Okay, I admit this one is a bit of a cheat since the loathsome Admiral Noble, played by Ed Skrein, isn’t technically dead anymore in the film’s final reveal. But, boy, is it satisfying when it seems like he officially bites the dust. The Imperium officer is trouble from the moment he first shows up on the scene, brutally murdering the village leader on the harvest moon of Veldt just to show who’s in charge. He spends much of the film indiscriminately killing civilians, soldiers, and even informers alike, wracking up a long list of war crimes that assuredly made viewers love to hate him.
His comeuppance finally arrives during the climactic battle at the end of “Rebel Moon,” when he ambushes Kora and her team of warriors and subsequently finds himself in the thick of a harrowing firefight. He eventually ends up dueling his rival and narrative foil Kora, on a tiny little platform suspended hundreds of feet over the ground in a tense, hand-to-hand brawl. Despite having the upper hand for the majority of their fight, however, his own arrogance and misplaced trust in the Imperium war machine winds up costing him dearly. And, thankfully, Kora shows no moral scruples about mortally wounding the film’s main antagonist and leaving him for dead. He deserved no less, after all!
Of course, it’s soon revealed that he survives the encounter thanks to the hasty intervention of the remaining Imperium forces and a mystical pep-talk from RegentĀ Balisarius (Fra Free). So while he’ll inevitably be backĀ in “Part Two,” Noble still feels like a worthy candidate for this list. The catharsis of his “death” is only rivaled by the disappointment of his eventual return.