Token Evil Teammate / Live-Action TV

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• Alias: Sydney's mother, among others like Sark.
• Andromeda: Tyr was less "evil" and more a consummate pragmatist who very openly was on his own side but smart enough to know which side of his toast was buttered. He did his level best to make himself invaluable and tried to sell out the ship/crew on a semi-regular bsis. It helps that Nietzschian pragmatism can be used to justify any action. Even Beka Valentine, a Han Solo-esque rogue, had far more loyalty and backbone. But then, Tyr was himself inspired by Avon from Blake's 7.
• Angel:
  • Illyria, in Season 5, hangs out with the main cast because she's been denied the power to Take Over the World, and isn't really sure what to do with herself otherwise. Occasionally she helps them out. Though she sometimes seems to be more closely aligned to the heroes than she claims.
  • Connor fits this in Season 4, alongside being the Tagalong Kid, due to his unstable nature.
• Arrow. Malcolm Merlyn, though only because his natural daughter Thea Queen is a member of Team Arrow—if not Oliver Queen would have killed him long ago. When he does turn up, it's either out of self-interest or to protect Thea. Sara Lance is also portrayed as this when she comes Back from the Dead in Season 2, given that she's a former member of the League of Assassins.
• Avataro Sentai Donbrothers: The heroic team has two:
  • Tsuyoshi Kijino / Kiji Brother is ordinarily a kind, unassuming Butt-Monkey salaryman defined by immense love for his newfound wife Miho. While downplayed in the sense that he isn't an inherently evil person, he is the least moral of the team, willing to allow the villains to murder the host of a Monster of the Week simply because their desire to paint saw his wife as a forced muse and even turn in his friend Tsubasa to the authorities after his wife (actually a Juuto) pretended to "become" the girlfriend Tsubasa had been seeking out once more; after Tsubasa tried repeatedly to explain to Tsuyoshi that things were not as they seemed.
  • Don Torabolt is one of two personalities occupying the body of Sixth Ranger Jiro Momotani. He's rude, broody and hostile to basically everyone - actively seeking to destroy Taro and take his place as The Leader under the delusion that he needs to be the strongest hero. He does however have a code of honor and has helped Taro as much as oppose him, also being one of the few people willing to socialize with the Evil Knockoff ranger Don Murasame. He's also the real Jiro, who created a Helpless Good Side alter ego to help integrate himself into society.
  • The Nouto have Sonoshi: A Political Officer sent by the Nouto's high council to stop the Friendly Enemy arrangement the three Nouto generals have with the Donbrothers. Even by the standards of a race of vigilantes motivated by Fantastic Racism to kill humans that become Hitotsuki rather than save them, Sonoshi is shown to be a deplorable individual willing to attack the very humans they're supposed to be protecting while using their status to bully their lower-ranked colleagues. They're such a menace that Sonoi and the generals conspire with the Donbrothers to turn their superior into a Hitotsuki just for some payback.
• Babylon 5:
  • At first this was the role of G'Kar who was originally a villanious and scheming character, he goes through a series of archs that land him as a mix between Warrior Poet and Preacher Man. The opposite happens to Londo, although always morally ambiguous was more sympathetic and friendly at the beginning and turn into a much darker and tormented character although always keeping a good side.
  • Possibly appropriate for Bester, who starts off as a major antagonist to the heroes (despite working effectively alongside them several times) but unexpectedly swaps sides to form an alliance of convenience with them in Season 3 when he realises his Psi Corps has also been betrayed by the Earth Alliance government. He even enjoys comic banter with Sheridan when they embark on a joint mission against the Shadows and plays up his sinister image for comic value. Impressively, despite continuing his apparent alliance with Team B5 throughout Season 4, he secretly executes a massive season-long plot to expose his enemies in the Earth Alliance by playing Garibaldi like a fiddle, having him betray all of his friends and manipulating him into having Sheridan arrested. Only a solitary line of sympathy for Garibaldi, and a mental kill-switch, stops him from killing Garibaldi when he is done.
