Arrowverse
Due to many twists regarding the villains of each season, Unmarked spoilers abound. open/close all folders
Arrow
Since Arrow runs two storylines simultaneously (one in the present, the other flashbacks to Oliver's time on the island and elsewhere), it naturally has two Big Bads per season (until Season Six, which drops this format, and picks it up again with the Flash Forwards in Season Seven):
- Season 1: Malcolm Merlyn/The Dark Archer, who wants to avenge his wife by eradicating the crime-ridden section of Starling City known as The Glades. He's also responsible for getting Oliver shipwrecked (and Robert Queen, who survived the initial sinking, killing himself to ensure Oliver's survival).
- Meanwhile, the past has Edward Fyers who plans to shoot a plane out of the sky to destabilize China's economy (until it turns out that he's working for a mystery woman, revealed in Season Three to be Amanda Waller, who wanted to assassinate China White).
- Season 2: Slade Wilson/Deathstroke, The Man Behind the Man to initial-seeming villain Sebastian "Brother" Blood. Slade wants to enact a Roaring Rampage of Revenge on Oliver for the events of this season's flashbacks, intending to take away his wealth, his loved ones, and eventually his city using a Mirakuru army.
- The past has Dr. Anthony Ivo, seeking to gain the Mirakuru serum by any means necessary, and puts Oliver through a Sadistic Choice that gets Shado killed. This incident is the catalyst for Slade's Face–Heel Turn, where he usurps Ivo's resources and begins to form his revenge plan, making him the overall Big Bad of the whole season.
- Season 3: Duties are initially split between Malcolm Merlyn and Ra's Al-Ghul. Malcolm drugs Thea into killing Sara in order to get Oliver to protect him and his daughter from the League, while Ra's initially tries to avenge Sara but soon decides to make Oliver into his heir when he takes the fall for Thea and narrowly survives their Trial by Combat. Ra's quickly takes over the Big Bad role completely, Oliver ultimately allying with Malcolm against Ra's as the Demon's Head tries to mold him and eliminate the connections to his past life.
- The flashbacks set in Hong Kong also split duties, this time between Amanda Waller and China White, the former giving Oliver and the Yamashiro family (Maseo and Tatsu/Katana) orders to go after the latter in her attempts to get a powerful bioweapon. Both end up eclipsed by General Shrieve, who seeks to use said bioweapon to devastate China.
- Season 4: Damien Darhk, a founding member of a rival organization to the League of Assassins known as H.I.V.E., who wants to kill almost all human life and restart civilization with his own followers. He forms a partnership with Malcolm Merlyn while Anarky becomes a secondary threat, harassing both Team Arrow (especially Thea) and H.I.V.E., who rejected him and his methods.
- Season 5: The mysterious serial killer known as Prometheus a.k.a. Adrian Chase, a.k.a. Simon Morrison. He's The Heavy in a Big Bad Duumvirate with Talia al Ghul, both working to avenge their fathers whom Oliver killed. Chase enacts psychological torture on Oliver, intending to make him admit he's just a cold-blooded murderer, culminating in kidnapping his friends and family on Lian Yu with a Sadistic Choice of Chase either killing Oliver's son or being killed himself (which would set off a Dead Man's Switch that would blow up the island). Crime lord Tobias Church acts as a Disc-One Final Boss for the first five episodes, until Prometheus kills him for going after Green Arrow too many times.
- In the past, the villain is Konstantin Kovar, a corrupt member of the Russian government, who's in a Big Bad Duumvirate with Pakhan Ishmael Gregor and Malcolm Merlyn.
- Season 6: Ricardo "The Dragon" Diaz is a crime lord who tricks Cayden James into believing Oliver killed his son, forming a Legion of Doom for revenge. The collateral damage caused by James' Roaring Rampage of Revenge enables Diaz to install corrupt officials on his payroll in key city government positions, and he kills him halfway through once he's outlived his usefulness.
