30 Strongest Female Villains of All Time (Ranked)

Women aren’t always pleasant. While most supervillains tend to be male, several female villains have given protagonists a difficult time.

Here are 30 of the strongest female villains that will blast people away with their powers.

30. Lust (Fullmetal Alchemist)

Among the Homunculi, Lust seems to be the most sadistic of the bunch, preferring to torture her victims over swiftly ending them compared to the rest of her “siblings.” This character flaw may be the reason why she fell to her demise in the fight against Mustang. Instead of finishing them off when she had the chance to finish the both of them off on multiple occasions.

Despite being a homunculus and despising humans, she portrays normal traits and looks at her comrades as a form of family. She tends to act motherly to Gluttony and seems to have good relationships with her other siblings except for Greed. Lust has the ability to extend her claw-like fingernails, which are sharp enough to cut through any material. 

29. Annie Leonhart/Female Titan (Attack on Titan)

She doesn’t lack strength in the slightest, but I placed her lower on the list because she decided to aid Armin and the rest of the team. However, that’s great for the heroes of Attack on Titan. She is a highly talented soldier. She graduated as the 4th best trainee in the 104th Training Corps. It was later revealed she was the Titan Shifter called the Female Titan, similar to Eren, but unlike the protagonist, she was actually fighting for Marley and wanted to take Eren back to Marley. Right before her defeat, she served as a major antagonist.

She eventually broke free after four years, and after a lot of convincing from the main cast, she ultimately decided to aid them.

28.  Catwoman/ Selina Kyle (DC)

Catwoman is a rather complex female villain. She is commonly associated with Batman as the two seem to have a love-hate relationship. While she is a long-running villain in DC comics, there are times the comics and the cartoon animation depict her as an anti-heroine. For example, an issue in Batman revealed her past as an amnesiac flight attendant. She turned to the life of crime after surviving a blow to the head during a traumatic place crash which she miraculously survived from.

She helped Batman for several volumes but then returned to being a supervillain in later issues. Later issues reveal that she made up the amnesia story.

27. Kuvira (Avatar: The Legend of Korra)

She’s not the best final boss the Avatar series has to offer, but she did give Korra and the rest of Team Avatar a hard time when she released a machine called the Colossus. She was first introduced as an ally to Team Avatar as a talented member of the Metal Clan. However, after the death of Earth Queen Hou-Ting, she left her position to help stabilize Ba Sing Se and was looked at as the nation’s provisional leader.

She served as the final antagonist as far as the cartoon animation is concerned.

26. Daki (Demon Slayer)

Daki and her older brother, Gyutaro, are the primary antagonists during the Entertainment District Arc in Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba. She shared the title of Upper-Rank Six with her brother. However, the actual titleholder is, in fact, Gyutaro. Before becoming a demon, Daki was a human child named Ume, known for her beauty and charm. Gyutaro struck a deal with the demon Doma who personally turned the two into demons to save her from dying.

Daki eventually met her end during the final fight of season 2 through the combined efforts of Zenitsu Agatsuma and Inosuke Hashibira.

25. Yubaba (Spirited Away)

The antagonistic witch of the film Spirited Away. While we didn’t get to see her fight, she did display high magic proficiency. In the movie, Ghibli fans got to see her manipulate magical energy that allowed her to defy the laws of nature. Even Haku, a river spirit, was even willing to enter apprenticeship and slavery under Yubaba to learn her secrets.

Yubaba has an identical older twin sister in the film called Zeniba. She also has a son named Boh, who becomes Chihiro’s companion. However, Yubaba’s husband is never mentioned. She has a bird servant who is also unnamed, but Ghibli fans have been referring to the bird as Yu-Bird.

24. Ursula (The Little Mermaid)

Another witch on this list is the Sea Witch Ursula, who plays as the primary antagonist in The Little Mermaid. The Sea Witch is known to temp merfolk with deals by promising to help them get what their heart’s desire is. However, these deals are usually one-sided and work primarily in her favor. If she sees her clients about to succeed, she has no qualms about interfering as long as her clients fail the deal.

It was never fully revealed, but it looks like Ursula had a bad history with King Triton, and she was a previous resident of his kingdom. The king eventually banished and exiled Ursula. However, her situation has made her want to possess the trident so she can rule the ocean.

23. Larxene/ Elrena (Kingdom Hearts)

While she isn’t a major villain in the Kingdom Hearts, she was another pesky boss to go through. Larxene is the twelfth member of the villain group of the series, Organization XIII. To top it off, she is also the only official female member of the group. Her choices of weapons are a set of knives and her thunder ability.

