So much has changed in the ten years since we first began collecting and cataloging the great crones of our time, but much yet remains the same. Namely: our continued commitment to evil hag representation in media. This is where we find some shred of joy amid the cycle of collapse and (hopefully?) regeneration in which our world is eternally locked. And so we present our top ten 2024 Crones of the Year.
Before we wade much farther in, quick head’s up: this piece includes major spoilers for Dragon Age: The Veilgard and Nosferatu, and mild spoilers for Star Trek: Lower Decks and Thelma.
About Crones of the Year
Conventionally, the word “crone” is used in a pejorative context. But here at POMEmag, “crone” is the absolute highest compliment we could possibly pay anyone. Crones are badass oldies who don’t care what anybody thinks about them. Crones are fearless, dangerous, and have a style all their own. In a culture so fixated on youth, it’s rare to find examples of what you want your golden years to look like, especially if you are a young woman navigating this patriarchal pop culture hellscape.
Due to (obvious) representation issues, our definition of “crone” is pretty broad. In our book, anybody can be a crone, regardless of gender, age, or actual arcane knowledge and abilities. Basically, cronedom is a state of mind that anyone theoretically can achieve. So we asked ourselves the following questions when determining our crones of the year:
- Would we mind being this person when we reach their age? How amazing of an end game would that be?
Did this person do something badass in 2024? - Did this person make us feel more powerful? Did watching, playing as, or reading about this person impart a little of their magic onto us?
- Are we intimidated by and/or at least a little afraid of this person?
- How long can we describe this person before we JUST CAN’T HELP SHOUTING ABOUT THEM
We assigned extra points for:
- Age – the older, the better
- Wizenedness
- Cackling
- Likelihood of actual magical powers
Please note: the crones selected below were all pulled from media consumed by at least one member of the POMEmag editorial coven throughout the past year. There may be other powerful crones we missed from 2024 and if so, we’d love to hear about them.
And so, without further ado:
The Top 10 Fictional Crones of 2024
10. Caterina, The First Talon (Dragon Age: The Veilguard)
Image via the Dragon Age Wiki
Caterina Dellamorte is the First Talon of the Crows, the Antivan assassin’s guild featured in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. She asks for your aid in freeing her grandson, the “Demon of Vyrantium,” who she recently discovered had not been killed but was instead alive and held in an underwater prison for over a year. While her love for her grandson is obvious, the respect she demands from the Crows is what really gives her a place among our Crones list—what kind of life must this woman have led to rise to power among the world’s deadliest assassins? Veilguard doesn’t tell us explicitly, and that’s almost better. It’s clear Caterina can and will make the hard decisions, and you better hope you’re on the right side of them when the time comes.
Stats:
- Age: With full-grown grandsons, it’s safe to assume somewhere in her 70s
- Wizenedness: average
- Cackling: not that we’ve seen
- Likelihood of actual magical powers: while not a mage, Caterina didn’t get to the rank of First Talon without having some serious capabilities!
9. Esther Finch (Dead Boy Detectives)
Image via the Sandman wiki
At Crone of the Year, there will always be a home for your classic fairy tale witch. Eating children, being nasty, looking fabulous—these are things that we have always loved to see. Netflix’s spinoff of Netflix’s The Sandman brings us: Esther! With her vocal fry and forest green Miata, she’s a fun new flavor to that tried and true shameless hag formula.
Esther is plural hundreds of years old, with a crow familiar and dark magic powers typical of your average evil crone. But she’s also been sacrificing children to maintain her eternal youth, so she’s lacking that wrinkliness so crucial to the quintessential crone’s charms. However! she makes the most of her youth by turning absolute looks every time she’s on screen—from her pipe and furs, to her spangly Stevie Nicks housecoat, she’s a dream and an inspiration.
Stats:
- Age: in the hundreds
- Wizenedness: barely there, thanks to all the child sacrifices
- Cackling: more of your evil anime girl’s oh ho ho than a true cackle
- Likelihood of actual magical powers: confirmed magical witch
8. Curzon Dax (Star Trek: Lower Decks)
Image via ScreenRant
Hardcore Deep Space Nine fans were rewarded for our unimpeachable taste last year, when the two-part season finale of Star Trek: Lower Decks took us into an alternate reality featuring the long yearned-for canonization of Garak and Bashir’s miracle romance. Though this revelation took center stage, off in the C-plot, DS9 true believers were also treated to a truly delightful trip into the antics of Curzon Dax, the Dax symbiote’s predecessor to beloved-of-POME Jadzia Dax. While Jadzia, literally the perfect woman, was sorely missed, it was a wild romp to see her in her croney Curzon aspect, originator of some of her most idiosyncratic traits, such as her bloodlust for Klingon martial arts. Wielding his bat’leth with all the zeal of a weeaboo who has studied the blade, Curzon manages to create problems and contribute nothing to the team while somehow also being right about everything, earning him a respectable spot on this list with his solid execution of crones’ prerogative.
