Arrowverse Big Bads, Ranked!

TVLine presents its ranking (updated for the 2020-21 TV season) of every Big Bad across 26 collective seasons of Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl, DC's Legends of Tomorrow, Batwoman and Black Lightning (Season 3). Which villain is chillin' as the very best of the "worst"? And which mischief makers are merely meh?

22. ASTRA & NON
(Supergirl Season 1)

Compelling Backstory: 7
Fearsome Appearance: 5
Powers/Skills: 6
Utter Ruthlessness: 6
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 7
Despicable Damage Done: 4

Having escaped from Fort Rozz, in which Alura had imprisoned them, Kara's aunt and her husband sought to enslave humankind via mind control. Heck, they even whammied a CGI'd, pre-Tyler Hoechlin Supes!

29. VANDAL SAVAGE
(Legends of Tomorrow Season 1)

Compelling Backstory: 4
Fearsome Appearance: LOL
Powers/Skills: 5
Utter Ruthlessness: 5
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 7
Despicable Damage Done: 10 (in the original timeline; but ultimately a 3)
 
The ancient Egyptian priest-turned-immortal was destined to decimate Earth by the year 2166, until a ragtag band of unlikely heroes — "legends," if you will — stood in his way. (Even a humorous, tongue-in-cheek cameo in the Season 4 finale couldn't nudge him much higher.)

26. QUEEN RHEA
(Supergirl Season 2)

Compelling Backstory: 6
Fearsome Appearance: 2
Powers/Skills: 4
Utter Ruthlessness: 5
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 8
Despicable Damage Done: 5

Having tracked down her missing son, Mon-El, only to realize he was happy on Earth – and in love with a Kryptonian, harrumph! — the queen of Daxam made Kara the target of her royal wrath.

17. THE THINKER
(The Flash Season 4)

Compelling Backstory: 5
Fearsome Appearance: 7 (except when speaking with the drawl of a female country singer)
Powers/Skills: 9 (including those of "absorbed" bus metas)
Utter Ruthlessness: 9
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 9
Despicable Damage Done: 5
 
By way of "The Enlightenment," this super-smaht baddie aimed to offer humanity a fresh start by dumbing everyone down. Alas, "The Fastest Mind Alive" never quite blew us away with his bean.

15. REIGN
(Supergirl Season 3)

Compelling Backstory: 6
Fearsome Appearance: 7
Powers/Skills: 8
Utter Ruthlessness: 7
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 7
Despicable Damage Done: 6
 
Single mom Samantha Arias came to realize that as a Kryptonian baby she had been shipped off to Earth to manifest her Worldkiller (!) powers and ultimately "reign" over the planet.

18. RA'S AL GHUL
(Arrow Season 3)

Compelling Backstory: 6
Fearsome Appearance: 5
Powers/Skills: 6
Utter Ruthlessness: 8
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 8
Despicable Damage Done: 7
 
The Demon's Head who famously pitched a stabbed Oliver off the top of a Nanda Parbat mountain, he went on to court Oliver as his successor — provided the local hero had the stones to wipe out Starling City with a bio-weapon.

16. THE LEGION OF DOOM
(Legends of Tomorrow Season 2)

Compelling Backstory: 6 (on average)
Fearsome Appearance: 5 (on average)
Powers/Skills: a collective 8
Utter Ruthlessness: 6
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 9
Despicable Damage Done: 7
 
Eobard Thawne aka Reverse-Flash, Damien Darhk and Maclolm Merlyn — with a tiny assist from Leonard Snart/Captain Cold — teamed to reassemble the Spear of Destiny, with which they could permanently rewrite history.

10. DAMIEN DARHK
(Arrow Season 4)

Compelling Backstory: 6
Fearsome Appearance: 5
Powers/Skills: 8
Utter Ruthlessness: 7
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 9
Despicable Damage Done: 8
 
Scorned long ago by the League of Assassins, the magic-wielding Darhk spearheaded his own evil entity, H.I.V.E., with the end game of no less than making (almost!) all of the world literally burn. Though he failed, he did kill Laurel Lance along the way, as well as dropped a bomb that Felicity rerouted to Havenrock.

