In an age when everyone and their old email server is producing quality short-form entertainment, how can anyone possibly whittle down all of the best characters on TV right now into a 25-entry list?

The answer: Slowly, carefully, and by following a rigid set of criteria. As EW‘s TV editors wrote in their call for submissions, for the purposes of this list, “characters must be current, fictional, recurring, and awesome. No reality, no one-offs, no finished shows, no pilots, no scrubs (a scrub is a guy who can’t get no love from me).” We also enacted a strict one-character-per-show policy, and decided that only characters whose arcs are ongoing would be eligible. And while these rules meant disqualifying several staff favorites—sorry, Rust Cohle, Molly Solverson, Yvonne “Vee” Parker, and Walter White—we’re still plenty happy with our final results.