history. Some villains believe that what they are doing is right, such as Lex Luther, which means he will do good things when he thinks he is saving the world. Other villains have mental health issues, and that includes a large number of Batman villains. However, with Reverse Flash, he is just a petty man with no redeeming qualities, and his sole purpose for existence is to hurt Barry Allen.
The problem with Eobard Thawne is that he is from the future and was a Flash fan until he researched and realized he was a Flash villain via time travel, and no one considered him important. He wanted to prove the world wrong and traveled back in time to kill Barry’s mother, while also using time travel to try to ruin other parts of Flash’s life. The more he changes history, the more he loses control of who he was to start with, and he has become completely irredeemable over the years.
6) Doctor Light
Doctor Light was often regarded as a joke in the DC Comics universe. Strangely, he used to be a serious villain, and then suddenly he became a punchline. In Identity Crisis, DC explained the reason for his change. It turned out that Doctor Light sexually assaulted Sue Dibny, a crime so heinous that the Justice League at the time voted to have Zatanna lobotomize him. This ultimately led to the Justice League’s fracture when Batman realized Zatanna had also erased his memory of this terrible act.
However, whether the reader agrees with the original Justice League’s decision to lobotomize Doctor Light and turn him into a joke, or they agree with Batman that it was wrong, the fact remains that the villain raped a superhero and left it up to the superhero team to make this decision. Some crimes are not redeemable, and Doctor Light committed one of them.
5) Anti-Monitor
There is no way to redeem a being whose only reason for existence is to destroy the multiverse. Anti-Monitor appeared in Crisis on Infinite Earths, and his only reason for being there was to destroy the existence of every Earth. He created the Mobius Chair to learn more about creation and then began to kill countless people in his pursuit of total destruction. The crossover brought together every surviving hero from different Earths to stop him, and it required multiple sacrifices to achieve this.
He was back in the New 52 as well, where he once again was a rage-filled being who only wanted to destroy all life. He even proved to be a match for Darkseid in Darkseid War, and while neither villain ever deserves redemption, it did suggest that the Anti-Monitor might be the most evil being in existence.
4) Victor Zsasz
Victor Zsasz is a Batman villain who never deserves redemption because he is nothing but a stone-cold killer, driven solely by his desire to kill. He is a Gotham City serial killer who tattoos a tally mark on his body for every person he kills. His body is covered with tally marks, showing his disregard for human life and the unconscionable number of people he has killed over the years.
He has been actively killing people for as long as Batman’s second year as a hero, and he has never once considered stopping. He is a pure sociopath, and leaves a tally mark on his victims’ bodies as well, considering him “betrothed” to them in death. He even speaks to his victims through his scars, and there is really no way for this DC villain ever to find redemption.
3) The Batman Who Laughs
DC Comics has shown a few times that it might be possible for Joker to find redemption, regardless of the terrible things he has done over his lifetime. Some stories even suggested that Joker would find sanity if Batman were dead, and he has shown remorse at times when he has regained his sanity. However, the Bruce Wayne from Earth-22 of the Dark Multiverse will never be redeemed. This is the Batman Who Laughs.
In this world, Joker died, and when he did, his body released the Joker toxin that affected Batman and drove him insane. This sent Batman into a murderous rage, where he killed the members of the Batman Family and his Justice League allies Superman, Wonder Woman, and others. He finally made his way to this Earth, where his murderous rampage continued. While he was driven insane by the toxins, his crimes have been greater than Joker’s ever could have been, and he is way beyond redemption.
2) Trigon
Trigon is a powerful demon and a conqueror of worlds, and this easily puts him beyond the scope of redemption for DC Comics villains. Trigon is Raven of the Teen Titans’ dad, and he wanted to ruin her life as well. However, Trigon was not originally an evil demon; he was the ruler of a planet in the multiverse when beings called the Divine used the Heart of Darkness on worlds across the universe to eradicate all evil. However, this failed when they reached Trigon’s planet.
Instead of working on him, he consumed the Heart of Darkness and absorbed the evils of 100 galaxies, which made him one of the most powerful and evil beings to have ever existed. The Heart of Darkness made his taste for evil insatiable, and he began to spread it from universe to universe until he was eventually banished. Now living in Hell, he rules over his own pocket dimension, not even wishing he could ever be redeemed.
1) Darkseid
Darkseid is a being who is a conqueror of worlds, and his only mission in life is to become the ruler over all worlds and dimensions, and catapult them all into darkness. He is the ruler of Apokolips and also ruled over all the other worlds he had conquered. A New God, he has innumerable powers greater than almost any other hero or villain, and many call him the God of Evil. His ultimate goal is to find the Anti-Life Equation, which will turn anyone into a mindless being whose only purpose is to serve his will, which he wants to use on every world he conquers.
He is such a powerful villain that most of the time, when he fights the Justice League and other heroes, their best bet is only to force him to leave. However, he refuses to stop, and unless he is fighting other villains to ensure his power remains true, there is nothing Darkseid will ever do that offers him redemption of any sort.
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