  • Max Eilerson in Crusade as an employee of a shady MegaCorp and himself a prodigy having a massive ego and Lack of Empathy tends to be the meaner of the crew members.
• Battlestar Galactica (2003): Tom Zarek of the re-imagined show likes to portray himself as a staunch defender of the little guy, who had to resort to extreme measures to try to empower his disenfranchised people, and yet ordered things like bombing convention centers, tried to have the president assassinated when there were less than 50,000 known survivors of humanity, ran an illegal black market which had previously included the exploitation of children, and had sold his position numerous times. While he does seem genuine in at least some of his outspokenness, the fact that he could be blackmailed with this information says something about his character. And then, well... let's say Season 4 gets a lot more definite on the subject of his character.
• Blake's 7: As referenced in the Andromeda example above, Avon might just be the prototypical sci-fi evil teammate: snarky, argumentative, cynical, and in favor of self-preservation over doing the right thing. He repeatedly claims that he’d sell out the rest of the crew in a heartbeat if it was to his benefit. It’s not clear how much of his attitude is a bluff, but he certainly is more… morally pragmatic than Blake is. In fact, the only thing that stops him from leaving the Liberator is the Liberator. Avon is a bit of an odd example because after Season B he’s the protagonist. In the final episode of that season, he tells Blake he's done with Blake's revolution and will only help if he is given Liberator. Blake agrees and Avon is content enough to follow Blake on what could easily be a suicide mission.
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
  • Spike has been nearly every level of this. He started on the road with the one time team up variety. When he got a chip put in his head to prevent him from hurting humans, he joined the Scoobies as the Token Evil Teammate, since killing demons was the only way he could get his kicks. This didn't stop him from working with Adam or being a general asshole - they only kept him around because he was occasionally useful and they didn't want to kill someone physically incapable of fighting back.
  • Faith believes that her Slayer powers give her the right to steal and generally run amok (eventually leading to the accidental death of a person). She soon goes from Token Evil Teammate to straight villain and The Dragon for Mayor Wilkins.
  • Anya's pining for her lost vengeance demon powers and lack of sympathy for humans qualified her as an Evil Teammate to begin with. Soon enough, though, she was just as goody-goody as the rest of the group, just odd.
• Community: From time to time Pierce Hawthorne fills this role. Chang sometimes does too. For example, when Pierce endangered Annie's anti-drug play, it was Chang who saved it.
• Crisis on Infinite Earths: Lex Luthor of Earth-38 is able to replace the Superman of Earth-96 as one of the Seven Paragons who are needed to restore reality after the destruction of the Multiverse, the other Paragons being clear heroes such as the Flash, White Canary, Supergirl, Batwoman, and the Martian Manhunter, and formerly-normal human Ryan Choi.
• Dans Une Galaxie Près De Chez Vous: Being an Expy of Dr Smith, Brad Spitfire from this French-Canadian science-fiction comedy fits this trope completely: cowardly, greedy, power-hungry, Nazi-loving and all-in-all hated by every other member, the only reason he hasn't been Thrown Out The Air Lock by now is because he is the only scientist on board, and his skills are greatly needed.
• Deus Salve O Rei: Brice serves as this among the witch trio. While Selene and Agnes are heroic witches willing to use their powers to help people, Brice is an amoral succubus-like witch that loves targeting men in order to steal their life-force. Despite their drastic differences, Brice is compelled to help and protect her fellow witches due to having witnessed so many of their kind burned at the stake.
• Dexter: In the Miami Homicide Department, since Dexter Morgan's secretly a Serial Killer who abuses his position to alter evidence and actively sabotages police investigations, so he can kill the Arc Villain before he's arrested.
• Doctor Who:
  • Snarky, cynical Turlough is like this to the affable and vulnerable Fifth Doctor after making a deal with the Black Guardian to assassinate the Doctor. He redeems himself in the end,^note after half a season of plotting, but throughout his run as a companion he's just as liable to run away or betray the Doctor as he is to heroically rescue his friends, and even strangers.
