While the entire franchise has antagonists that are too likable to hate, there are often others that were truly loathsome.
- The Separatist Council are a group of corrupt corporate executives who make a profit off of selling the Separatists weapons and droids to fight the war with, thus being responsible for massive amounts of casualties and violence throughout the war. They are fully aware of it, but don't care because it makes them rich. However, they finally receive their comeuppance in Revenge of the Sith.
- A New Hope has Grand Moff Tarkin, who has Vader torture Leia, and later on, he threatens to destroy Alderaan, a peaceful planet populated by billions that have done nothing wrong, if Leia doesn't reveal the location of the Rebel Base. But even when Leia seemingly reveals to him where the base is located, he still has the Death Star go through with destroying Alderaan, just for the sake of spiting Leia and inciting fear across the galaxy. He gets his just deserts when the Death Star is destroyed at the end, while he is on it.
- Those who think that Tarkin was somewhat likable in A New Hope courtesy of Peter Cushing won't see him that way when he appears in Star Wars: The Clone Wars, he belittles the Jedi who are rescuing him and turns Kangaroo Court on Ahsoka just to push his own agenda, despite Ahsoka saving his life in the former mission.
- And then immediately before A New Hope in Rogue One, Tarkin has to share the stage with Orson Callan Krennic, the man behind the construction of the Death Star. Krennic is an egotistical sociopath who believes he deserves respect from Tarkin, Vader, and Palpatine, just because he oversaw the Death Star's construction. Never mind that it was never his idea in the first place. He also causes trouble for Jyn throughout the movie, first by kidnapping her father and killing her mother when she was just a little girl, destroying the main city on Jedha (he originally wanted to destroy the whole planet) for the sake of a test, and threatening to kill all of the scientists Galen Erso was working with when searching for who leaked the Death Star plans, and still goes through with the execution even after Galen reveals that he did it himself. Needless to say, his fate is as equally satisfying as it is ironic: he gets directly hit by the Death Star's superlaser when it is fired on Scarif, courtesy of Tarkin himself. It also doesn't hurt watching Vader intimidate him and force choke him when Krennic isn't, ahem, being too careful about choking on his aspirations.
- A New Hope: Admiral Conan Antonio Motti is introduced dismissing General Tagge's concerns about the threat of the Rebel Alliance despite a major victory, declaring the Death Star the "ultimate power in the universe". When chastised by Darth Vader for his arrogance, Motti proceeds to insult Vader and his adherence to the Force, prompting Vader to strangle him from across the room with only Grand Moff Tarkin stopping him from killing Motti. Unbowed, Motti spends the rest of the film willingly complying with Tarkin's orders to commit genocide and his pronouncements are proven wrong when Luke Skywalker drops a proton torpedo into the Death Star's reactor, killing all onboard the Death Star including Motti. A figure portrayed as Trigger-Happy and pompous by his actor and subsequent material, Admiral Motti stands as a reminder to those who doubt the power of the Force.
- The Empire Strikes Back: Admiral Kendal Ozzel is an incompetent Imperial officer who consistently hinders Darth Vader's efforts to find the Rebels through his contrarian personality. His clumsy tactics during the Battle of Hoth proves to be the final straw as Darth Vader unceremoniously chokes him to death to demonstrate the price of failure to the rest of the crew. Ancillary media and Legends stories reveal that Ozzel came from a privileged family and only got his position through powerful connections as his superiors saw him to be unfit to be an efficient field commander, thus making his execution well-deserved. However, the canon book From a Certain Point of View: The Empire Strikes Back reveals that Ozzel regretted his actions in his self-titled short story right before his demise, giving him a layer of sympathy that was absent in the film.
- The Last Jedi: For all his mystery and gravitas, it slowly but surely becomes clear that Supreme Leader Snoke is little more than a vile Smug Snake who emotionally manipulates and abuses Kylo Ren for his own selfish gain. Later on, he arrogantly toys and tortures Rey, making her watch the destruction of Resistance fleet, before forcing Kylo Ren to kill her to complete his training. His sudden Undignified Death at the hands of Kylo Ren all but cements him as a Big Bad Wannabe with the only thing similar to Emperor Palpatine is his cruelty. note
Western Animation
- Star Wars: The Clone Wars:
- Captain/Admiral Wilhuff Tarkin. Even in his days as a Republic officer, Tarkin was a nasty piece of work. In his first appearance (which is during the Citadel arc), he is initially ungrateful about being rescued by Anakin Skywalker and has a very low opinion of the Jedi Order despite serving under one of them, and it's implied he only got into his position through connections with Palpatine. Come the Fugitive arc, it is shown he will do anything to one-up the Jedi Order, including sentencing an innocent teenage girl to death and deny any obvious signs of a frame-up.
- The Umbara arc introduces Pong Krell. Unlike other Jedi generals that have been shown throughout the series, Krell is anything but a model Jedi and very cruel in his treatment of Clone Troopers. He orders the troopers around harshly, gets some of them killed through his (seemingly) incompetent tactical decisions, tries to execute Fives and Jesse without trial, and tricks two clone trooper regiments into killing each other as part of a plan to sabotage the Republic campaign on Umbara and win Count Dooku's favor. He even slaughters half of them when escaping. It's extremely satisfying when he is shot and killed by Dogma, the one clone trooper that was loyal to him throughout the arc out of a naive respect for the chain of command.