5. DARK ARCHER
(Arrow Season 1)

Compelling Backstory: 6
Fearsome Appearance: 7
Powers/Skills: 8
Utter Ruthlessness: 7
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 9
Despicable Damage Done: 9
 
Having trained with the League of Assassins after his wife's murder, Malcolm Merlyn plotted to demolish the sketchy part of town known as The Glades — but an upstart vigilante dubbed The Hood (actually his son Tommy's BFF!) kept getting the way.

8. SAVITAR
(The Flash Season 3)

Compelling Backstory: 6
Fearsome Appearance: 9
Powers/Skills: 7
Utter Ruthlessness: 9
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 8
Despicable Damage Done: 6
 
Barry's friendless future time remnant had but one goal: to kill Iris, quite brutally, and thus ensure his own existence.

4. PROMETHEUS
(Arrow Season 5)

Compelling Backstory: 6
Fearsome Appearance: 7
Powers/Skills: 8
Utter Ruthlessness: 9
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 8
Despicable Damage Done: 10 (R.I.P., Lian Yu!)
 
Out to avenge his father's death at the Hood's hand, Adrian Chase inserted himself into Oliver Queen's life and yet refused to end it. Instead, he chose to torture his adversary with the notion that Oliver likes killing and thus is poison to everyone around him.

12. ZOOM
(The Flash Season 2)

Compelling Backstory: 6
Fearsome Appearance: 8
Powers/Skills: 8
Utter Ruthlessness: 7
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 7
Despicable Damage Done: 6
 
Like Ricky Bobby, Earth-Two serial killer Hunter Zolomon wanted to go fast. That quest led him to our Barry Allen, whom he befriended as "Jay Garrick" — co-opting the identity of the Earth-Three speedster he had locked up in his lair, clad in an iron mask.

3. REVERSE-FLASH
(The Flash Season 1)

Compelling Backstory: 9
Fearsome Appearance: 7
Powers/Skills: 8
Utter Ruthlessness: 7
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 9
Despicable Damage Done: 9

Future speedster Eobard Thawne's trip back in time to kill a young Barry Allen led to him murdering the lad's mother instead. Then finding himself stuck in time, he stole the identity of ad Barry's mentor, Harrison Wells, to ensure the particle accelerator's timely completion/explosion. 

1. DEATHSTROKE
(Arrow Season 2)

Compelling Backstory: 10
Fearsome Appearance: 8
Powers/Skills: 9
Utter Ruthlessness: 10
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 8
Despicable Damage Done: 9

Oliver's extremely complicated Lian Yu past came back to bite him when Slade Wilson resurfaced as a Moira-murdering maker of mayhem whose sanity had been corrupted by mirakiru serum.

25. MALLUS
(Legends of Tomorrow Season 3)

Compelling Backstory: 4
Fearsome Appearance: 5 in his true, CGI form; 8 when possessing the likes of Nora Darhk
Powers/Skills: 6
Utter Ruthlessness: 6  
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 5
Despicable Damage Done: 4
 
Imprisoned long ago by the tribes of Zambesi, this time demon enlisted Damien Darhk to create anachronisms that would facilitate his release into our realm. The one obstacle Mallus didn't plan on? A big ol' Beebo.

27. RICARDO DIAZ
(Arrow Season 6)

Compelling Backstory: 5
Fearsome Appearance: 4
Powers/Skills: 3
Utter Ruthlessness: 7
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 5
Despicable Damage Done: 6
 
Little more than a street tough with a childhood sob story, Diaz rose up the criminal ranks and allied with hacker Cayden James, Earth-Two meta Laurel Lance and others to take control of Star City, destroying Oliver's life in the process.

11. AGENT LIBERTY
(Supergirl Season 4)

Compelling Backstory: 10
Fearsome Appearance: 6; 8 with the dead-eyed C-3PO-like mask 
Powers/Skills: 6
Utter Ruthlessness: 6
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 9
Despicable Damage Done: 7
 
In flashback we learned that Ben Lockwood's anti-alien stance was stoke and stoked, and stoked yet again, over years' worth of previous Supergirl storylines, to the point that he donned a mask and led like-minded deplorables on a mission to assert humankind as the superior race.

