Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World follows two twenty-somethings in Toronto on a quest of love and romance. Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) meets, and falls for, mysterious cool-girl Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). In order to be able to date her, he needs to defeat all seven of her “evil exes”. Throughout the comics, movie, and game, we learn all about these so-called evil exes as Scott endeavors to beat them all through a mix of fight-scenes and musical interludes.
Not all of Ramona’s exes are evil, though (shout-out Doug, and, briefly, Scott Pilgrim). Only the worst-of-the-worst went on to conspire against her happiness and her prospective partners. This collection of losers and villains went on to form the “League of Evil Exes”, made via a post on Craigslist. Let’s take a look at each member of the League, ranking each of them based on how interesting, evil, cool, or even sympathetic they are.
7. Matthew Patel
TAGLINE: “Mystic Pirate”.
Matthew Patel (Satya Bhabha) was Ramona’s first boyfriend, back in the seventh grade. They dated for just under two weeks, during which Matthew teamed up with Ramona to use his host of magical powers to fend off their macho, jock classmates who had been bothering them both previously. After this, much to Matthew’s disdain, the two split. The first evil ex that Scott encounters is Matthew. He sends Scott a long, rambling, formal email to challenge him to a duel. While this is entertaining, it doesn’t exactly scream “badass villain”.
While Matthew’s magical powers – levitation, pyrokinesis, and demon-summoning capabilities – are admittedly pretty cool, his backstory is a little less than sympathetic. He’s still caught up on a two-week long relationship from when he was thirteen, enough so to still torment Ramona around a decade later. Who even does that?
Coolness: 3/10. Bonus points for his magical powers, but being a total edgelord doesn’t exactly help his case.
Sympathy: 1/10. It happened in middle school, get over it.
Memorability: 5/10 I mean, that fight scene in the movie? Memorably bizarre.
Tagline: 4/10. Turns out pirates aren’t actually “in”.
6. Lucas Lee
TAGLINE: “Pretty Good Skateboarder/Actor”.
Lucas Lee (Chris Evans) is the second of the evil exes that Scott runs into. Lucas is a former skater, who’s making it big as an actor. He and Ramona dated briefly in high-school, and even in the throes of fame and fortune (“I’m aiming for an Oscar”), he still seems to be pretty caught up on the relationship. Ramona broke up with him to get together with one of her later exes, Todd Ingram (Brandon Routh). While this feeling obviously sucks, it seems like the time to get over a teenaged romance gone wrong has maybe come and gone.
Unlike a lot of Ramona’s other evil exes, he doesn’t have any immediately obvious magical powers, which definitely detracts from how interesting he is a little. Instead, he relies on being super strong and physically capable. But, he’s comically pretentious enough to make you love-to-hate him with or without any mystical powers, which is definitely a plus in any villain.
In the comic and video game, Lucas comes across as being a little more sensitive and soft-hearted than in the movie, providing a bit of depth of character. This, paired with him being buff and kind of dim-witted, makes him almost into a villainous version of a “himbo”: a man who is attractive, muscular, and less-than-smart. Even though he’s evil, it’s a pretty charming combo.
Coolness: 6/10. Wallace Wells’ (Kieran Culkin) fanboying over him is pretty understandable, even though Lucas is an ass.
Sympathy: 3/10. It sucks to get dumped for someone else, but maybe not enough so to haunt someone for the mistakes of their youth.
Memorability: 5/10. His character is maybe a little generic, but that scene where he explodes from skateboarding too fast? Unforgettable.
Tagline Rating: 1/10. What a mouthful.
5. Kyle Katayanagi
TAGLINE: Handsome Jerk
Kyle Katayanagi (Keita Saito) is Ramona’s fifth ex. Ramona dated Kyle concurrently with his twin brother, Ken Katayanagi (Shota Seito), cheating on them both with each other. This led to them swearing not to do anything separately anymore to prevent anything of the likes happening again – and ultimately leading to them forming a double-team in the League of Evil Exes. Admittedly, being cheated on with your brother seems like a fairly valid reason to turn evil. So saying, given the Katayanagi Twin’s taglines -- “Handsome Jerk” and “Perfect Asshat” – they maybe weren’t the nicest guys to begin with, so let’s withhold some of our sympathies for now.
The twins’ character designs complement each other, with Kyle sporting all-dark clothes and dark hair, and Ken wearing all-light clothes with bleached blond hair. While in the video game they share the same sprite in different colors, and so there are few differing visual qualities between them, in the comics and movie their designs are pretty different from one another. Both twins are pretty much as cool as each other, but Ken’s character design is a little stronger than Kyle’s, making him rank a little lower.
Coolness: 8/10. Great character design, interesting backstory, basically everything you would want out of an evil ex.
Sympathy: 7/10. His relationship with Ramona is pretty sordid, but neither of the twins seem like particularly great people, making it hard to really feel much compassion.
Memorability: 6/10. Their characterization in the video game and comic book is unique, and their lone scene in the movie is very cool. However, they don’t have any lines in the movie, and they’re gone in the blink of an eye.
Tagline Rating: 6/10. He may be a jerk, but at least he’s handsome, right?
4. Ken Katayanagi
TAGLINE: Perfect Asshat
The other half of the Katayanagi twins, Ken is Ramona’s sixth evil ex. The twins differ wildly between the different versions of Scott Pilgrim, whether looking to the comics, game, or movie. In the movie, they don’t speak a single line. Instead, they challenge Scott to duel with their music and magic alone. In a slick sequence, the twins battle Scott with synthesizers, keyboards, and an apparition of a pair of incredible snow dragons. Evil or not, they need to score some points for the spectacle alone.
