Back in June of 2020, Netflix announced The Cuphead Show,
a show based on the video game Cuphead. Well, it was officially released on
Netflix on February 18th, 2022, and features the misadventures of the titular Cuphead and
his brother Mugman through Inkwell Isle. With so many intriguing characters throughout the series,
it made us ask the age-old question, whos the best of the best, and who’s surveying the pits of hell?
I’m Kyle with WickedBinge, and this is The Cuphead Show!: Good to Evil.
As always we start with the best characters in the show
and move our way down to the worst of the worst, these are The Good.
Earning our gold medal of good is Mugman, one of the two main characters of the show. Mugman like
his brother is a young teen who lives with the Elder Kettle on Inkwell Isle. He gets in plenty
of shenanigans with his brother, most of which involve dealing with the devil or his associates.
He has saved his brother’s soul multiple times, including in the very first episode,
and later on, he saved him from The Devil once again. He even knit an invisible sweater that
stopped The Devil from taking his soul. Mugman is arguably the smarter of the two,
but he’s also shown to be kind of cowardly at times and he’s often shown to be quite
easy to convince or trick. In Episode 10 “Dangerous Mugman” he does get over his
cowardly ways and becomes a bit braver thanks to a ploy from Cuphead but we don’t get to see a lot
of this new braver Mugman. Mugman is a shoo-in for this spot, so it’s no surprise he landed here.
While not the most important character, Quadratus gets our silver medal of good. Quadratus only
appears in Episode 8 and even then, his role is relatively small. But what he lacks in screentime
he makes up for in good actions. Quadratus is a sage and supposedly great and smart,
he is the one responsible for telling Mugman how to stop The Devil from grabbing Cuphead’s soul.
He even provides the invisible yarn necessary to do so as well, making it quite obvious why
he ranks in the good. He doesn’t grab the top spot only because he doesn’t have a lot of screen time.
Oh, banana oil, titular character Cuphead only gets our bronze medal of good.
In any other universe, Cuphead would rank a bit lower than this, but as you’ll see there are
not a lot of good characters here. Cuphead is a hotheaded young teen who insists on doubling down
at every opportunity. He hates doing chores and will always take the easy way out, he’s a show-off
and he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. However, while all of these traits are bad
for different reasons, he’s still a good kid at times. He’s willing to help people if need be,
he loves his brother quite a lot as he will split half of his pancakes with Mugman
and try to convince him to be brave with the goggles in Episode 10. However, he is a whole host
of issues and in any other show would fall much lower, but he has to rank here out of necessity.
Maybe ranking a bit high to some but next on our list is Ms. Chalice. Chalice is a trickster of
the highest caliber and gets all kinds of stuff just by being cute and charming. She
calls herself “nothing but trouble” and a “solo act” but does take Cuphead and Mugman under her
wing to learn her charming ways. She does break the law in a myriad of ways such as pretty much
stealing all kinds of items and trespassing. She does accidentally get the boys arrested
but it is shown that she didn’t want them to get arrested and it’s also revealed that she may be
a spirit of some kind. We’ll likely see more of her in Season 2, but as for now, she lands here.
Up next on our list is Dorris from Episode 3. Dorris is a relatively small character in the
episode and the girlfriend or wife of Sherman. She is shown to get quite angry that Sherman is always
working and wants him around more often. She also hates getting corrected and does inform Sherman
about Mugman and Cuphead escaping, although doesn’t comment on Sherman trying to cook them.
If she had more screentime she might rank lower but at this point, this is where she lands.
Rounding out the good section on our list are Duke, Jasper, and Emma. This trio of ghostly
ghouls are the main antagonists of Episode 6 where they spend most of the episode trying to scare
Cuphead and Mugman in the graveyard. They are kind of an abusive trio, where the leader likes to beat
up on the big lug, much like the Three Stooges. They didn’t want to actually harm the cups as they
get scared and sad when the cups fall out of the window and look like they’re dead, even planning
to give a eulogy to them. They really were just messing around and weren’t really malicious.
With the quote-unquote good section out of the way,
we move down to worse characters in The Gray Area.
Starting our Gray Area on our list is Stickler. Stickler is Hell’s personal auditor who works
on counting and marking down every soul that The Devil collects. He only appears in Episode
8 during The Devil’s party in hell where he is constantly trying to ruin the party by bringing up
Cuphead, the one soul The Devil hasn’t collected yet. Stickler really cares about his job and even
says he “won’t apologize for doing his job” even though everyone including The Devil hates him.
By the end of the episode, he is forced to do a full recount due to how he is annoying
the Devil. He’s really only an annoyance and nothing else, hence his ranking here.
Next up on the list is none other than Elder Kettle. Kettle is the caretaker of Cuphead and
Mugman and as his name implies, on the older side. He makes breakfast for the boys in the
mornings and takes care of them quite well, trying to teach them responsibility in a myriad of ways.
Sure, he gets angry at times and takes a lot of pride in things like his radio and garden,
but he does try his best. However, he has to be pulled down because, in Episode 11,
he does actively try to kill the boys because he overheard them talking about burying a worm.
Not to say he’s very competent or good at doing this, but that doesn’t change the actual events.
Up next on our list is Sherman. Sherman is a chef on Ribby and Croak’s riverboat who finds Cuphead
and Mugman in the freezer, and he was assumedly going to chop up, cook, and serve the boys
to the people on the boat. He is consumed in his work and supposedly always working according to
Dorris, and he does get quite angry at Dorris for mispronouncing “anniversary”. However,
we dock points because he had to do that as part of his job
and wasn’t doing it maliciously to our knowledge.