  • The Doctor himself started out as Token Evil Teammate, and the First Doctor's character arc is about him shifting from evil to good.
  • Future Doctors seem to consider the War Doctor this in "The Day of the Doctor", when considering the Doctors as a "team" rather than one man. After The Reveal that he didn't actually destroy Gallifrey but helped save it, only to forget about his actions due to the Timey-Wimey Ball caused by him saving it with the aid of his future selves, he is forgiven. Even before that realisation, the Tenth and Eleventh Doctors, after spending some time with him, admit he wasn't as bad as they thought, musing that he wasn't the Doctor who "broke the promise", but the Doctor "on the day that it was impossible to get it right".
  • Not surprisingly the Master becomes this when circumstances dictate he and the Doctor work together, like when he accidentally set loose a field of entropy that threatened to destroy the universe but his skills were needed to stop it.
  • Missy serves this role in the Twelfth Doctor's final season, initially just offering advice, but after being released from the Vault and rescuing the Doctor and Bill from Mars, providing technical support and maintenance aboard the TARDIS.
  • River Song is pretty insistent that she's this; she calls herself a psychopath, even though she has plenty of empathy and pulled a Heroic Sacrifice in her first appearance. She is the most violent of the Doctor's companions, and has a reputation that matches his own.
    Dalek: You will be exterminated.
    River: Not yet. Your systems are still restoring, which means your shield density is compromised. One alpha-meson burst through your eye-stalk would kill you stone dead.
    Dalek: Records indicate you will show mercy. You are an associate of the Doctor's.
    River: I'm River Song. Check your records again.
    [beat]
    Dalek: Mercy?
    River: Say it again?
    Dalek: Mercy!!
    River: One. More. Time.
    Dalek: Mercyyyyy!!!
    [a few minutes later]
    Amy: What happened to the Dalek?
    River: It died.
• Farscape: Everyone is quite morally ambiguous—especially by the final season. However, in that season, Scorpius definitely qualifies. Earlier on, there's Rygel, who constantly tries to sell out and undermine the rest of the team and unashamedly jumps on any opportunity for profit.
• Firefly: Jayne is very much this for the main characters. He always points out when they're about to do something more honorable than profitable and was a prime example of Recruiting the Criminal... well, enemy criminal. He's Only in It for the Money, and is probably the staunchest proponent for getting rid of the Tams, though the one time he tried to do so in "Ariel", he got betrayed by the guy he worked with and almost got Thrown Out the Airlock for it by a furious Mal. Also, in Serenity, after River gets triggered and Mal still keeps her on the ship, Jayne tries to kill her in order to get the Alliance off their backs. However, Jayne definitely shows that he has good in him. Whether it be his shame of betraying Simon and River after Mal was about to throw him out of the airlock (it wasn't just fear but legitimate shame), or him eventually advocating in favor of doing the right thing near the end of Serenity.
• Game of Thrones:
  • House Bolton were definitely this for the North when they were fighting alongside the Starks. Roose Bolton's Establishing Character Moment is him encouraging Robb to start torturing prisoners for information as well as executing them, with some hints that he'd have them flayed. Deconstructed, because as it turns out, having a person that openly lacks any morals on your side just gives him the chance to betray you when you begin to show weakness and can't win a war. Even before the War of Five Kings the Boltons were seen as this to the North, though Ned Stark tried to get them to calm down by outlawing flaying. It didn't work.
  • Rickard Karstark takes over for Roose Bolton as this in Season 3, due to child murder. As mentioned above, this is ultimately subverted, by Bolton himself, who (perhaps unsurprisingly) turns out to be even eviller in "The Rains of Castamere", and gets a Klingon Promotion to Warden of the North in the package. At least the Karstarks never killed their King.
  • Locke and his men exemplify, like the soldiers that Brienne killed in the Season 2 finale, that not all those on the Designated Hero side of the Starks are good men. These are Stark counterparts to the Mountain and his men.
