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After thousands of votes and months of villains facing off against villains, we have a clear winner in our Ultimate Chuck Villain Tournament –
Daniel Shaw
He easily bested all comers in the season 3 rounds, and while there were some solid cases made for villains like Volkoff and Quinn in the final round, Shaw prevailed again with a commanding 46% of the votes. Here’s what some of you said about him:
Shaw was a great villain. He wasn’t a great character when he was a good guy, but he was the quintessential villain. He had good reason to hate both Chuck and Sarah and I think he had the most compelling character arc of the three involved here. – Claudio
Shaw was bad, bad, and ended badly. Just not a nice person. It’s a testament to Brandon Routh as an actor that I will never watch another show/movie that he’s in. – Agent52
It is SHAW all the way. Just finished re-watching the series and Shaw makes my blood boil every time I see him. (Good job Brandon Routh!) Pure evil. – Malle
It’s Shaw for me. I can’t and never will forgive him for killing Steven Bartowski in cold blood. – Liz B
Thanks to all who voted and who passionately stated their case in the comments. Should we do another tournament? What should we vote on?
Agree 100%. If Quinn had been a villain over a full season, maybe. But the fact that he only got 3 1/5 episodes and Shaw had multiple seasons clinches it.
Very cool, but I never doubted he would win. One of the best villains in recent memory in both TV and movies, IMO. Congratulations, Brandon, you earned it.
I meant to say I never doubted he wouldn’t win.
Also, his relationship with Sarah never bothered me in the first episodes of season 3, because it was all good set up for his tragic story and turn to the dark side. Santa Suit and Subway wouldn’t be the same without all that set up. Think about it. It wouldn’t be as personal.
This villain bracket was enjoyable to partake in. While I do not have an idea of what to next, I would enjoy taking part in another competition such as this. The only little idea I have had is perhaps on PLI’s but I don’t really think there are enough of them.
am happy Shaw won he was sooooo evil you did it Brandon you played bad guy realy good. and you did good too Mel putting these baaaad guys together. GREAT!!!!
If Volkoff would have stayed a villian then he would have blown the others out of the water and won the whole thing.
This was a tough one. In the end, I voted for Shaw because he was the villain who affected our heroes most personally. It would have worked even better had Shaw either been there from the beginning or they had been able to keep Bryce and ‘he’ went off the deep end. But for what they gave us, they gave us a man whose motivation for fighting was love and a desire to avenge the loss of his wife.
When it was revealed that Sarah killed his wife, Shaw had a legitimate reason for turning to the Ring. The organization he’d been fighting for lied to him and the girl he was falling for killed the woman he married.
When you consider the other choices, they just don’t stand up that well. Volkoff was a great villain, but he had no real motivation and in the end ‘Volkoff’ was simply an Intersect gone wrong.
Quinn did a lot of damage in his brief tenure, but he comes off as a whiny kid. “But I wanted the Intersect! Waahh!” Maybe if ‘he’d been established at the beginning, he’d have been more compelling but at the 11th hour, he feels shoehorned in as a final villain.
Shaw wasn’t all that great as a good guy, but I think that’s because the show had him as yet another potential block to Chuck’s relationship with Sarah. If they hadn’t done that, but still kept the later ‘Sarah killed his wife’ connection, his entire story arc might have been perfect as far as story arcs on Chuck go.
Once Shaw did his bad guy turn, it was clear he’d found the right part. He came closer to destroying Team Bartowski (including Decker as his blackmailed stooge), he had personal history with the team that the other villains didn’t have (though it could have been longer), and he was the only villain to permanently harm/kill off beloved characters. Even if Sarah never regains her memories, she’s falling in love with Chuck again and they’ll be fine. Papa B, as others have said, will not.
And that extremely long post is why I believe Shaw is truly Chuck’s ultimate villain.
Allen- your “extremely long post” has negated any need for my medium post about Shaw. As they say: “couldn’t have said it any better”. Thanks (I think).
I am not familiar with any other work Routh has done. Would love to see how it holds up to Shaw in other viewer’s opinions.
I loved him in Superman Returns, Scott Pilgrim vs the World (he plays another villain here) and in Crooked Arrows. I think he did a fine job in all those. He’s also charming in Table For Three.
Very well put, Allen. Thanks for writing all that in such detail.
Mel….it would be a lot of fun to do another tournament, just can’t think of what to make it about though. It kind of keeps us Chuck fans connected. Will put on my thinking cap.
Mel- Does Brandon get a prize? Other than the vast prestige associated with ChuckTV.Net and its fans. Seriously, do you notify him in any fashion other than an e-mail or twit? It would be interesting to know what his reaction is.
Another tournament would be great. Gladly participate or help in any way. I will borrow Liz B’s thinking cap when she is done.
Favorite episodes from each season? Or maybe fav Chuck n Sarah moments? How about fav guest stars?? Just spit balling here…
I can’t argue with this. Volkoff was probably the most evil character and probably would have won if he had stayed that way, but since he was revealed to be Hartly Winterbottom (not just a good guy but Orion’s best friend as well) that takes him out of the running.