Rounding out the Gray Area of our list is Henchman. Henchman is, as his name implies,
The Devil’s Henchman, and could be seen as his right-hand man to some degree.
He helps The Devil in a variety of ways, such as telling him the soul counter had stopped
or helping him heal his wounds after he was injured by the sweater that stops him from
collecting souls. He even tries to cheer The Devil up with leftover cake from their party,
and the Devil trusts him enough to reveal he hadn’t actually caught Cuphead. Henchman
is not evil by himself but following the Devil’s orders without question does bring him down a peg.
Finally, we move on to the bottom of the barrel, these are The Bad to Evil.
Starting off the bad to evil section is Ribby and Croaks. Ribby and Croaks are ex-boxers who now run
a supposedly stand-up riverboat. However, just because they are now supposedly stand-up guys,
they don’t treat people very well. Not only do they steal five dollars from Cuphead and Mugman
but they subsequently kick them into the river. The two of them constantly fight with each other,
despite them promising their mother otherwise and they end up sinking
their own ship because they cared more about getting the “bums” rather than protecting
their paying customers. But we give them a pass and let them land here because they do forgive
Cuphead and Mugman and call them part of their “family”, trying to turn things around.
Next on our list is Porkrind, the local storeowner. Porkrind appears in two separate
episodes, where he “helps” the boys in a couple of different ways. He intends to sell glue to the
boys to get Mugman’s handle back on and confirms that the more they needed it the more expensive it
would be. He is also shown to have anger issues, daydreaming about literally killing the boys,
threatening to eat a baby dragon, and sending the boys on a dangerous mission because they
were annoying him. However, he’s not all bad, as long as you have money he’s willing to sell
to you and he ends up giving the Dirk Dangerous machine to the boys because they loved it so much.
Porkrind doesn’t actively try to kill the boys in any way so we let him slide for now.
Ranking outside the Bottom Three is The Root Pack. The Root Pack consists of three Root vegetables,
Sal the Spud, Ollie the Onion, and Chauncey the Carrot. The three of them appear by stealing soil
from Elder Kettle and then conning the boys with a sob story. They convince the boys to
leave them with the garden and then start to throw a massive party while they’re gone, then
stop them from entering their own home. They don’t care about anything save for their reputation and
fight amongst themselves quite often. The three of them are all major a-holes to the boys and
stop themselves from falling to the bottom three because they’re more annoying than anything else.
Taking the bronze medal of evil is the gambling gamester, King Dice. King Dice only appears in
Episode 5 “Roll the Dice” which is a travesty for reasons we won’t get into here. But even in this
series he still keeps up his right-hand man status to The Devil and hosts a show called Roll The Dice
which is just a front to steal souls. He’s pretty well-liked and quite popular, he tries everything
in his ability to take Cuphead’s soul but fails at it, getting his first loss ever. This causes him
to lose his number one status and his show, as he is seen as a cheater and the show as rigged.
Snatching the silver medal of evil is Baby Bottle from the episode of the same name. Now while this
sounds weird, stick with us here, Baby Bottle is the main antagonist of the second episode of the
series and by Jove what an antagonist he is. He starts off by tricking Cuphead and Mugman with his
cuteness but pretty quickly starts attacking and decimating the house. He locks the boys
out of the house to destroy things, he breaks the fishbowl and just leaves the fish to die,
breaks the radio knowing it was the one bad thing to break, and then actively tries to kill not only
Cuphead and Mugman but also Elder Kettle. By the end of the episode, it’s pretty clear that Baby
Bottle is actually malicious and not just being a weird child if the way it tears the head off of
Mugman’s bear is any indication. He’s pretty bad, but he’s not nearly as bad as our number one spot.
Grabbing the gold medal of evil is, to no one’s surprise, The Devil. The Devil is the owner and
operator of hell, which takes care of famines, war, and gluttony among other things. He reaps
millions of souls in a variety of ways, but one of his most noticeable is the Carnival he runs
that is a front for souls or the aforementioned gameshow. A lot of his deeds are really about
annoyance, as he causes a lot of annoyances to the “local yokels” and he quite enjoys it when
people run in fear of him. However, he can be kind of daft at times, such as when he destroys his own
carnival chasing around Cuphead and Mugman or tries dozens of times to take Cuphead’s soul
with the sweater on him. He however has no qualms about taking souls and taking out his anger
on his own minions like Stickler and King Dice. It’s no surprise Old Scratch ranks here, as he
is a classic trickster and soul reaper, but we haven’t seen the full extent of his evil just yet.
With a series so closely tied to the Devil and sin,
it only makes sense we bring up some Sinner Medals
Earning our Darwin Medal is the titular character Cuphead. He is just dumb on so many occasions,
he doesn’t understand basic words at times, and mostly just runs on impulse
Cuphead also grabs out Sloth Medal because even in the first episode
he will blow off chores just because he wants to be lazy instead
Grabbing our Gluttony Medal is The Root Pack, this is because out of spite,
they suck up all the water in the garden, which almost leads to their deaths
The Pride Medal goes to The Devil himself, in Episode 8, he spends the
entire time congratulating himself for work that others did because of “how he runs it”
Old Scratch, The Devil also grabs the Wrath Medal,
this is because in the aforementioned episode he got so angry he blew up half of the forest.
But let us know in the comment section if you agree with our ranking. And if you want more
Cuphead content - check out our brand new Cuphead Characters Weak to Powerful over on 1upBinge.
Remember to hit that notification bell, but most importantly, stay wicked