  • Joffrey Baratheon to his siblings Tommen and Myrcella, who ironically are the Token Good Teammates of their family.
• Glee: Santana has increasingly become this in the second season. Quinn can flip in and out of this role.
• The Good Place: From the second season on, Michael is this to Team Cockroach. He's still a devious, torture-loving demon, but at least now he's on the humans' side. At first it's only to save his own ass, but over the course of the second season, he learns what it means to be good, and grows to genuinely love the others. By the end of the season, he's a Jerk with a Heart of Gold, and the rest of Team Cockroach accepts him as one of their own.
• Gossip Girl: Chuck Bass is the Token Evil Teammate of the Non-Judging Breakfast Club. True he's mellowed, but a guy who's attempted to rape another team member definitely counts as evil.
• Grimm:
  • Adalind became part of the team after having Nick's son; how much she is less evil than when she was one of the villains is yet to be discovered.
  • Nick's boss, Sean Renard, bounced between being an unreliable but powerful ally and being the Big Bad who was directly opposing Team Grimm.
• On Haven, Duke is this, but only because his personality and job are at odds with the rest of the "team." He's not evil, a backstabber (although he plays the Fake Defector very well), or that much of a jerk, but the fact he's a Venturous Smuggler with questionable ethics teaming up with Audrey and Nathan, both Haven Police Department detectives, makes him this trope.
• House: Oddly enough, this show features its main character Dr. Gregory House as one of these. Whatever his actual moral alignment may be, he's a brilliant diagnostician, but his demeanor is that of a snarky jerkass with an addiction to painkillers, and he's made it quite clear that solving complicated medical mysteries is pretty much just a fun game for him. Failing to save a patient's life is usually more of a blow to his ego than a source of sorrow.
• How I Met Your Mother: Has Barney Stinson, the embodiment of this trope. A Ladykiller in Love casanova to the extreme who works for MegaCorp, which is implied to have all sorts of really evil things going on with North Korea and even somehow contaminating the drinking water in Lisbon for some reason? Yeah, pretty evil. The other characters occasionally wonder why they even hang out with Barney when he's being exceptionally assholish. The reason, of course, is that he's like family to them, and no matter how horrible he acts, they can't bear to abandon him, as Ted realized in Season 3, and Marshall in Season 6.
• Human Target: Guerrero. He is intensely loyal to Chance, but that seems to be about it as far as morals go. Threats, torture, murder? Check, check and check. He doesn't look like much, but his name is enough to cause an experienced thief to wet her panties.
• iCarly: Sam. If the plot requires anything that isn't lawful, Sam will suggest it and carry it out.
• The gang from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is full of Unsympathetic Comedy Protagonists (the least awful one being an insane Stalker with a Crush). But Dennis takes the cake. The man has shown symptoms of sociopathy and some screwed views on consent though he's only implied to be a rapist. He's also implied to be a Serial Killer, too.
• Kamen Rider:
  • Kamen Rider 555: Masato Kusaka places exceptional focus on the consequences of associating with someone who's doing the right thing for evil reasons. He nominally fights the same monsters that the other heroes do, but instead of his evil being something that lets him get his hands dirty while the other heroes keep theirs clean, his spiteful and self-serving nature means he's The Millstone, and it's only because he's also a Manipulative Bastard that the heroes don't realize they'd be better off without him.
  • Kamen Rider OOO: Ankh is this to the staff of Coss Cousier. A cocky, self assured Perpetual Frowner Greeed, who works with Eiji only because he needs OOO to protect himself from from other Greed. Eiji, despite his usual behavior, is well aware of this and accepts it because he needs to be OOO to help people and Ankh holds medals needed. Neither of them pretends they won't kill each other the moment this condition passes.
