The 10 Best Fighters In Into The Badlands, Ranked

Set in a post-apocalyptic future roughly half a millennium from today, Into the Badlands tells the story of a world where people have lost faith in guns. This premise explains the focus on characters who are adept martial artists, using melee weaponry skills and archery to survive. It’s like a medieval age-themed fantasy but set in the future. There’s even a magical gift granting superpowers in Into the Badlands which adds a layer of fantasy to the setting.




Since there are no guns in Into the Badlands, there is a lot of eye-catching melee combat featuring highly skilled characters who face off regularly, prompting one to wonder who is the strongest of them all. Divided into factions, the people are vying for power and are accompanied by their loyal lackeys in their fight for dominance. The best part is that the leaders themselves, despite being people in power, never shy away from getting their hands dirty. Every major character of Into the Badlands gets their moment to showcase their combat skills, but some are clearly superior in their skill to others.


10 Tilda

Played by Ally Ioannides


Originally adopted by the Widow as her Regent, Tilda, as a fighter, goes through a significant evolution as the show progresses. She’s initially quite easily overpowered by almost everyone she has to fight who channels rage and physicality in their fighting style. It’s impressive how she’s able to hold her own against people who outmatch her in size and strength, but when someone banks on their physical strength, she’s quite often easily overpowered in the earlier episodes of the first season.

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However, with time, she improves her reflexes to become even faster and more precise, and by the end of the show, she can sort of hold her own against groups of fighters, but as long as they aren’t any of the major characters. Against a significant main character, she’s never really fared well, and given the fact that she left her mother to pursue her own mission, we’ll never find out how good she could have become if she’d kept training under the Widow.


9 Nix

Played by Ella-Rae Smith

Nix’s skills with the sword remain largely unexplained because almost no backstory is offered about her life before joining Pilgrim’s group or even about how she joined Pilgrim. It’s simply clear that she’s a talented swordbearer who can hold her own against relatively significant foes. The most impressive martial arts feat, however, has to be the aim with which she literally threw her swords into a clipper’s chest once. On top of her considerably impressive skills with her fists and her swords, Nix is also a bearer of the gift. It enhances her skills supernaturally.

Nix’s power relied on cutting herself, and so, she couldn’t use it at will, until she witnessed Castor’s death, which then became her anchor for pain, allowing her to tap into her powers at will.


From improved agility and reflexes, to improved strength and improved stamina, her gift makes her an even more formidable foe. However, she can’t use it at will initially, and even afterward, she’s limited by the basic limitation of the gift, which shuts down when someone gives the Azran command of “Peace be with you.” She’s managed to last for a while in fights against M.K. and even Pilgrim when she figured out how to use it at will, but she’s still far from being the strongest character in the show.

8 M.K.

Played by Aramis Knight

Sunny’s colt M.K is no stranger to melee weaponry. He’s most commonly seen wielding his dual scimitars, which he does with ease, grace, and expertise. While Sunny’s training made him a proficient swordsman, his masterful use of the bo staff is a consequence of training with the Abbotts. His fists aren’t less than any weapon either, as Sunny’s training in hand-to-hand combat made him a competent martial artist too.


M.K’s real strength lies in his use of the gift, though. While most of the gifted harness their powers by cutting themselves, M.K relies on an emotion that hurts worse than a wound to wield his powers. In the first season, he even uses the force-push powers that he then never uses again during the rest of the show. While it feels like a glaring oversight on the part of the writers, there could be an in-world explanation for it. M.K’s fixated on vengeance throughout the show, and that holds him back from realizing his full potential as a fighter.

7 The Widow

Played by Emily Beecham


Always impeccably dressed, often in heels, which makes her athleticism even more impressive, Minerva is one of the best fighters in Into the Badlands. She’s outfought almost everyone who she’s faced off against, be it with swords or with just her fists. She’s also adept at parkour, dodging her way through flurries of blows, flipping over tables, and running across walls to gain a tactical advantage.

“She’s killed almost everyone she’s fought, but still isn’t the most capable fighter in the show.”

Apart from her martial artistry, The Widow is further made powerful by being able to harness the gift, which, apart from enhancing all her abilities, also lets her do telekinesis, through a move called the force push/pull. She’s killed almost everyone she’s fought, but still isn’t the most capable fighter in the show. Nathaniel Moon, Sunny, and Quinn are all main characters who have held her off in melee combat.


6 Nathaniel Moon

Played by Sherman Augustus

Nathaniel Moon is one of the deadliest characters in Into the Badlands. He literally left the badlands after his nine hundred and ninetieth kill to find peace. The badass ex-regent who later on becomes a regent for The Widow is one of the few characters who have held their own against the latter in combat. Of all the characters in the show who don’t have powers until the final season, Silver Moon, as he’s also known, is only behind Quinn and Sunny in fighting abilities.