Quinn was nasty, but only had a short timeline on the show. Also, his motives were never that clearly developed. He seemed to just be obsessed with getting the intersect–to the point where he probably wouldn’t have know what to do had he gotten it. A little more back story or info about his “master plan” could have pushed him over the top.
Shaw was in many ways, Chuck’s nemesis, his opposite number. The fact that we also got to see his journey from good spy to super villian makes it even more complete. Would have liked to have seen some resolution regarding the motives for his wife’s murder (still thought it would have been a twist if Quinn had been the one to order it) and maybe some backstory about his alliance (blackmailing) with Decker, but over all a truly terrific bad guy.
How about a tournament of Casey grunts? It would be silly and very fun! Some of those grunts are quite famous afterall…like when Chuck tranqed him because he tried to stop him from going to Roark Instruments HQ (Chuck vs The Dream Job), or when Chuck called him on his grunts (“that’s grunt number 7”), etc. Plenty to choose from. Or just Casey quotes (when he shoots Bryce then says “don’t move” – what a great introduction to Casey! Or when he found his angry centre and beat his mentor. Or when he calls Lester to get ask them to save Awesome, Alex & Morgan and does that awesome speech “This is Col. John Casey of the NSA…..” – I loved that and so did my partner! Great moment! Though come to think of it, maybe when Chuck downloaded the Intersect 3.0 and Casey says “Chuck me” in amazement could be the winner of a Casey quotes tournament). 🙂
Could also do favourite Jeff & Lester moments (quite possibly when they armoured up and saved Awesome, Alex & Morgan could win this one, though my dad cracked up laughing when they kept getting tranqed and put back in the car in the middle of nowhere (Chuck vs Bo)). Plenty of choices here too… I love these tournaments/polls – we all miss Chuck and the tournaments are a nice trip down memory lane. 🙂
Apologies for the long post…I’m looking forward to another Chuck tournament. The guest stars tournament is a great idea too. 🙂
Cheers, everyone 🙂
Another tournament?
As Sarah was so secretive – what else would the fans have liked her to reveal in her mission logs.
Yup the killing or Orion takes the cake.
What about a tournament for favorite fight scene, best dramatic episode, best comedic moment, most romantic scene, best Jeffster moment.
Like others, I miss Chuck too!
I like the idea of best romantic scene (Sarah & Chuck). Depending how crazy you want to go you could start with each episode, then season, series. Need to first get someone to do nominations of scenes and then someone would have to narrow them down to have five to ten sceness to present to fans for voting. Lots of work/fun.
Do the same for best “one liners” and/or all the ideas mentioned so far. It seems narrowing picks down to a managable vote size would be the hardest. You could really burn some brain cells putting another tournament together, but it’s “CHUCK”.
Yeah, narrowing down the picks to vote on is the most time-consuming task. If someone wants to volunteer to put together a list of Chuck & Sarah moments, that would be a very cool tournament.
Mel- I would/will volunteer to do a list. I trust my ability as far as choosing the “moments”. However, right now a couple of things I need help on- my computer skills are not the greatest so I need a hint on how to properly label the moments as far as identifying them so people could find them. Just do it by the minute & second for beginning and ending? Choose from all 91 episodes broken down to each year. I know how long it took me to just finish rewatching every episode so if there were five volunteers we could make headway fast enough to keep interest up. If not, and I do all of them, I would review each episode in a scanning fashion to speed it up.
Would it be C&S “moments” or C&S romantic moments. Got to get specific on that part. They had some great moments that were not especially romantic. I personally think the more specific (such as romantic) the easier it would be, and less room for disagreeing.
I am serious about this, but it depends on your feed back. Thanks.
Have we done best supporting characters yet? I would suggest a best ‘good guy’ tourney, but one of the big 3 would be obvious winners. So how about supporting cast? From the part timers to the Nerd Herders, who stood out the most in the crowd?
For a new tournament, how about favorite guest star? It could be one time or recurring. I have a feeling Scott Bakula would win, but one never knows. Timothy Dalton was pretty fantastic.
For the next tournament: favourite dialogue, favourite line, something like that. I remember Chuck trying to outwit an eavesdropping Casey in setting up a tryst with Jill,,,”and you divide that by the atomic weight of hydrogen…” and Casey growls “Nerd code!”…stuff like that cracks me up every time.
No big surprise it was Shaw, but I’m glad that Volkoff was second place! 🙂
I may be a minority, but my two beefs with Shaw’s arc, are that I thought finding out Sarah was the one who killed his wife was the perfect motive, but it felt like we needed maybe ONE other set up to see him truly go over the edge and switch sides -at least from a viewer standpoint. But, I also understand that at the time, all Fidak and Schwartz knew they had was the 13-episode order. The other is that the final fight with Chuck in “Santa Suit” felt like a big dismissal of the fact that Shaw was already a trained killer before becoming the Ring intersect. Not to dismiss Chuck’s polished skill as a fighter, but I thought he bested him too easily.
Other than that, yeah, Shaw is the perfect “Chuck” nemesis!
So right that Shaw is the best villain. Never liked him as a good guy but as a villain he´s great.