Stats:
- Age: 70s??? in current incarnation, 100s if we’re counting the full life of the Dax symbiote
- Wizenedness: Idyllicly wrinkled and liver-spotted
- Cackling: A bit bro-y but estimable nonethless
- Likelihood of actual magical powers: Unfortunately, his powers come strictly from science
7. The Widow Botezatu (What Feasts at Night)
Image via Macmillan
What Feasts at Night is the second book in the Sworn Soldier series by T. Kingfisher and it brings to us the Widow Botezatu, a curmudgeonly grandmother hired by the protagonist (along with her himbo grandson) to work at kan home (note: the sworn soldiers of Gallacia use unique pronouns, as do other professions in the fictional country). When her grandson begins to fall under a mysterious illness while working in the protagonist’s home, the Widow is the first to clock the malevolent supernatural force that is slowly killing him through his dreams. She responds by hiding knives under everyone’s pillows (for dream fighting), tying house fixtures up in red string, and implementing other various folklore-based superstitions. The Widow suffers from a perpetual state of exasperation with our protagonist, Easton, and rightfully so—kan attempts to makes things better inevitably make them worse, and Botezatu really shouldn’t have to put up with the bumbling good intentions of wayward soldiers.
Stats:
- Age: Gallacians are a hard-lived people, so Botezatu could be as young as 60 or as old as 90 for all we know
- Wizenedness: we can assume a life of hard work and poverty has taken its toll
- Cackling: less cackling and more exasperated sighing
- Likelihood of actual magical powers: only a knife under a pillow
6. Prof. Albin Eberhart (Nosferatu)
Image via abcNEWS
Count Orlok this, Count Orlok that: while kids these days hyperfocus on hooking up with six-foot-five Nosferatu, we are over in this other corner Counting down the Clock until we can achieve the immaculate crone vibes of Nosferatu’s nemesis, Professor Albin Eberhart. Played by the inimitable Willem Dafoe, Eberhart is the kooky crackpot called upon to crack the case when the boys (a dracula and two thousand real live rats) come back to town to wreak plague and sexual trauma on the Victorian populace. Rejected by the academic establishment for his objectively correct views on the veracity of things like demon possession and ghosts, Eberhart lives his best crone life napping in a cozy chair surrounded by arcane tomes, wanting for nothing, until called upon to—sigh—defeat an unspeakable evil yet again. Whether nursing his bro’s buddy’s goth gf back to health, or tricking said bro’s buddy into a powerful cuckolding ritual to save the world, the noble professor shows us that with a little hard-earned know how and just enough schnapps, crones truly can have it all.
Stats:
- Age: Idk probably like 40 based on the healthcare practices of the period
- Wizenedness: Notable
- Cackling: Falls more on the self-righteous rant side of the spectrum
- Likelihood of actual magical powers: Low, despite extensive knowledge of the arcane
5. Thelma (Thelma)
Image via Wikipedia
In January 2024’s Thelma, 93-year-old Thelma Post falls victim to a phone scam and goes on an adventure to get her $10,000 back—thus proving to her (debatably over-) protective family that she is perfectly capable of continuing to live independently. This film was seemingly written to top the Crone of the Year charts. Cool old broads doing crime while on a journey of self-discovery? Thelma truly was out here checking all the boxes. We aspire to Thelma’s gumption and scooter-stealing skills.
Stats:
- Age: 93—confirmed!
- Wizenedness: Earned and beautiful
- Cackling: More likely to pointedly chuckle than cackle tbh
- Likelihood of actual magical powers: if guns count, definitely
4. Lady Jessica (Dune 2)
Image via EW.com
Yes, Lady Jessica is technically a mother, but hear us out! In Dune 2, Jessica is fully on her crone path — she drinks the worm poison and inherits all the memories of every previous Fremen Reverend Mother. She gets a crazy makeover and begins plotting with her unborn daughter (whose mind has been prematurely awakened by the worm juice) to bring the various and twisting prophecies surrounding Arrakis and her son to fruition.
