Assassin Outclassin / Live-Action TV

• A twofer in Season 1 of Angel. Wolfram & Hart first hire Faith to kill Angel. After she goes through a Heel–Face Turn as a result, they hire a demon to assassinate Faith, with predictable results.
  Lee Mercer: This is getting ridiculous. The first assassin kills the second assassin, sent to kill the first assassin, who didn't assassinate anyone until we hired the second assassin to assassinate the first assassin!
• Arrow: Near the end of Season 1, after Oliver finds out about the Undertaking, the Hood confronts Malcolm Merlyn and tries to shoot him. Merlyn catches the arrow and proceeds to drive Oliver away despite a total lack of preparation and equipment.
• Attila: Attila personally foils an attempt on his life by an Eastern Roman assassin who managed to slip past his bodyguards. Unfortunately, he's not so lucky in foiling Aetius' more complex scheme to have him killed.
• Babylon 5:
  • See the nameless Narn stalking Vir Cotto's fiancée, weapon drawn? Switch the scene to a bit later, and she's offering the hogtied Narn to Vir as a gift.
  • An earlier episode had G'Kar escape a professional assassin with the help of his new diplomatic aide, Na'Toth. He then put the assassin through a form of Cruel Mercy^note Involving the Guild sending assassins to do to him what he was hired to do to G'Kar in such a way that neither he nor the Assassins' Guild would ever be a threat to G'Kar again.
  • The Crusade episode "The Rules of the Game" has a pair of diplomats with whom Gideon and Lochley are negotiating for access to their planet decide that the best way to keep them away is to kill them. This works out about as well as you'd expect two untrained civilians attacking seasoned military officers to go: once their first shots miss, their fates are sealed.
• Better Call Saul: With some improvised weapons and a hidden tunnel, Lalo Salamanca kills all four assassins sent to ambush him in his home.
• The Brittas Empire:
  • The plot of "Assassin" revolves around a man named Larry Whittaker trying to kill Brittas because he was having a negative impact on the attendance figures of the local choir. Unfortunately for him, all of his attempts to kill him (including cutting the brakes, trying to trip him down the stairs with wire, and trying to electrocute him over the roof) fail in some way or another and he ends up accidentally being electrocuted and falling off the building.
  • There was also the time someone tried to kill Brittas by sending over a poisonous spider. It bit Colin instead. Who survived in the end.
• Burn Notice:
  • Early in Season 1, Michael mentions to Jason Bly, an NSA bureaucrat who is harassing him, that he got his trademark sunglasses from an Algerian special ops guy.
    Michael: He, ah, didn't need them anymore.
  • Late in the season, an assassin tries to strangle Michael in his apartment, promising to Make It Look Like an Accident. Michael manages to break through to where he's hidden a gun and shoot his attacker in the stomach; he flees and bleeds out in a nearby alley.
  • When Sam is audited by the IRS in a Season 3 episode, he shows off a gun as the only proof of a classified mission he was on that figures into his taxes somehow. (He's not actually trying to intimidate the auditor with the story, it just can't legally be explained in any other way.)
    Sam: Something happened, and then the gun... didn't have an owner anymore.
• In one episode of Criminal Minds, for years two men have been kidnapping victims, taking them to the Idaho National Forest, and hunting them down with high-tech bows and arrows. Without ever failing. The victim of the week gets herself a knife, bushwhacks one killer and stabs him repeatedly, avoids the second, and stabs him too. The first killer dies of injuries before the end of the episode, and the second is shot and killed by the BAU team. The female victim-to-be is fine, other than some dirt and bruises.
• Doctor Who: In "The Romans", the First Doctor runs rings around the mute assassin Ascaris sent to kill him, and ultimately ends up shoving him out of a window.
• Fargo:
  • When Numbers and Wrench finally learn Malvo's identity and are ordered to kill him, Malvo escapes their vehicular ambush in a snowstorm and kills Numbers before heading off.