  • Kamen Rider Ex-Aid: Most of the cast start out this way to some degree, owing to being a Dysfunction Junction, and as such end up spending much of the first act at each other's throats with the title character being the only one with a firm moral center. By the time they overcome their various personal traumas and become better people, they're joined by Kuroto Dan, the show's first Big Bad, who unlike them is still the same hammy psychopath with a god complex and no intention of getting any better. But the other villains hijacked his plot and murdered him (he got better), and that is not something he's willing to let them get away with. In the post-series movies, once the other villains have been dealt with, Kuroto promptly betrays the team and goes right back to being a villain.
• LazyTown: Not evil, per se, but Stingy is definitely the most flawed of the child characters and most prone to grabbing the Jerkass Ball.
• Legend of the Seeker: Cara might qualify as this after her Heel–Face Turn. Although she's extremely loyal to Richard and eventually admits, albeit begrudgingly, that she cares a lot about her teammates, she seems to really enjoy killing and torture, and finds the other characters' displays of love and affection nauseating.
• Legends of Tomorrow: On a team of Superheroes, Leonard Snart/Captain Cold and his partner Mick Rory/Heat Wave were both career supervillains before joining the team, and both only joined for the chance to steal priceless artifacts from history. However the first season gives them both a lot of Character Development and both eventually develop into more Anti-Heroic characters, and both try to pull a Heroic Sacrifice in the second to last episode of the first season, with Snart being More Hero than Thou so his partner could survive.
• The Librarians: Ezekiel Jones. He might not be outright evil like the actual villains of the series, but prior to being recruited as a Librarian-in-Training, he was a (self-proclaimed) world-class-thief leading an successful criminal life, and hasn't lost the attitude at all upon joining the team. His hacking and break-in skills come in use quite a lot when retrieving magic artifacts, but he's just as likely to pickpocket his friends for his own amusement. He's egotistical, cocky, and mischievous, and the only reason he's even there is not because he wants to help people like the rest of the team, but because it's fun and he gets bored easily. The other characters find him a little annoying at times, but generally don't mind his immoral ways and don't particularly want him to change. In fact, his evil-ness has even come in handy a couple times, such as when they're dealing with an artifact that makes people evil by turning them into the worst versions of themselves, which has no effect on him whatsoever, or when they need someone to act as bait for a monster that goes after people who make Badass Boasts, which he's always ready to do.
• Lost: Ben fits this trope in the sixth season. He's still a manipulative sociopath, but this time he's on the losties side. Also, Sawyer pretty much filled this role in the first season, or at least he was the token Jerkass.
• Lost in Space: Dr. Smith. While not outright evil, he's propelled largely by self-interest and tends to have such poor judgment it can become a real liability. The aborted movie franchise did make Smith substantially more malevolent and intelligent. However, this is really a case of Villain Decay. Early episodes showed him to be much more malevolent and the show itself was much more serious. It quickly devolved into slapstick. Also, in the earlier episodes Smith's unquestionably necessary skills as a doctor prevented the Robinsons from simply flushing him out the airlock, whereas in the later episodes he contributes nothing to the team and all he ever does is get in the way with his self-serving schemes.
• Lost in Space (2018): Dr. Smith again. This time, she's a much nastier and more competent villain than the original. But her primary motivation is survival at any cost, which means she and the Robinsons often end up working together to get through the latest crisis, even after they cotton on to her true nature. She begins to soften a bit in the final episodes, as the Robinsons' influence rubs off on her.
• Luther: Has Alice Morgan, at least after the finale of the first series. Even though Luther's a policeman and she's an unrepentant murderer and sociopath, the two have an understanding and friendship of sorts and are perfectly willing to help each other with their various problems.
• M*A*S*H: Major Charles Winchester. He's not above trying to get something out of his forced residence at the 4077th (especially if it's at the expense of his tent mates), but he does do his best to take care of the patients. Turns into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold later in the series. Also, Major Frank Burns (for whom Winchester was the Suspiciously Similar Substitute) is a better fit for this trope, given that he actually tried to get Hawkeye killed at least once (a depth to which Charles would never stoop).
• Misfits: Nathan isn't quite evil, but he's a bullying, self-obsessed, borderline-sociopathic Small Name, Big Ego of epic proportions, who is regularly suggested to have some kind of undiagnosed mental illness.