- Even in a society of slavers, Keeper Agruss is a repulsive being by Zygerrian standards. His introduction scene involves him casually executing some slaves to make a point of how powerless Obi-Wan Kenobi is in his situation. When Obi-Wan tries to help the abused slaves in Kadavo, it gets to the point that he ends up alienating those he wants to help. When the tables are finally turned on Agruss, not only does he try to ensure that Republic's rescue mission is soured by trying to drop all the slaves into the crater (and destroying the controls so they can't stop the process), he smugly tries to invoke the Jedi Thou Shalt Not Kill rule against Obi-Wan just because he's unarmed and unable to defend himself, but even Obi-Wan has his limits and [[Loophole Abuse silently orders Captain Rex to
- Wat Tambor also gets this treatment in The Clone Wars, being incredibly sociopathic even for a Separatist Council member. Not only is he a Corrupt Corporate Executive who joined the Separatists solely for profit like many of the other Council members, he is willing to exploit, experiment on, and even order the deaths of countless numbers of innocents if it means lining his pockets. Even then, his loyalty to the Separatists is only secondary to him, as he'll even withhold information about his failures from them if it means keeping his numbers up (which notably costs the Separatists at Anaxes). He even has the audacity to claim that the sentient populations of the planets the Techno Union controls (or anyone he gets his hands on) are company property.
- In Star Wars Rebels, many of the recurring Imperial officers are this:
- Kassius Konstantine. Not only is he incompetent and a Glory Hound, but his screw-ups lead to his more competent superiors' plans failing and letting the rebels get away. In addition, when he became an Ascended Extra starting in Season 2, it at least seemed that he had a Villainous Friendship with Kallus... then later, after Kallus has a Heel Realization but still wants to see if there's any good in the Empire, Konstantine never acknowledges his return beyond what is basically a "Hi", meaning that the admiral isn't actually that concerned about Kallus and never seemed to have considered him a "friend". He gets even more insufferable in Season 3, constantly clashing with Grand Admiral Thrawn until his ego finally gets him killed.
- While he only appears in a couple of episodes, pretty much everything that Captain Slavin does is meant to make you hate him. While most Imperials make at least a token effort at actual military service, Slavin is little more than a simple bully and textbook Smug Snake. He's cruel, arrogant, and unbelievably stupid, hurling racist abuse at Hera and mistaking her for a servant even when he has a portrait of her face note hanging on the wall in his office. Between making his headquarters in Hera's former home and dismissing the Twi'leks as uncultured savages, to the point that it's hard not to cheer on Thrawn nearly throttling him when Slavin suggests that they should destroy a valuable piece of art.
- While she was always a bad guy, in the back half of Season 4 Governor Pryce really starts to show herself as cruel, arrogant, and unnecessarily harsh to an even greater degree than most Imperial officers. It's made clear that she has absolutely no military expertise, and while even Konstantine was at least a loyal soldier, Pryce is little more than a career politician with a sadistic totalitarian streak and delusions of superiority. She demonstrates her cruelty by torturing Hera solely for the fun of it, not even to get information from her, and ends that same episode by blowing up the Imperial fuel storages on Lothal solely to kill Kanan Jarrus, despite the fact that one of her subordinates accurately protests that it will do more harm than good. Thrawn calls her out on this since it was effectively the biggest Rebel win of the campaign to that point (and ultimately handed the Rebels the entire civil war).
- Star Wars: The Bad Batch:
- Vice Admiral Rampart is the first Imperial to push for the replacement of clones with recruits, which is indicated to be more out of a personal hatred for clones than an actual belief that recruits will be better. He also spearheads the occupation of Ryloth, going so far as trying to have its senator assassinated just to make Cham Syndulla look bad. His treatment of the clones becomes worse and worse, culminating in him destroying Kamino and trying to let Crosshair die in the chaos. In season 2 he becomes even worse, killing several of his own clones and ordering a hit on a Senator. It makes it all the more satisfying when he gets caught, arrested in front of the entire senate, and presumably executed.
- Lieutenant Nolan is a human Pong Krell - a ruthless, arrogant asshole who has a limitless supply of hatred for clone troopers. It's telling that in his first few minutes of screentime, he reacts with annoyance about being put in charge of a team of clones, going so far as to call them "used equipment", and shortly thereafter, when he slips on a patch of ice and one of his men attempts to help him, he thanks the trooper by angrily pushing him away. The worst of it is when at the end of the episode, Crosshair and Mayday make it back to the outpost after narrowly surviving a deadly avalanche, but without the cargo they were sent to retrieve. Nolan criticizes them both for failing, and also refuses to provide medical aid for a dying Mayday, even as the otherwise cold-hearted Crosshair begs him to help his comrade. It's little wonder why Crosshair reaches a breaking point and frags Nolan after he pushes Crosshair too far.
- Dr. Royce Hemlock takes over as Big Bad in the second half of season 2 and proves to be far worse than Rampart, Nolan, or Krell in terms of treatment of clones. Working out of Mount Tantiss, his operation doesn’t even exist in any records because it conducts experiments that are too awful, and he is said to torture clones to death en masse, with the implication that at least part of his motivation is For the Evulz. He sees his experiments as justified because he considers clones to be Imperial property, not people. The first time we get an idea of just how depraved he is is when his cloned Zillo Beast rampages in a village, resulting in him ordering the arrest and execution of the entire populace just because they saw the creature. Later, when Crosshair tries to break out of his facility, Hemlock gases the room and then walks in himself, having immunized himself to the toxin by exposing himself to it. His sadism is further accentuated by how quiet his voice is.