  • Malvo himself falls victim to this when he tracks down Lester, who sets up a bear trap and injures him enough to force him to flee.
• Firefly: While introducing his favorite gun, Vera, Jayne tells Mal, "Six men came to kill me one time, and the best of them carried this."
• Game of Thrones: Osha attempts to assassinate Ramsay using the same Honey Trap ploy she used to lull Theon into a false sense of security and murder one of his guards. Unfortunately, Theon had already told Ramsay about this trick during one of their torture sessions, so when she tries it again, Ramsay is quicker on the draw and kills her.
• Grimm:
  • Reapers are assassins who specifically target Grimms but since Grimms are far from helpless, their success is far from guaranteed. The Reaper who goes after Marie Kessler overpowers her, but he makes the mistake of disregarding her police-trained nephew, Nick, who shoots him dead. The Reapers who later come to kill Nick make the mistake of thinking that two of them will be enough to kill him. Nick sends a note back to their boss, "Next time send your best." This is accompanied by the heads of the two Reapers.
  • In the episode "Nameless", Captain Renard discovers that a Verrat assassin left a briefcase containing a bomb in the restaurant they were in. Renard throws the bomb into an empty street, then chases the assassin down and kills him.
  • Later on, an FBI agent (also a Wesen) gets Viktor's blessing to take out Sean Renard (Viktor's cousin). He manages to surprise and seriously wound Renard but then tries to take out a 20-some girl who witnessed it. Unknownst to him, she's a Grimm. Worse still, they're in the house of another Grimm packed with Grimm weapons. She takes his head.
• Kaamelott:
  • King Arthur is once jumped by an assassin inside the castle in the middle of the night. He blocks the killer's blade with a candlestick while calling for the guards. Since none shows up, in desperation Arthur stabs the assassin with the spike of the candlestick. Then he announces to nobody in particular that the guards are facing some serious drill training in their near future.
  • In another case, the council of the Kings of Logres (reuniting every four years) is targeted by a cabal of assassins. They easily go past the (laughable) "security", but the assembled warrior kings prove to be much harder to kill than expected. Notably Léodagan who takes the killers bare-handed, Loth who fries them with lightning magic, or Arthur who deflects swords with his magic ring.
• Done in an episode of Lois & Clark, where an alien assassin is trying to kill Superman. Upon failing, he has an immediate Eye Lights Out death — failure is unacceptable in his culture.
• In Luck (2011), not only does Gus ambush and kill an assassin with his bare hands, but his idle chatter with Ace makes it seem like this isn't the first time.
  Gus: Remember Chicago? I think we've got a situation like that again.
• The Man in the High Castle: In Season 3, Trade Minister Tagomi is repeatedly targeted by Nazi assassins for his previous participation in smuggling classified nuclear technology out of the Reich. On one such occasion, the assassin bursts right into his home, but Tagomi overpowers and kills him thanks to his Kendo skills.
• Moonlighting: The cold open of a season one episode shows an assassin (played by a very young Tim Robbins) sneak into a hospital to kill an old man.. who turns out to be the greatest hired killer alive. The would-be assassin is beaten with a bed-pan before fleeing.
• NCIS: Lab Rat Abby Scuito is preparing to testify in court, but the suspect hires a hitman to take her out while she's on her way to the courthouse. By the time Gibbs and his team catch up with her, she pushes her would-be killer out of the taxi while gleefully tasering him.
  Gibbs: ABBY!
  Abby: Be with you in a second, Gibbs. [tasers the guy again] And don't look up my skirt!
• Pennyworth: In the episode "Shirley Bassey", the No Name League hires Dave Boy to assassinate Frances Gaunt, the leader of the Raven Society, during a sit down. Unfortunately, Dave Boy hesitates, asking Gaunt to close her eyes first so he doesn't have to look in them as he does it, which gives her the opportunity to whip out a gun and shoot him instead. Fortunately for Dave Boy, Gaunt is a doctor and takes her Hippocratic Oath seriously, so she patches him up afterwards.