Her original self is a girl named Elrena, who was a Keyblade Wielder of a group called the Dandelions. However, during the Keyblade War, she and several other Keyblade Wielders lost their hearts to darkness. Eventually, her empty vessel became the Nobody players now know as Larxene.

22. Jadis the White Witch (The Chronicles of Narnia)

Queen Jadis is actually of another world. Before she got sent to Narnia, she lived and ruled a land called Charn. Due to her own spell, she ended all life in Charn, excluding her own. She was brought to the World of Narnia during its creation. However, Aslan banished her to the North. She also became queen of Narnia when she usurped the throne from the royal family.

During her reign, she put a curse on Narnia and forced the world to enter a magical Long Winter. Because of this, she earned the title the White Witch.

21. Azula (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

Azula posed several problems for Team Avatar, even causing difficulties for her older brother Zuko. Since the two were younger, Azula has always been seen as the firebending prodigy. Azula has proven to be well accustomed in battle, displaying that she is a formidable warrior and strategist. She managed to orchestrate a coup in Ba Sing Se and even halted the invasion during the Day of the Black Sun.

Her mental instability wasn’t apparent until the betrayal of her two best friends, Mai and Tai Lee. It turns out she is searching for attention and affection, especially from her father. This is due to her belief that her mother has always loved Zuko more than her and was primarily raised by her father, where she must be perfect all the time. She fell deeper into her mental illness after defeat at the hands of both Zuko and Katara.

20. Irene Belserion (Fairy Tail)

She is known to be the strongest female member of the Spriggan 12. She is even nicknamed Scarlet Despair because of the magnitude of power she has in her possession. During her fight with Wendy Marvell and Erza Scarlet, she revealed she is actually Erza’s mother and that she is the creator of Dragon Slayer Magic.

Four hundred years prior to the story, Irene was actually shown to be a very caring individual who went to lengths to settle disputes. She was also a strong believer in a world where humans and dragons could co-exist. She even created Dragon Slayer Magic to move coexistence forward. When she was imprisoned for an attempt to undergo dragonization, she halted the growth of a fetus growing inside her. Her organization was successful, and she became a dragon. However, she was desperate to become a human and tried to enchant herself into an unborn fetus but ultimately failed. She abandoned the infant in Rosemary Village since she had no more use for the child.

The events were later stated to be fabricated by Irene because she didn’t want to enchant herself in Erza’s body because she knew she might attempt to later. So, she abandoned her child in hopes someone would take care of her.

19. Medusa Gorgon (Soul Eater)

Sometimes the worst types of villains are the ones people least expect. Medusa Gorgon has been posing as DWMA’s kind and caring nurse. In reality, she is actually a witch who was secretly plotting to release Kishin from his sealing. As a scientist, she tends to view even human life as research material and will not hesitate to use them. Medusa even used her own biological child, Corona, for her experiments.

She is cunning and intelligent, able to formulate plans that even DWMA could not counteract, and unlike other villains, she learns from her mistakes and can think of a new strategy.

18. Lady Deathstrike/ Yuriko Oyama (Marvel)

She is a supervillain commonly portrayed as a foe to the group X-Men, with particular attention towards Wolverine. Her father is Lord Dark Wind, the creator of the adamantium-bonding process that was previously forced onto Wolverine. Before she became Lady Deathstrike, Yuriko hired a villain called Spiral to do the same technique onto her own skeleton with the addition of other cyber-genetic enhancements. 

Since she became Lady Deathstrike, she has worked as a mercenary. However, she also feels she needs to prove herself by being superior and killing Wolverine.

17. P’Li (Avatar: The Legend of Korra)

P’Li had a unique type of firebending called combostionbending. If you watched the first Avatar series, you would know that Combustionman already demonstrated this type of bending. P’Li is a member of a group called the Red Lotus who hopes to rid the world of government rules and the Avatar. At some point, she and the members were caught and put under the care of the Order of the White Lotus.

P’li was taken in her youth by a warlord to become the lord’s personal assassin. Zaheer later freed her, and the two began a relationship and joined the Red Lotus. P’Li was caught and imprisoned when the Red Lotus attempted to Kidnap Korra when she was younger. She was kept in a fortress on the North Pole so the cold could negate her firebending. She was saved by the other Red Lotus members, who managed to escape their own confinements 13 years later and decided to continue their mission.

P’Li died when Suyin metalbent her armor around P’Li’s head. When the combustion bender let out her attack, it backfired on her since the explosion was contained in a small space. Her death allowed Zaheer to let go of all earthly attachments and allowed him to unlock the airbending skill of flight.

