The New Female Antihero examines the hardedged spies, ruthless queens, and entitled slackers of twentyfirstcentury television The last ten years have seen a shift in television storytelling toward increasingly complex storylines and characters In this study, Sarah Hagelin and Gillian Silverman zoom in on a key figure in this transformation: the archetype of the female antihero Far from the sunny, sincere, plucky persona once demanded of female characters, the new female antihero is often selfish and deeply unlikeable In this entertaining and insightful study, Hagelin and Silverman explore the meanings of this profound change in the role of women characters In the dramas of the new millennium, they show, the female antihero is ambitious, conniving, even murderous in comedies, she is selfcentered, selfsabotaging, and antiaspirational Across genres, these female protagonists eschew the part of good girl or role model In their rejection of social responsibility, female antiheroes thus represent a more profound threat to the status quo than do their male counterparts From the devious schemers of Game of Thrones, The Americans, Scandal, and Homeland, to the joyful failures of Girls, Broad City, Insecure, and SMILF, female antiheroes register a deep ambivalence about the promises of liberal feminism They push back against the myth of the modernday superwoman8212she who 8220has it all82218212and in so doing, they give us new ways of imagining women8217s lives in contemporary America