• The Peripheral (2022): The team of mercenaries who accept the Research Institute's $9m dark-web bounty to kill Flynne in Episode 1 are ex-members of an elite military unit. Unfortunately for them, Burton and his buddies were part of an even more elite unit and quickly gun down the goons with the help of their cybernetic implants, despite being outnumbered three to one.
• In Person of Interest, the Dirty Cop ring H.R. tries to have Detective Carter assassinated when she gets too close in her investigation. She turns out to be quicker on the trigger than her assassin, so the H.R. member on site improvises and pockets the assassin's gun to frame her for shooting an unarmed man. She keeps her job but at the start of the next season has been demoted to beat cop.
• Police Squad!: A joke in the opening credits shows Abraham Lincoln being targeted by John Wilkes Booth, who only manages to shoot his hat off, and Lincoln furiously returning fire with a revolver he had on his person.
• Shortly before the beginning of Robin Hood, Robin saved Richard The Lion Heart from a group of Muslim assassins (who attack him first). He himself is wounded in the process and sent back to England to recuperate. Except the assassins were led by Guy of Gisborne as an early attempt by Prince John's supporters to get rid of the king.
• Sharpe: Early in "Sharpe's Regiment", Sharpe and Harper shoot a pair of thugs sent to kill them for looking into a crimping scheme. Both Sharpe and Harper fake their deaths to investigate further.
• An episode of Sledge Hammer! has assassins trying to kill Sledge from the time he wakes until he gets to the office. One, hiding in his closet, meets his end because Sledge shoots him through the closet door. Not because he knew there was an assassin in the closet, but because he always shoots at the target on his closet door.
• In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "The Nagus", it is implied that Grand Nagus Zek of the Ferengi has survived many attempts on his life. When he names Quark as his successor, Quark is quickly given an offer of protection (actually a threat) from Gral another Ferengi, if he would "consider" giving Gral his pick of the more profitable opportunities in the Gamma Quadrant. When the now-nervous Quark asks Zek for advice, Zek merely says "So Gral was the first? He won't be the last." And he tells Quark that to survive as Nagus, Quark must surround himself with loyal men, but none too loyal, and that he should be ruthless. It's later revealed that a successful Ferengi doesn't grab power via assassinating a rival, but accumulates it quietly, without anyone noticing; likely the reason Zek survived so long.
• One sketch in Tosh.0 shows Tosh using the bathroom when he is suddenly attacked by ninjas. He fights them off, only to realize there's no toilet paper.
• Taboo:
  • Delaney turns the tables on an assassin sent by the EITC at the end of the second episode, though it is downplayed in that he doesn't walk away unscathed.
  • And again in the fourth episode, in which Delaney is also injured. This time it's an assassin sent by the Americans, and given his huge size, proves to be far more dangerous than the previous one.
• The Umbrella Academy:
  • Five manages to escape Hazel and Cha-Cha multiple times. When the duo decide to break into the Academy, Luther, Diego, and Allison beat them pretty badly, with the only success being that Hazel managed to kidnap Klaus, who was high and not much for fighting.
  • In Season 2, Vanya beats a trio of highly skilled assassins without even trying. These same assassins (down one) are later beaten by Allison and her non-combatant, civilian husband. Raymond has never been trained in the slightest. He still managed a good fight against one of the assassins. Allison took the other's eye out with a vaccuum nozzle.
• In the final season of The Wire, after Marlo Stanfield is arrested he tries to figure out who might have been informing to the police (ironically, nobody is, several detectives went rogue and used an illegal wiretap to get crucial evidence), and eventually puts a hit out on his young enforcer Michael Lee, who is the only possibility he can come up with for who might have talked to the police. Michael (who has participated in several hits for the organization), notices that his would-be killer is giving him instructions that don't really make sense and that go against how they usually do things, and deduces that he's being set up. He gets the drop on her with a hidden gun and kills her before she can bring him to the site where he was supposed to be ambushed.