2. LEX LUTHOR
(Supergirl Season 4)

Compelling Backstory: 10
Fearsome Appearance: 6
Powers/Skills: 8, for his intellect alone
Utter Ruthlessness: 9
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 8
Despicable Damage Done: 9

In a mere handful of mid-/late season appearances by Jon Cryer, Lex keenly orchestrated an impressive amount of havoc. We learned of his "mentoring" of Red Daughter, his role in creating the Children of Liberty as a scapegoat, and his secret alliance with Eve Tessmacher, while witnessing his manipulation of half-sister Lena into testing Harun-El on humans. Yet even in that short, concentrated burst, he lived up to his supervillain legacy.

30. EMIKO ADACHI
(Arrow Season 7)

Compelling Backstory: 4
Fearsome Appearance: 3
Powers/Skills: 5
Utter Ruthlessness: 5
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 4
Despicable Damage Done: 3

Season 7's "Who's the new Green Arrow?" question wound up being far more provocative than the answer, as it was revealed that a daughter sired/abandoned by Robert Queen had grown up and undergone her own training to pose as the Emerald Archer and in doing so wreck her half-brother's legacy. Alas, we never quite rooted for Emiko to have a change of heart and make nice with Oliver, nor did she pass as ruthless enough a foe.

14. CICADA/CICADA II
(The Flash Season 5)

Compelling Backstory: 6
Fearsome Appearance: 6 
Powers/Skills: 9
Utter Ruthlessness: 8 (poor Dr. Ambres!)
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 7
Despicable Damage Done: 8
 
Fueled by the deaths of his brother and sister-in-law, and later his young niece Grace's coma — all as the result of metahuman activity — Orlin Dwyer adopted the persona of Cicada, using his power-dampening dagger to kill powered people. Along the way, his anti-meta rhetoric poisoned comatose's Grace mind, leading her to decades later succeed him as Cicada and travel back in time to resume Uncle Orlin's killing spree.

9. FUTURE EOBARD THAWNE
(The Flash Season 5)

See Season 1 Reverse-Flash

Compelling Backstory: 9
Fearsome Appearance: 6
Powers/Skills: 8
Utter Ruthlessness: 7
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 7
Despicable Damage Done: 8 (if you count taunting WestAllen with the introduction of their grown, but doomed, daughter) 

Imprisoned in 2046, Thawne was typically vexing but rather inert for most of Season 5, mostly there to leave us (and Team Flash) puzzling over his agenda and how it involved time-travelling Nora. But when the lonnnnnng game he had been playing was eventually revealed, you had to give a slow golf clap to the imprisoned speedster's domino-like escape plan.

21. NERON
(Legends of Tomorrow Season 4)

Compelling Backstory: 5
Fearsome Appearance: Varies, but creepiest in gooey-faced native form (not shown!)
Powers/Skills: 7
Utter Ruthlessness: 8
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 8
Despicable Damage Done: 7
 
Scorned years ago by Constantine and now out to enslave as many human souls as possible, this demon hopped from familiar body to familiar body (starting with John's ex, Desmond, and ending with Ray), killing Nate's father and later (briefly) Nate himself along the way.

13. DAMIEN & NORA DARHK
(Legends of Tomorrow Season 3)

Compelling Backstory: 8
Fearsome Appearance: 6
Powers/Skills: 8
Utter Ruthlessness: 7
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 6
Despicable Damage Done: 6
 
Time-displaced as a corpse and resurrected in 1895 London by Mallus, Damien teamed with grown daughter Nora to lay waste to the Time Bureau agents who came after them and then target the Legends. In the end, as the Legends readied to vanquish Mallus (and in turn the demon's current human vessel), one of them would make the ultimate sacrifice.

20. ALICE (Batwoman Season 1)

Compelling Backstory: 8 (and that's just what we know thus far) 
Fearsome Appearance: 2 (and that's mostly the bangs)
Powers/Skills: 4
Utter Ruthlessness: 7
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 5  
Despicable Damage Done: 6

In the accident that killed their mother, Kate Kane was rescued in time by Batman, but her twin sister Beth tumbled with the car into the river, presumed dead. In actuality, Beth was found by off-kilter August Cartwright and his meek son Jonathan, often locked up inside their remote home and subject to its horrors. Eventually rechristening herself as "Alice," she resurfaced in Gotham as an adult to punish those who had "forgotten" her — Kate (aka Batwoman), and their father Jacob. Yet thus far, her agenda has been very personal, very small.  (Points added for Rachel Skarsten's scene-stealing performance.)

