Often thought of as a more unlikeable spiritual successor to Sex and the City‘s Carrie Bradshaw, Girls leading lady Hannah Horvath was a character that fans struggled to love—or, for that matter, even tolerate—over the course of the HBO dramedy’s six-season run.
Created and played by Girls showrunner Lena Dunham, self-absorbed and entitled Hannah was seen as an archetype for a specific type of millennial woman, particularly the messy 20-something kind living in Brooklyn in the mid 2010s. However, much of the ire aimed at Hannah seemed to be intertwined with what viewers thought about Dunham herself, who touted the character as semi-autobiographical and was the subject of intense scrutiny during the years Girls was on the air. Dunham has defended Hannah’s faults—as well as those of her pseudo-besties Marnie (Allison Williams), Jessa (Jemima Kirke), and Shoshanna (Zosia Mamet)—as relatable and honest, and spoken out about how their flaws were criticized much more than the exponentially worse offenses of their male antihero counterparts.
“I’m constantly being asked about these characters being unlikable, and I’m like, ‘What does that even mean?'” Dunham told Vogue in 2016. “Walter White and Tony Soprano literally murder people, and everybody’s like, ‘I love them,’ and all we do is be kind of rude and do drugs sometimes and we’re unlikable.”
Still, that doesn’t mean Hannah’s behavior was always easy to watch play out on screen. So here, in chronological order, are the 10 Girls episodes where Hannah Horvath was the worst.
“Pilot” (Season 1, Episode 1)
Girls doesn’t waste any time letting us know just what type of person Hannah is. After her parents cut her off financially in the pilot episode’s opening scene, insisting she try to get a paying job at the age of 24, Hannah responds by telling them she doesn’t want to see them for the rest of their visit to New York. However, she later proceeds to get high on opium tea, show up at their hotel room to confront them, and—in what has become one of Girls‘ most defining moments—deliver a half self-aggrandizing, half-self deprecating plea for support: “I think that I may be the voice of a generation. Or, at least, a voice of a generation.”
In the morning, Hannah wakes to find her parents have checked out and left behind two envelopes, one with $20 for her and one with $20 for housekeeping. She pockets both bills without pause and heads out.
“Bad Friend” (Season 2, Episode 3)
“Bad Friend” may be one of Girls‘ funniest installments, but it’s also one of Hannah’s most unflattering—which is saying something. After asking her downstairs neighbor Laird (Jon Glaser), a recovering addict, for a drug hook-up, Hannah goes on a Wednesday night coke bender with Elijah (Andrew Rannells) that results in him revealing he and Marnie briefly had sex in a moment of confusion. Despite the fact that he and Hannah broke up years ago and he’s since come out to her as gay, this prompts Hannah to kick Elijah out of their shared apartment and show up unannounced at Booth Jonathan’s (Jorma Taccone) home to accost Marnie with a self-righteous diatribe about how Marnie is the bad friend and she’s the good friend. During a pit stop at a local pharmacy, Elijah succinctly sums up her bad behavior: “Leave it to you to make this whole night about you and your role in my path to honest sexuality…Maybe what happened between Marnie and I had very little, nay, nothing to do with you whatsoever.”
To make herself feel better after terrorizing her friends, Hannah ends the evening by sleeping with Laird, who has spent the night racked with guilt over the fact that he supplied her with drugs. It’s the cherry on top of a narcissistic spiral.
“Video Games” (Season 2, Episode 7)
While accompanying Jessa on a trip upstate to visit her estranged father, Hannah deems it appropriate to have a sexual encounter with Hannah’s 19-year-old stepbrother Frank (Nick Lashaway) while Jessa is attempting to work through the issues her dad’s immaturity and frequent abandonment have caused in their relationship. When Jessa questions Hannah’s behavior, demanding to know whether she really “had no idea this was not supposed to be a sexcapade,” Hannah blames Jessa for making her think that’s what the evening was about. Later that night, she further isolates her friend by offering up the less-than-helpful advice that no one is ever in the right frame of mind to see their parents.
To make matters even worse, when Frank tells Hannah the next morning that he feels like she used him for sex, she’s dismissive of his hurt despite the fact that he’s a literal teenager and seems to have been a virgin. Turns out actions have consequences, Hannah.
“Only Child” (Season 3, Episode 5)
After Hannah’s editor David (John Cameron Mitchell) unexpectedly dies, she decides it’s a good idea to show up at his funeral to question his widow about the fate of her forthcoming ebook. When she finds out the publisher David worked for has dropped all his projects, Hannah is more concerned with trying to suss out the name of another potential publisher than the fact that she’s surrounded by David’s grieving family members. In turn, she earns the only acceptable response to such an ill-timed and callous request: “If I do give you another name, will you get the f-ck out of here?”