  "This is why people kill you."
• The Mr. Potato Head Show: Jiblets is a character who delights in the suffering of others. When the show is cancelled in the finale, he laments that he's unemployable, and when Mr. Potato Head jokingly says "There's always politics", he quickly regrets it.
• Once Upon a Time. Regina and Rumplestiltskin in Season 2. Lampshaded in Season 3 by Emma, who calls Regina a villain but still one that is needed to rescue Henry from Neverland.
• Person of Interest. Root is the "recurring villain who ends up working for the good guys" version; justified as she literally worships The Machine that gives them the "Irrelevant" Numbers. In Season 3, Sameen Shaw also joins Team Machine. She's a US government operative assigned to assassinate the "Relevant" Numbers (threats to national security) provided by the Machine. As such she tends to argue the merits of just killing the perps rather than going to the trouble of aiming for non-lethal takedowns, and prefers spending time with Bear to the rest of the team.
• Prison Break: The show is about a group of convicts trying to escape prison, but out of all of them, T-Bag, a serial killer, stands out as the most evil.
• Red Dwarf: Rimmer in the first two seasons, although downplayed, since the rest of the cast are Anti Heroes and as a hologram he’s largely impotent. In later seasons he was more like the Token Jerkass Teammate: cowardly, selfish and rude but not actively malicious.
• Revolution: While not evil per se, Miles certainly is a Jerkass and an Anti-Hero. Major Tom Neville is a straight example as of episode 16. The good news is that he wants to take down Monroe. The bad news is that as his son stated, he doesn't care whose side he's on, as long as people kiss his butt. Episode 19 and the first season finale has Tom Neville successfully take over the Monroe militia, while his son Jason doesn't have a clue as to what he should do about this.
• The Secret Circle: Faye from is a Subverted Trope: she has all the surface traits, but doesn't want to hurt anyone and is scared of losing control of her powers. Jake, on the other hand....
• Stargate Atlantis: Todd the Wraith occasionally allies with Atlantis versus Replicators, Genii, other Wraith clans, etc. But he's still a Wraith, meaning that his very survival requires humans' Life Energy.
• Stargate Universe: Dr. Rush is the only person smart enough to help out his crewmates most of the time. Which he stranded them on in the first place. He also is arrogant, doesn't particularly care about what happens to anyone else on the ship and is insanely dedicated to carrying out Destiny's mission.
• Star Trek: Deep Space Nine:
  • Gul Dukat works with the crew of Deep Space Nine and forms a mutual trust with Sisko to eliminate a greater evil far more often than Sisko should trust him. Dukat works under the assumptions that he's a magnanimous leader and charming ladies' man who will swoop in and take back his former glory in due time. His narcissistic tendencies eventually catch up with him and he eventually teams up with the Dominion and later the Pah-Wraiths to preserve his delusions of grandeur.
  • Garak also qualifies, given his penchant for lying, previous job as a spy/torturer, and "ends justify the means" attitude. He had no qualms about committing extortion, blackmail, and murder to convince the Romulans to join the Dominion War in "In the Pale Moonlight", and when someone doesn't believe he'd shoot a man In the Back in "Call to Arms", his reply is simply, "It's the safest way, isn't it?" Despite all this, he's willing to work with (or manipulate) the heroes to undermine the regime that ousted him while trying to protect his people from their government's mistakes.
  • Quark during his first seasons was a much darker character willing to do a lot of criminal activities and ethically questionable actions while he mellow with time turning more into a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
• Former Mirror Universe emperor Philippa Georgiou in Star Trek: Discovery.
• Supernatural:
  • Season 5 gave us Crowley, who, while still perfectly willing to kill innocent people and send souls to hell, proved to be a valuable member of Team Free Will. Over time the Winchesters become downright blasé about constantly teaming up with the King of Hell.