23. BLOODWORK (The Flash Season 6A)

Compelling Backstory: 5
Fearsome Appearance: 5 as veiny human; 10 in full CGI form
Powers/Skills: 6
Utter Ruthlessness: 6
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 5
Despicable Damage Done: 5

Dr. Ramsey Rosso had set out to find a cure for the HLH cancer that killed his mother. Using stolen dark matter, he fell short in that quest, yet found a way to live forever by feeding off of his victims' adrenaline-infused blood. As Bloodwork, he infected and briefly took control of The Flash, only to later, as a towering, comics-accurate monster, be undone by visions of his mother.

24. POST-CRISIS LEX LUTHOR (Supergirl Season 5B)

Compelling Backstory: 5
Fearsome Appearance: 6
Powers/Skills: 5
Utter Ruthlessness: 6
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 6
Despicable Damage Done: 6

Whereas the original Lex was genuinely frightening, the post-Crisis version of Lena's smarmy old brother didn't pack quite the same punch he once did, partially because he spent much of the season keeping up his "good guy" facade. Don't get us wrong, what he did to Eve was pretty awful, but it wasn't exactly mass genocide.

19. THE FATES (Legends of Tomorrow Season 5)

Compelling Backstory: 7
Fearsome Appearance: 2
Powers/Skills: 8
Utter Ruthlessness: 8
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 7
Despicable Damage Done: 7

Charlie's sisters, the Greek deities Lachesis and Atropos, were certainly powerful, what with their ability to control people's destinies and even end their lives with just a snip of their life threads. They even created a whole new world without free will — partially powered by an Apple-esque Fatewatch that told people what to do and feel!

7. THE ANTI-MONITOR (Arrow Season 8/'Crisis on Infinite Earths')

Compelling Backstory: 6
Fearsome Appearance: 7
Powers/Skills: 10
Utter Ruthlessness: 9
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 10
Despicable Damage Done: 8

Fancying himself "destiny incarnate, inexorable and inescapable," the Anti-Monitor aka Mobius was in some ways the Arrowverse's Thanos, seeking as he did to eradicate universe after universe with an anti-matter cannon. In the end, the teamwork of the Paragons and Spectre/the late Oliver Queen — assisted by a nifty "shrink bomb" — rendered the baddie too literally tiny to be of consequence. (Points deducted for limited screen time.)

TBD. MIRROR MISTRESS (The Flash Season 6B)

Compelling Backstory: 3
Fearsome Appearance: 2
Powers/Skills: 5
Utter Ruthlessness: 3
Eeeevilness of Agenda: TBD
Despicable Damage Done: 5 (so far)

Trapped inside a mirror realm during the particle accelerator explosion, Dr. Eva MCulloch grew frustrated when husband Joseph gave up on saving her — and then grew a bit insane from years of solitude. Eventually trapping Iris/using a fake to do her bidding in the real world, Eva sought to drain Flash of his speed and use Dr. Ramsey Rosso's blood to orchestrate her escape. Aside from leaving the real Iris, Kamilla and Singh trapped in the Mirrorverse, though, her grander plan remains TBD (due to pandemic-truncated season).

6. GRAVEDIGGER (Black Lightning Season 3)

Compelling Backstory: 10
Fearsome Appearance: 4
Powers/Skills: 9
Utter Ruthlessness: 9
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 7
Despicable Damage Done: 7

An OG metahuman, Tyson Sykes first fought for his country in WWII, but later led a coup that overthrew the U.S. government's troops in Markovia. Aiming to turn Markovia into a metahuman-fortified sanctuary (of sorts), he ordered the invasion of Freeland and captured many of its powered citizens — only to ultimately get stopped, for now, by great-nephew (!) Jefferson Pierce and his superheroic family/friends.

28. LEVIATHAN (Supergirl Season 5)

Compelling Backstory: 1
Fearsome Appearance: 1 as human; 8 in full CGI form
Powers/Skills: 8
Utter Ruthlessness: 5
Eeeevilness of Agenda: 4
Despicable Damage Done: 5

Despite a promising tease in the Season 4 finale, Leviathan has turned out to be a dud of a "Big Bad," ultimately delivering one of the show's most convoluted villain arcs yet. (And that's saying a lot.) From ancient deities to civilian assassins to VR mind control, the organization seems to be throwing everything against the wall — and very little of it sticks.