16. Himiko Toga (My Hero Academia)

She may not seem too powerful, but Himiko Toga showed she could make a lot of use of her quirk. Himiko has a transformation quirk that allows her to copy the physical appearance of someone and their voice and quirk. The downside of this is she must digest the blood of the person she will transform into. Toga is the youngest and only female member who has come from the League of Villains.

15. Harley Quinn/ Dr. Harleen Quinzel (DC)

Harley is a supervillain who makes several appearances in the DC universe. She is usually depicted as Joker’s sidekick and love interest. Before her fall into insanity, she was a well-known psychiatrist at the Arkham Asylum known as Dr. Harleen Quinzel. She was assigned to treat Joker for his psychiatric problems but fell in love with the villain instead. Later comics and animation episodes had Harley grow independent of Joker, and now recent stories even portray her as a hero hoping to redeem herself for her past actions.

14. Wicked Witch of the West (Oz Universe)

Despite not being seen again after her death in the first book, the Wicked Witch of the West is an iconic villain in the OZ legacy, to the point people know of her more compared to the other antagonists in other books. While she doesn’t have a name in L. Frank Baum’s version, she was named Elphaba in Gregory Maguire’s revision of the Oz novels. She is fully green because her mother consumed the “Green Miracle Elixer” in the story.

Meanwhile, in Walt Disney’s version of the story, she used to be called the Good Witch Theodora, who accidentally ate a poisonous green apple. The apple caused her to turn evil, and her skin green.

13. Poison Ivy/ Dr. Pamela Lillian Isley (DC)

Poison Ivy is a supper villain commonly appearing in DC’s Batman comics and related media. She is a botanist and biochemist who has the ability to poison people via her touch and has enhanced physical capabilities. On top of these, she can control different types of plants. She uses her plant toxins also to influence humans to do her bidding. Her skin tone tends to change depending on the comics, but her skin is usually depicted as regular flesh or green in tone.

12. Queen Chrysalis (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)

She is the queen of Changelings in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. She is the final boss in the season two finale and has appeared as a minor antagonist in the other seasons. She becomes another major enemy in the finale of season 9.

When she first appeared as an enemy, she used her abilities to shapeshift into Princess Cadance so she would be able to hypnotize Shining Armor and infiltrate Canterlot. She planned to eventually take over Equestria after gaining control of Canterlot.

She makes her final appearance in the finale f season 9, where she, Lord Tirek, and Cozy Glow get frozen into stone as punishment for their crimes.

11. Konan (Naruto Shippuden)

Konan is a female ninja known as a kunoichi who has hailed from Amegakure. She is a founding member of the Akatsuki but ultimately left the group. She left the group after the death of Nagato and returned to Amegakure to become a de facto head of the village. In her younger years, she was childhood friends with Yahiko and Nagato. The three of them encountered Jiraya, who decided to teach them how to fight so they could fend for themselves in the future. Jiraya eventually left the three orphans when he deemed them strong enough.

The three of them later became the founding members of Akatsuki, which was initially intended to protect the village but eventually grew into a criminal group once other members began to join.

10. The Witch Queen (Black Clover)

The Witch Queen resides in the Witch Forest and serves as the ruler and mother of all witches. She absolutely detests men. She is seen as a perfectionist who shows an exceedingly cruel personality based on her treatment of Vanessa Enoteca and Vanessa’s friends. 

She is also manipulative, and her fortune-telling ability gives her an edge on how to target stronger people to do her bidding. For example, she releases Vanessa from her imprisonment because she knows Vanessa will eventually come back with more potent magic she can use. Another instance is when she healed Astra’s arm so she could make use of his body and Anti-Magic.

9. Android 18 (Dragon Ball Z + Dragon Ball Super)

Before becoming an android, 18 was an ordinary girl named Lazuli. She is the older twin sister of Android 17. She and the rest of the androids by Dr. Gero were created to go against Goku. Despite being called an Android, she is actually mostly human and was enhanced through bio-organic components. Her only mechanical parts were the emergency deactivation controller, a device that allows self-destruction, and an energy reactor.

She was troublesome as a villain but later joins up with the heroes, even marrying Krillin. Again, she becomes an active fighter against forces threatening the world in Dragon Ball Super.

8. Maleficent (Disney + Kingdom Hearts)

Out of the evil witches in the Disney franchise, Maleficent is probably the most iconic, to the point she served as a strong antagonist in the Kingdom Hearts franchise. She isn’t precisely a witch and more of an evil fairy. Maleficent is said to be responsible for all the misfortunes the kingdom of King Stefan has experienced during his reign. The fairy took offense to not being invited to the christening of Princess Aurora. She barged into the party and put a curse on the baby to die by her 16th birthday.