Of all the characters in the show who don’t have powers until the final season, Silver Moon is only behind Quinn and Sunny in fighting abilities.


Silver Moon is such an adept swordsman that he has held off multiple gifted fighters at once, and his fight against the Widow, in which he fought without one of his hands, was far more equal than it should have been, given his disability. The bionic arm he gets as a replacement does have a blade and a couple of darts hidden in it, but it messes with his balance and negatively affects his combat skills.

5 Quinn

Played by Marton Csokas

Despite being terminally ill, Quinn is ridiculously skilled in melee combat and practically killed The Widow once, in one of the most entertaining fight scenes in the entire show. The most powerful baron in the Badlands, he’s outmatched in his combat skills only by his regent Sunny. His physicality makes him an intimidating foe, but what’s scariest about him is that when he’s not encumbered by his health conditions, he’s practically invincible. Quinn hasn’t lost a single sword fight against someone without the gift while functioning at full capacity.


With unreal pain tolerance, a consequence of his brain tumor, Quinn has been stabbed a disturbing number of times and lived to tell the tale. While he isn’t athletic like The Widow or Sunny because of his larger build, Quinn is still very agile, and landing a blow on him takes a lot of patience and skill. He’s quick on his feet, and always mindful of his surroundings. Not the fairest of fighters, he often makes use of circumstances and his cunning to get his way, either cheating his way to victory, or manipulating his foes into fighting for him.

4 Pilgrim

Played by Babou Ceesay


A self-proclaimed son of Azra and the leader of the Totemists, Pilgrim is arguably as strong as Sunny or perhaps even stronger on his best day. An expert martial artist, he possesses the uncanny ability to fend off groups of fighters even when blindfolded! He makes for a compelling antagonist to Sunny, but his insane skills and the ease with which he wins most of his fights feel borderline like plot armor.

When he’s wielding the power of the gift, Pilgrim is practically unstoppable.

Pilgrim’s scariest ability is, of course, the power to temporarily disable others’ connection with the gift. It makes him an even scarier foe because many of the characters who have the gift rely on it to survive encounters. Not only that, when he’s wielding the power of the gift, Pilgrim is practically unstoppable, even stronger than The Master because of how much it enhances his martial artistry and his general physical prowess. No one experiences the enhancement of abilities from the gift like he does.


3 Sunny

Played by Daniel Wu

Regent to Quinn, Sunny is often considered the strongest character in Into the Badlands. He’s by far the most skilled melee combatant. He’s literally only ever been beaten or fended off by people who possess the gift, and, Sunny is the only character who beat Quinn in one-on-one combat. Sunny’s resilience makes him a formidable fighter because he never stops until literally knocked out, or as in his fight against Pilgrim, practically disemboweled.

Sunny himself has the gift too, but he doesn’t unlock it until the final season of the show, and he’s basically beaten everyone without powers until then.


Sunny has faced off against every considerably significant character in the show and basically emerged victorious. Long before he could tap into his powers through the gift, he had defeated the Widow in a fight. Nathaniel Moon couldn’t get the best of him, three power-enabled Abbotts took a long time to knock him down, and even Pilgrim almost didn’t beat him until going berserk with his powers. Sunny could quite possibly be the strongest in the show, but he’s still not invincible.

2 Cyan

Played by Cung Le

The Abbott who leads a trio on their hunt for people with powers, Cyan is arguably the best combatant in Into the Badlands. It’s true that it took the help of two other Abbotts and all three of them had to activate their powers to achieve it, but Cyan is one of the few people who have bested Sunny in combat. His powers make him hard to beat, but a lot of his skills come simply from being a highly talented martial artist.


Daniel-Wu-in-Into-the-Badlands

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While he quite often relies on his powers to win fights, Cyan’s definitely a badass Abbott. His skills with the sword make him formidable in melee combat, but add to that his ability to channel the gift for enhancing his abilities without having to cut himself, and he seems nearly impossible to beat. On top of that, he can perform the deadly Hand of Five Poisons move that causes his enemy’s bodies to slowly shut down, eventually killing them.

1 The Master

Played by Chipo Chung


Obsessed with the gift, Ada aka the Master, has dedicated her life to studying and controlling it. She finds people with the gift and trains them to control it for their benefit, but mostly with the intention of ensuring it doesn’t spread to sections of society she deems undeserving of powers. Not only is she adept at coaching others with powers, but she also has such a connection with the gift that she has powers that go beyond combat, even being able to manipulate people’s memories. And, of course, she can harness her powers at will.

Pilgrim, one of the most capable combatants in the Badlands, couldn’t defeat her until he had disabled her powers. She does rely on the gift a lot, but that doesn’t mean she’s useless without them. She doesn’t even have to activate them to beat most of the characters in melee combat. It’s only exceptional fighters like Pilgrim who make her rely on her abilities. But once she’s activated her powers, there’s literally no one in Into the Badlands who can fight better than her.


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