Despite their lack of lines in the movie, in the comics and video game both of the twins are verbose, spending most of their appearances berating Scott and Kim Pine (Alison Pill). An additional characteristic of the twins missing from the movie is that they’re “award-winning roboticists”. Normally they have robot henchmen following them around doing their bidding – namely attacking Scott. All around, all iterations of the twins are pretty interesting, even though they’re wildly different.
Coolness: 9/10. The ice dragon makes him cool in the most literal sense.
Sympathy: 6/10. I mean, if Ken is the second twin that Ramona started dating, how could he possibly not be even vaguely aware of what was going on?
Memorability: 6/10. Again, he could’ve appeared in the film longer.
Tagline Rating: 8/10. If you’re going to be evil anyway, you may as well be a perfect asshat.
3. Todd Ingram
TAGLINE: “Vegan Rockstar”
Todd Ingram is Ramona’s third evil ex, and he is loathsome. He and Ramona were long-term teenaged sweethearts after she broke up with Lucas, up until she moved away to college (and he went away to supposedly practice veganism). While with Ramona, he demonstrated his love with grand gestures, such as “punching a hole in the moon”. The breakup was mutual and amicable, but that didn’t stop him from joining the League of Evil Exes.
Todd possesses a host of paranormal powers, including psychic abilities and super strength. He attributes his powers to his not-so-devout veganism which, much like his partner Envy Adams (Brie Larson), he cheats on frequently. He isn’t only a terrible boyfriend, but an all-around awful person, too. Arrogant, stuck-up, and sanctimonious, he’s the image of a perfect villain before he even starts taunting Scott, Ramona, and even poor Knives Chau (Ellen Wong). Not only is he easy to hate, but some of the film’s most iconic scenes can be linked back to him. Without Todd, there would be no “vegan police” sequence.
Coolness: 6/10. It’s hard to say whether “punching a hole in the moon” is cool or not.
Sympathy: 1/10. He’s just awful.
Memorability: 10/10. Who could ever forget the vegan police?
Tagline Rating: 5/10. It’s pretty straight-forward.
2. Roxie Ritcher
TAGLINE: “Bi-Furious Half Ninja”
Roxie Ritcher (Mae Whitman) is number four on Ramona’s list of evil exes. She was Ramona’s college roommate. They hadn’t been in touch much, if at all, since their split, up until the formation of the League of Evil Exes, and a great deal about hers and Ramona’s relationship is unknown.
Roxie is easily one of Ramona’s more likable and sympathetic exes. In the film, Ramona refers to her relationship with Roxie as having happened because she was “a little bi-curious”. Roxie’s feelings, on the other hand, appear to have run deeper than that. It can be hugely difficult to feel experimented with, making Roxie’s resentment more understandable than some of the grudges held by the other exes. However, it still doesn’t exactly justify conspiring against Ramona and her prospective partners, meaning she’s still pretty firmly cemented as a villain. Interestingly, in the original comics, Roxie’s motivations are a little different. Instead, she claims that she’s mostly targeting Scott to protect Ramona, because he is allegedly cheating on her with an old friend.
As well as her backstory being interesting, Roxie’s character design is great, too. Roxie is a ninja with superhuman speed. In the game, she also has transfiguration powers, meaning she can easily shift between a human form and appearing as tiny animals or plants. Supposedly, she was born on the moon, which may have caused her supernatural powers. Is she the “magical girl” character of the Scott Pilgrim-universe, a-la Sailor Moon? Either way, she’s cool.
Coolness: 10/10. I mean, she was born on the moon.
Sympathy: 7/10. Having a decent origin story doesn’t necessarily make her actions okay.
Memorability: 9/10. She has some of the film’s most memorable quotes from any of the exes.
Tagline: 9/10. Not “gay” as in “happy”, “queer” as in “bi-furious”.
1. Gideon Graves
Gideon Graves (Jason Schwartzman) is basically the perfect villain. His character design is on-point, he’s full of devious schemes, and he creates a rewarding redemption arc for the film’s antihero, Scott. What more could you want from the franchise’s final boss?
Gideon formed the infamous League of Evil Exes that brought (so many of) Ramona’s former beaus together via a post on Craigslist after they split. Although Ramona was infatuated by Gideon, Gideon had been treating Ramona as an experiment – both romantically and scientifically. He had been using Ramona as a lab-rat for what he dubs “The Glow”, which is a form of psychological magic that gets referred to throughout the franchise as a tool of “emotional warfare”. In the movie, he does this using a chip that he plants in the back of Ramona’s neck.
The way Gideon masterfully uses manipulation to execute his master plan is genuinely terrifying. Whether it’s by using The Glow, or by turning folks against each other, Gideon weaponizes intimate connections and turns relationships into psychological minefields. This easily makes him the most devious, memorable, and iconic of all of Ramona’s evil exes – even if he isn’t technically a member of the League of Evil Exes himself, but instead the group’s mastermind.
Coolness: 10/10. His character design is awesome, and the sci-fi angle of his powers is a nice touch.
Sympathy: 0/10. The man’s just evil. We don’t know why.
Memorability: 10/10. He’s the mastermind puppeteer behind (almost) all of Scott and Ramona’s problems. The reveal with The Glow is too shocking to forget, too.
Tagline: Why would he need one? He’s Gideon Graves.