Woman Crush Wednesday: Seven ‘Killer’ Women On Netflix

As the holiday season gets closer and the weather outside gets colder, more and more people will opt to stay indoors when they are at their leisure — which means more time for Netflix. With the calendar year coming to an end, 2016 still seems, for many, to be one of the craziest years in recent history.

In February, Deadpool blew away all expectations at the box office, proving that a comic book movie could flip the genre on its head and still make a ton of money. In June, the Cavaliers brought Cleveland its first major sports championship in over 50 years after defying all odds as the first team to ever come back from being down 0-3 in the NBA Finals. Then, in November, the Chicago Cubs won their first World Series in over a century. A week later, Donald Trump was announced as the President-Elect of the United States.

The New Year could bring a fresh start for the world and a return to normalcy. On the other hand, things could just keep getting crazier. And in seemingly apocalyptic times like these, when the only thing we can expect is the unexpected, there’s no better time to have a strong, fearless woman by your side — one who will do whatever it takes to survive. For those who can’t have such a woman by their side, the next best thing may be to pull inspiration from such a character on Netflix.

To help celebrate the weekly Millennial tradition of recognizing admirable adult females on hump day, what follows is a list of seven candidates for Woman Crush Wednesday that can be found on Netflix playing roles in which they are literal killers. The list includes a variety of actresses, from big-name stars like Salma Hayek and Halle Berry to still-up-and-coming entertainers like Élodie Yung and Abigail Breslin.

Salma Hayek in Everly

Everly received a rather limited release in 2015, so it’s not one of Salma Hayek’s most recognizable roles, even if it is very recent. Hayek plays the titular character, who is being held captive as a prostitute by a powerful criminal boss. The only chance for her to see her daughter again is to shoot her way out.

For those who aren’t convinced by the trailer above, a review by The Hollywood Reporter gets right to the point:

“Salma Hayek kicks a**, and looks great doing it.”

If the ninety minutes of cinematic violence in Everly isn’t enough, Salma Hayek also has a seductively evil role in From Dusk Till Dawn, also available to stream on Netflix.

Full Netflix filmography: 54, El Callejón de los Milagros, Everly, Frida, From Dusk Till Dawn, Septembers of Shiraz, Some Kind of Beautiful, Spy Kids 3: Game Over

Abigail Breslin in Final Girl

Who would have thought ten years ago that the awkwardly adorable little girl from Little Miss Sunshine would grow up to be a total babe with a pension towards the morbid? Outside of content available on Netflix, Abigail Breslin currently stars on the incredibly campy horror sitcom Scream Queens. Three years after Sunshine, she was a part of Zombieland, a dark comedy of a very different nature.

In Final Girl, Breslin plays an orphan who is raised and trained to help take out a group of teenage boys in a small town who have made a habit of taking pretty blonde girls to a local forest and hunting them for sport. While August: Osage County and her appearance on Chelsea may be free of violence, she plots the murder of her alcoholic mother in Perfect Sisters. She even stars in a demented version of Groundhog Day as the lead character in Haunter.

Full Netflix filmography: August: Osage County, Chelsea (Season 1, Episode 50), Final Girl, Haunter, Perfect Sisters

Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction

While the selection for Uma Thurman films on Netflix is slim, arguably the most important film in her career is one of the stream-able options. In Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Uma played Mia Wallace, the wife of gang boss Marsellus Wallace. While Mia doesn’t actually murder anyone in the film, the character did play another character in a fictional pilot for Fox Force Five that Mia described as “the deadliest woman in the world with a knife,” which was really a description of the character Uma would later play in the Kill Bill movies.

She also temporarily killed herself in Pulp Fiction by accidentally snorting heroin that she believed to be cocaine, although she was revived later by a shot of adrenaline to the heart. The only other options on Netflix for Uma Thurman are the two separate versions of Nymphomaniac: Volume 1, which is adult-themed in an entirely different way.

Full Netflix filmography: Pulp Fiction, Nymphomaniac: Volume 1, Nymphomaniac: The Extended Director’s Cut Volume 1

Maggie Q in Nikita

From the very first episode, Maggie Q’s titular character on Nikita proves that she is willing and able to kill. She spends the first three seasons trying to take down the secret government organization that trained her to be the killer she has become, before going completely rogue in the fourth season. All four seasons of Nikita are currently available to stream on Netflix.

Full Netflix filmography: Mission: Impossible III, Nikita (Seasons 1-4)

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Élodie Yung in Marvel’s Daredevil

Élodie Yung really burst onto the scene as Elektra in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as part of the Netflix Original Series Marvel’s Daredevil. As reported by TV Guide, she is slated to reprise her role in Marvel’s The Defenders in 2017. Having appeared in box office action blockbusters like The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and G.I. Joe: Retaliation, she becomes even more lethal when she embodies her character from Marvel Comics.

Full Netflix filmography: Marvel’s Daredevil (Season 2, Episodes 4-13), Narcopolis, Still

Kellita Smith in Z Nation

Among all of the zombie-based television options available, Z Nation is the series that feels most appropriately at home on SyFy. It manages to be both gritty and silly, resulting in arguably the campiest of all the undead television shows out there. The first two seasons include everything from a zombie tornado to a zombie bear to zombies on speed and Viagra. And the only people with a chance to save humanity are led by Killita Smith’s Lt. Roberta Warren, who is forced to kill more than her fair share of the living dead in almost every episode.

Full Netflix filmography: The Bernie Mac Show (Seasons 1-5), Z Nation (Seasons 1-2)

Halle Berry in Catwoman

While she’s certainly no saint in Sword Fish, she plays one of the all-time greatest villains from the pages of DC Comics as Catwoman in the movie of the same name. Unfortunately for Berry, Catwoman was one of many superhero films that failed before the rampant success the genre has seen over the last decade. In fact, in the video below, Berry accepts here Razzie Award for the role with a very tongue-in-cheek speech.

Full Netflix filmography: Bulworth, Catwoman, Dark Tide, For Love of Liberty, Perfect Stranger, Sword Fish, Things We Lost in the Fire

[Featured Images by Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images, Jason Merritt/Getty Images, and John Sciulli/Getty Images]