The 7 best (and 6 worst) Arrowverse villains

The Arrowverse has presented us with plenty of villains over the years, but which of its big bads stole the show and which ones fell a little short?

Arrow -- "Deathstroke Returns" -- Image AR605b_0253b.jpg -- Pictured: Manu Bennett as Slade Wilson/Deathstroke -- Photo: Cate Cameron/The CW -- © 2017 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Arrow -- "Deathstroke Returns" -- Image AR605b_0253b.jpg -- Pictured: Manu Bennett as Slade Wilson/Deathstroke -- Photo: Cate Cameron/The CW -- © 2017 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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Arrowverse, Vandal Savage
DC’s Legends of Tomorrow –“Legendary”– Image LGN116b_0384b.jpg Pictured: Casper Crump as Vandal Savage — Photo: Dean Buscher/The CW — © 2016 The CW Network, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Vandal Savage

Casper Crump looked amazing as Vandal Savage. It was really as if the DC Comics villain had stepped right off the pages onto the screen, and Crump played him with such a dastardly flare. The problem was that the material wasn’t giving him much beyond surface level villainy, and that made the character a pretty lacklustre threat for the first season of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.

Savage was initially introduced as the villain of the second-annual Arrowverse crossover when The Flash and Green Arrow had to team up to stop him. He served his purpose well and was eventually defeated at the hands of both heroes. But the crossover was essentially a backdoor pilot for Legends and thus he was eventually resurrected to serve as its main villain.

In all honesty, he was a fine villain, and lived up to his Arrowverse reputation as an immortal tyrant who needed all the might of the Legends to stop him at three different points in the timeline, but he just wasn’t all that interesting and rarely had anything to offer outside of typical villain mustache-twirling.

In short bursts, he was perfect, but this wasn’t a character that needed to be a season-long big bad.

Verdict: WORST