  • Castiel borders on this through Seasons 4-6. While always on the side of good, he is a lot more willing to kill than the Winchesters and at times felt like a Knight Templar. He becomes outright evil in the Season 6 finale, but also ceases being a teammate. After his resurrection midway through Season 7, he becomes more of a full-on good guy, arguably more so than the Winchesters.
  • The demon Meg also becomes this after teaming up with Team Free Will against Crowley in Seasons 7 and 8.
• Survivors: Tom Price in the 2008 remake of this BBC drama, only his position as the Big Guy of The Family has kept the other survivors from killing or permanently banishing him, and even then, only barely.
• Ted Lasso: "Evil" is probably too strong a word, but Jamie plays the role of Token Jerkass Teammate in Season One. In Season Two he's reformed, but Roy tells him to bring out his old attitude when necessary to win.
• Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles: Reprogrammed Terminators like Cameron, Weaver and those employed by the Resistance fit this category to a T. Cold, logical, unstoppable and brutally pragmatic (Cameron would kill anyone she even suspects of being a threat, and Weaver slaughtered an entire warehouse of people for working for Skynet when John Henry intercepts an unsecure communication) — be glad they're on our side. Of course, "Sometimes they go bad. No-one knows why."
• The Thundermans: Max, Phoebe's fraternal twin brother, is in a family of superheroes but aspires to be a supervillain up until his eventual Heel–Face Turn.
• V: Hobbes is a mercenary wanted by the FBI who is forced to join the Fifth Column after the Visitors frame him for a crime he didn't commit... which is not to say that he hasn't also committed other crimes which were just as bad or worse.
• In the V: the Final Battle mini-series from the 80's, Michael Ironside portrays merc Ham Tyler, whose was initially distrusted by the Resistance as being a warmonger.
• The Vampire Diaries: Damon, in the beginning. He's not even LIKED by most of the team, and the main reasons they keep him around are that he's Stefan's brother, it means they know where he is and he'll lend a hand if it serves his purposes. In Season 1, they just had to deal with having him around because he was too strong to fight. In Season 2, he's more of a team player, but maybe that's because Bonnie has proven that she could (and almost did) kill him if angry enough with him. Also, Elijah joins them in Season 2 despite being rather antagonistic earlier in the season.
• Eli "Weevil" Navarro in Veronica Mars, although not really evil and having a soft side, of all of Veronica's friends he's a criminal and the leader of a bikers' gang. He rehabilitates at some point after the series only to be back into crime at the end of the movie.
• The Walking Dead (2010):
  • Shane Walsh in Season 2 and Merle Dixon (when he's with his brother's group) in Season 3. Merle makes a Heel–Face Turn at the last second and goes out like a hero, while Shane succumbs to his villainy, tries to kill Rick, and is stabbed by his former best friend as a result.
  • Merle in particular recognizes what it means to be this trope: "Maybe these people need someone like me around to do their dirty work. The bad guy."
• Warehouse 13: H.G. Wells goes from pure villain to a member of the team. Artie is certain she'll betray them at any moment. And as it stands he was right. She eventually betrays the group to wield one of the most powerful and destructive artifacts there is that nearly causes a mass earthquake capable of wiping out all life on earth after (in her eyes) seeing the future world decay so horribly over the years from her time.
• White Collar: Similar to House, the main character (or one of them) is more or less this: Neal Caffrey is a Boxed Crook working with the FBI in exchange for not being in prison. Subverted inasmuch as Neal shows signs of reform—to say nothing of the fact that, as a good-natured forger and con artist, Caffrey wasn't terribly evil to start with. He is also extremely unwilling to use violence, which is a major factor in what makes him redeemable.
• Wizards of Waverly Place: She's the main protagonist, namely Alex.
• Young Dracula: Ingrid is this whenever she helps Vlad, which isn't often.
• Z Nation: Murphy fills this role for the first two seasons, and the rest of the team is forced to put up with him due to his status as the Living MacGuffin around which their mission is centered. Though as of Season 3, he has fully succumbed to megalomania and Transhuman Treachery to become a full villain.

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