Sam and Dean always managed to find some clever, resourceful way to beat the villains in Supernatural. This meant the baddies had to be more intelligent than they were powerful. All the antagonists were ultimately defeated due to the Winchesters outsmarting them, although some characters were more intelligent than others.
Main villains who remained good guys more than when they were bad — such as Castiel, Soulless Sam, Demon Dean, and Rowena — won’t be counted. Rather, the focus will be on antagonists who were constantly against the heroes and used their intellect to keep challenging them. Due to this, many powerful characters won’t be in the top spot and those weaker on paper can edge ahead.
The Darkness/Amara
Amara never got the chance to understand how the universe worked because she was trapped by her brother for millions of years. The little time she had on her own was spent being manipulated by everyone else, as the likes of Dean and Chuck kept playing with her emotions.
She was a threat purely because of her incredible powers, with there being no instances where Amara actually used any kind of strategy. She was bested several times by other characters using their intellectual prowess against her, which again points toward Amara’s little to no experience.
Abaddon
Abaddon’s strategy was always to go in for the attack without worrying about being challenged. Being a Knight of Hell, she usually outmatched anyone that was in her way. However, she was repeatedly defeated against those who put their thinking caps on.
Unlike many other high-level demons, Abaddon didn’t care for elaborate plots and kept herself on the attacking end. This meant she preferred blind action to intelligence, which led to her ending most enemies because of her powers but losing when it mattered most.
Alternate Michael
While he destroyed the Apocalypse World, this Michael mainly achieved that because there were no Sam or Dean in that universe. All in all, he was more impressive in his aesthetic than in being a main villain, seeing as his plans all flopped.
Michael did devise a way to boost monsters and use them as weapons, but he didn’t have the smarts to anticipate what the heroes had in store for him. His arrogance led to him figuring he could get away with the win with minimal planning, but that didn’t work out in the long-run.
Dick Roman
The problem with Roman was that he was too smart for his own good. He came up with schemes to take down the human population and turn them into a food resource for the Leviathan but didn’t think of the little details needed to make it happen.
Not to mention how he easily got played by Crowley despite the two signing an agreement, meaning Dick wasn’t smart enough to understand that he was being double-crossed. This kind of uneven thinking is why the entire Leviathan arc is one of the most hated by fans.
Chuck/God
One would think that God would be at the top of the heap, but he actually turned out to be a pretty bad writer of his own story. There are more than a few reasons why he was the Big Bad, although these things were possible because he was the creator and not because of intelligence.
His logic was that he could make any problem disappear because he was the ultimate power, yet the Winchesters found a way around this time and again. God was big on ideas, short on execution.
Metatron
For a guy who was a sniveling, whiny manchild, Metatron did pull off certain feats. He was remarkable in his ability to trick Castiel into banishing all the angels, along with playing the part of an unassuming screwup to gain sympathy and move closer to his goals.
Metatron’s issue was that he didn’t know what to do once he had achieved his ends, which costs him some intelligent points as his schemes ultimately had no meaning. Still, it’s hard to argue against how he was able to take down the heroes for a significant time.
Lucifer
All the worst things that happened to Sam and Dean were because of Lucifer’s machinations. He didn’t directly come up with the plans, but he was the one who commissioned them. He displayed his proficiency in Season 5 where everything he predicted came to pass because of his workings.
Later seasons seemed to dumb Lucifer down, though, as he became more reliant on his powers favored emotions over intelligent thought. That doesn’t count out how he managed to pull off the apocalypse scenario, which was the closest the world came to ending.
Lilith
It wasn’t just because she was the most powerful demon created, as Lilith deserves credit for using the fear factor around her to orchestrate her own death to free Lucifer. The only times she was in threat of losing was when Sam considered not killing her.
Lilith died because she wanted to, meaning she was always smart enough to control the events. However, her return in Season 15 vastly dumbed her down, to the point where she was foolish enough to directly approach Michael and get herself blown to smithereens for it.
Azazel
For most Supernatural fans, Azazel is the ultimate villain as he retained the dangerous image he’d cultivated to the very end by making the demons commit all kinds of atrocities. It was he who came up with the scheme to release Lucifer from the cage, which is extremely impressive since he planned it decades in advance.
Azazel was also a fast thinker, as proven when he instantly traded John’s life for Dean’s when the opportunity came up and used Jake to open the gates of Hell when his plan for Sam didn’t work out. In the end, Azazel’s hopes of getting Lucifer released worked out in his favor.
Crowley
The ultimate survivor in more ways than one, Crowley was capable of resorting to any method to come away with the win, whether it was something shameful or brilliant. In the grand scheme of things, Crowley was never defeated as he took his own life in a bid to best Lucifer and trap him in the Apocalypse World.
Crowley wasn’t the most powerful, but he was easily the smartest, something that allowed him to beat the likes of archangels, higher-level demons, and even the Darkness. He became one of the good guys later on, but his earlier acts of evil remain one of a kind, all thanks to his superior intellect.