“Beach House” (Season 3, Episode 7)
During a weekend getaway to Marnie’s mom’s friend’s beach house in North Fork that Marnie organized in hopes of healing the girls’ fractured friend group, Hannah invites Elijah and his pals (including a new boyfriend literally named Pal who’s played by Danny Strong) to come over without even checking to see if it’s OK with the others. She then rudely laughs at everyone’s jokes about how little food there is at dinner, a problem that only exists because Marnie thought she was shopping for four people not eight. Does Marnie’s response to her plans getting derailed come off as a bit neurotic? Yes. Does that cancel out how inconsiderate Hannah is? Certainly not.
“I Saw You” (Season 3, Episode 11)
As Adam (Adam Driver) prepares for his first Broadway role, Hannah reverts to full on clingy mode, even going so far as to show up at Ray’s (Alex Karpovsky) apartment, where Adam is temporarily staying, and interrupt his vocal exercises when she wants attention. Later, even though Adam is a guest in Ray’s home, she barges into Ray’s room after proclaiming that “everything” is her business to find him having sex with Marnie. She then proceeds to scream at a humiliated Marnie that she’s never allowed to judge her again. With friends like these who needs enemies?
Sadly, that’s not all. Hannah also blows up her latest professional gig by going on a tirade against her fellow GQ colleagues for working in what she describes as a “sweatshop factory for puns”—all because she’s insecure about her own faltering writing career. This quickly provokes her boss (played by Jenna Lyons) into firing her.
“Two Plane Rides” (Season 3, Episode 12)
In the Season 3 finale, an increasingly flailing Hannah finds out she got into the Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate program she applied to. This is a cause for celebration, but she selfishly chooses to deliver the news to Adam in the minutes before he’s set to take the stage on opening night of his Broadway play. The unnecessary added stress of her announcement leads to Adam delivering what he judges to be a not-so-perfect performance and ultimately results in what appears to be a near-relationship-ending fight between the two. Hannah obviously isn’t the only one at fault in their downfall as a couple, but her decision making certainly leaves something to be desired.
“Ask Me My Name” (Season 4, Episode 7)
On her first date with fellow teacher Fran (Jake Lacey), Hannah sabotages what seems to be a positive new connection in her life by dragging him to Adam’s new girlfriend Mimi-Rose’s (Gillian Jacobs) art show. Once Fran gets wise to the fact that she’s using him as a pawn in her twisted attempt to interact with Adam, he quickly dips. But that doesn’t stop Hannah from spending the night making herself and everyone around her miserable by trying to get to know Mimi-Rose, who clearly has some personality disorders of her own. Hannah’s inner turmoil over her life trajectory is on full, chaotic display here.
“Homeward Bound” (Season 5, Episode 8)
After agreeing to go on a three-month summer road trip with Fran despite their issues, Hannah figures out before the first pit stop that she doesn’t actually want to be with him anymore. But instead of handling the situation like an adult and having a conversation, Hannah chooses to lock herself in a rest stop bathroom and refuse to talk to him. She then rejects Fran’s offer to drive her home and opts to call on Ray to come pick her up in his fancy new coffee truck. As a completely misguided thank you, Hannah tries to perform a very hesitantly accepted sexual favor for Ray, which causes him to drive off the road and tip over his recent $50,000-investment. She then hitches a ride with a stranger, leaving Ray on the side of the road to deal with the busted-up truck on his own. It’s difficult to justify pretty much any of Hannah’s actions in this one!
“Goodbye Tour” (Season 6, Episode 9)
Hannah’s overall arc in the series’ penultimate episode is a step in the right direction for her. But there is one glaring misstep that recalls the Hannah of old. After ignoring Shoshanna for months and neglecting to even tell her she was pregnant, Hannah shows up at her apartment uninvited to say goodbye. Only, it turns out Shosh has gotten engaged in the meantime and is in the middle of her engagement party, which Hannah was decidedly not invited to. Hannah’s longtime disinterest in Shosh is particularly egregious considering how Shoshanna leapt to her defense over the whole Mimi-Rose situation and even stood up to Jessa after she shacked up with Adam (even if that wasn’t really what she had a problem with). As Shoshanna says her fiancé Byron helped her realize, she can’t be friends with the others anymore because of “how exhausting and narcissistic and ultimately boring this whole dynamic is.” You tell em, Shosh.