Lady Jessica goes through a major vibe shift in this movie—her ambition is twisted, her reasoning rooted in mysticism. It’s unclear if she’s been broken by the worm juice and the heavy weight of the generations of old-woman memories that have flooded her, or if they simply awoke something innate in her. Her political maneuverings, her ascendence to Fremen Reverend Mother, and her completely insane aesthetic choices give her top billing in our crones list this year.
Stats:
- Age: 40-50?
- Wizenedness: none, still very hot
- Cackling: no cackling, only the Voice
- Likelihood of actual magical powers: Jessica’s Bene Gesserit training already gave her abilities above and beyond normal folks, but this worm juice has really got her going on another level
3. Johanna Hezenkoss (Dragon Age: The Veilguard)
Image via Polygon
Here at POME Crone HQ we love a bonafide hater and there are few haters more bonafide than Johanna Hezenkoss. She literally quit academia to dedicate herself to fulltime haterdom, inviting all her academic rivals and detractors to an enormous gala so she could take them all out with a giant, shrieking cursed skeleton. She happily throws herself into becoming a half-living, half-lich eldritch being (eternal hater behavior) and uses her enchanted, detached hand for mobile hating. This crone’s dedication to unrepentant petty antagonism is an inspiration to the idea that if you do what you love, you will never work a day in your undying half-life.
Stats:
- Age: Tenured
- Wizenedness: Aspirational
- Cackling: 100% 100% 100%
- Likelihood of actual magical powers: A literal (former) necromancy professor
2. Hakea (Worlds Beyond Number)
Image by Jack Jones via Worlds Beyond Number Wiki
For the as-yet uninitiated, Worlds Beyond Number, a homebrew D&D podcast helmed by beloved Dimension 20 luminaries Aabria Iyengar, Erika Ishii, Lou Wilson, and Brennan Lee Mulligan, has for three seasons delivered a real treat for lovers of storytelling via RPG and Studio Ghibli-esque soundtracks. The second season of “The Wizard, The Witch, and the Wild One” campaign, taking place entirely during an event called The Conclave of the Coven of Elders, blessed us last year with a true cornucopia of crones, from the masked mystery of the Witch of the Waning Moon, to the feral ferocity of the Witch of the Wild Hunt, to the cold calculation of the Witch of the Wind and Stars. But even amongst such a venerable assembly, none could take the crone crown from Hakea, Witch of the Woodland Green. The eldest and original founder of the Coven, Hakea spends the first half of the Conclave functionally asleep, having done and seen way too much to give a care for the politics and infighting of her dysfunctional sisterhood. But with just the right kind of prompting, not only does Hakea wake up to unleash the raw power of nature against her enemies, she continues to act for the rest of the season in peak croneform, twisting the plot and following the true north of her own tricksy moral compass with a wink and a cackle.
Stats:
- Age: Somewhere in the multiples of hundreds
- Wizenedness: Crone-propriate, yet surprisingly minimal given her actual age
- Cackling: The literal blueprint
- Likelihood of actual magical powers: Proven! Truth in advertising!
1. Turbo Granny (Dandadan)
Image via the Dandadan wiki
At the very outset of the Dandadan anime, Turbo Granny enters the show as an adversary, a terrifying spectral menace out to take your life and/or steal your weenie. But as the series continues (and as she enters the main ensemble after getting trapped within a lucky cat doll), we get to know her better. And like, does Turbo Granny take lives and weenies? Absolutely. But she also looks out for the spirits of girls who died tragically within her forest. Plus, she’s a nosy, meddling, griping old bird who puts whippersnappers in their place time and time again. Turbo Granny lends a hand to those who need her the most – as long as she can complain and ridicule them the whole time.
Stats:
- Age: Legendary
- Wizenedness: Equally legendary
- Cackling: Incredible
- Likelihood of actual magical powers: confirmed (ghost)
It’s been 10 years of crones—can you believe it?? We certainly can’t. But here’s to an eternity more. May the world never tire of variously mean old ladies.
Interested in our previous offerings? Check out all of our Crones of the Year lists here.
And Ko-Fi subscribers: head on over to our Ko-Fi for our honorable mentions!