In Kingdom Hearts, she is one of the peskier villains Sora and his gang would have to stop. But, unlike other villains who are confined to causing havoc in their respective worlds, Maleficent has the ability to teleport to different words.

7. Cersei Lannister (Game of Thrones)

She is the last queen and the overall monarch who was able to sit upon the Iron Throne. She is the main antagonist in the Song of Ice and Fire books and television series. Despite coming from royalty, Cersei’s life is mostly filled with suffering. This might have been why she became a mad queen in later seasons. Her actions have also caused people to suffer and die around her. However, her actions are always in what she believes will benefit her. 

6. Ultimecia (Final Fantasy VIII)

She serves as Final Fantasy VIII’s main antagonist. She is a powerful sorceress with the goal to compress time and space and make herself a living god. She has strong magic up her sleeve, can even manipulate others and even animate a person’s subconscious.

Even though the Cloud of Darkness has a female appearance, it is sexless, making Ultimecia the first and one of the strongest female antagonists in the series. A player has to face Ultimecia a total of six times to end the game. She, at some point, was said to be one of the most challenging bosses to face in video game history.

5. Mystique (Marvel)

Mystique is a recurring villain in Marvel Comics who is usually seen up against the X-Men despite first appearing in Ms. Marvel comics. She is a mutant who can shapeshift into anyone with precision. However, her default and natural appearance is that of a mutant with blue skin, red hair, and yellow eyes. She is said to be at least 100 years old and had birthed two sons, one being the hero Nightcrawler and the other being the villain Graydon Creed. At one point, she also adopted the mutant Rogue.

4. Dolores Umbridge (Harry Potter)

She is a half-blood witch who was a British Ministry of Magic bureaucrat. She served as an Undersecretary to Ministers Cornelius Fudge. Rufus Scrimgeour and Pius Thicknesse.

She later became an instructor at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft, where she held three high-rank positions. Due to the high-rank positions she held as a teacher, she had power over several of her colleagues and students. Almost everyone, including professors, disliked Dolores due to her interfering with school matters and her condescending ways.

By the end of the books, Dolores was given a life sentence of imprisonment in Azkaban because of the several crimes she committed against Muggle-borns. While she does not know many useful spells, her abilities have given her an edge when it comes to both offensive and defensive magic. She is also proficient in dark magic.

3. Bellatrix Lestrange (Harry Potter)

One of the strongest witches in Harry Potter. Bellatrix is a British Witch and the eldest daughter of Cygnus and Druella Black. She is a member of an old wizarding family called the House of Black.

She entered and graduated from Hogwarts only to become a Death Eater who was fanatically loyal to Lord Voldemort. At one point, she and a number of Death Eaters were imprisoned in Azkaban only to escape in the 1996 mass break-out. During the Seconding Wizarding War, she attempted to murder any members of the Order of the Phoenix. She managed to kill Sirius Black and Nymphadora Tonks. She also killed a close ally of Harry Potter, the house-elf Dobby.

Bellatrix met her end at the hands of Molly Weasley and was the last Death Eater to die.

2. Hela Odinsdottir (Marvel)

Hela is the daughter of Odin and is his firstborn, making her the older sister of both Loki and Thor. She is the Asgardian goddess of death and previously served as an executioner in Asgard. Odin imprisoned Hela for a millennium and was released upon her father’s death. Since her release, she has tried to restore her power and authority over Asgard, often being stopped by her two younger brothers. 

In one of her grand attempts to take over Asgard, she was stopped by Thor and a new superhero group called the Revengers. During this encounter, Loki unleased Surtur, who caused Ragnarok, which destroyed both Asgard and Hela.

1. Dark Phoenix/Jean Grey (Marvel)

Dark Phoenix is what people refer to when Jean Grey acts as an antagonist in the story when Phoenix Force possesses her. After Jean Grey joined the X-Men, she was on a mission in space where she used her powers to protect the team during a solar storm. However, Phoenix Force was looking for a host in great timing and found Jean Grey in the middle of defending the ship and decided to use her as a host.

Once on earth, the Hellfire Club kidnapped Jean Grey and altered her mind, making her believe she was one of them. However, when she was rescued, the Phoenix Force did not like getting manipulated and took the opportunity of a weak Jean Grey and overtook her body, creating the supervillain Dark Phoenix. As Dark Phoenix, she is an energy-hungry force that will try to destroy the universe to gain unimaginable power.