The NCAA basketball tournaments are less than a month away. Because it’s obviously never been done before, HitFix is going to host its own tournament, but this battle won’t take place between teams on Tobacco Road. We’ve got something more exciting in mind. In our competition, the greatest Heroes from the worlds of television and movies will face off versus the greatest Villains.
The committee is currently mulling over the brackets, but we need your help. There are six characters who some would consider anti-heroes, but we know then need to part of the battle royale. Do they fall in the Heroes bracket or the Villains bracket?
You decide. You have 48 hours. Choose wisely.
Our first anti-hero of questionable bracketology is the man who started off this discussion among the HitFix staff. Almost immediately after we began brainstorming people for this list, someone asked the very obvious question:
“Where do we put Walter White?”
Obviously, the protagonist of “Breaking Bad” wasn’t the first anti-hero on the big or small screen, nor was he even the first among the cable drama revolution of the last 15 years (that would be Tony Soprano). But his journey from a good – or good-seeming – man to an outright monster makes him perhaps the quintessential 21st Century anti-hero, and the perfect test case for this debate. After all, didn’t “Breaking Bad” fandom spend much of the show’s five seasons debating how much they were rooting for or against Walt at any given time, and whether the people who stood in opposition to him should be cheered or booed?
I jumped on the “Walt’s the villain” train pretty early on in the series, but I’m not the one voting. You are. This poll will be up for the next 48 hours, and the results will determine which bracket Walt is placed on. (Depending on the seedings, we can’t guarantee that every one of the six anti-heroes will make the final cut, but I think it’s pretty safe to assume that Walt will.) So cast your vote, and if you want to continue the eternal debate in the comments, you are more than welcome to do so.