- Season 7: Emiko Adachi is the new Green Arrow and the leader of the Ninth Circle, who wants to destroy Oliver's life in petty revenge for their father Robert abandoning her and her mother. She was recruited into the Ninth Circle by (and eventually surpassed) Dante, a terrorist backer who provided the Longbow Hunters to Diaz for the first half of the season. Diaz is eventually captured and, after making trouble for a few episodes, burned alive by Emiko; while Dante is killed after Emiko realizes he was the one who killed her mother.
- In the Flash Forward scenes twenty years into a Bad Future, Rene of all people is initially presented as this, as the cold Mayor of the now independent Glades who had a falling out with his friends and outlawed vigilantes — then it turns out that he is under the thumb of a powerful business partner named Kevin Dale, who plans on destroying all the rest of Star City and eliminating vigilantes worldwide.
- Season 8:
- With the stakes higher than ever, none other than the Anti-Monitor himself serves as the unseen, but thoroughly felt threat of the season, as the Monitor sends Oliver and his friends on a quest to prepare for the destruction of the multiverse in Crisis on Infinite Earths.
- Since the Anti-Monitor only appears during the crossover (episode eight of ten), the season proper features Oliver worrying about and scheming against the Ambiguously Evil Monitor — with good reason, as Mar Novu was the Greater-Scope Villain to the League of Assassins.
- The future has J.J. Diggle, the leader of the Deathstroke gang, who causes trouble for Mia and her friends, in particular killing Zoey. However, this storyline is truncated when Mia's team is brought back in time by the Monitor to aid in Oliver's quest. The last two Post-Crisis episodes don't have a central antagonist, being respectively a Poorly Disguised Pilot for a Mia-centric successor series and the Grand Finale.
The Flash
- Season 1: The Reverse-Flash, a.k.a. Eobard Thawne, having stolen the name and DNA of Harrison Wells, with Grodd lurking in the shadows as The Dragon and Leonard Snart/Captain Cold as a secondary threat. Thawne murdered Barry's mother Nora after failing to kill Barry as a child, and orchestrated the Mass Empowering Event that gave Barry his powers so he can use him to return to his own time.
- Season 2: Zoom, real name Hunter Zolomon (and pretending to be Jay Garrick), who leads an army of evil metahumans from Earth-2 with the goal of eliminating all other speedsters. After receiving a cure for the drug that increased his powers but was also killing him, he decides to destroy the rest of the multiverse and rule over Earth-1.
- Season 3: Savitar, who is really a future time remnant of Barry pretending to be the mythical God of Speed, with Julian Albert Desmond unwittingly serving him as Dr. Alchemy. Savitar's plan, after he escapes from his prison in the Speed Force, is to murder Iris in order to set up a Stable Time Loop that ensures his eventual creation. Killer Frost, Caitlin's Superpowered Evil Side, replaces Alchemy as The Dragon in the second half of the season.
- Season 4: Clifford DeVoe, a.k.a. The Thinker, who seeks to assimilate all of the metahumans he created in the season premiere and use their powers to Take Over the World, faking his own death to get Barry framed for murder. His wife Marlize, a.k.a. The Mechanic, works as The Dragon, though she later turns against him due to his growing insanity and lust for power. Amunet Black also causes a little trouble here and there for the heroes throughout the season, though she utterly pales in comparison to DeVoe and later even helps the team against him.
- Season 5: Initially Orlin Dwyer, a.k.a. Cicada, a No-Nonsense Nemesis Vigilante Man and Serial Killer of metahumans, because of their actions resulting in the death of his sister and his niece going into a coma. In the later half of the season, Team Flash talk him into a Heel–Face Turn, only for a Future Badass version of Dwyer's niece Grace Gibbons, who has become Cicada II, to arrive in the present and kill him. Eobard Thawne is also revealed to be manipulating Barry's time-travelling daughter, Nora, from his imprisonment in the future. The final episodes of the season reveal that Thawne's goal was to alter the timeline enough so that Cicada was finally defeated, ensuring his escape from prison and securing his place as the true mastermind and Final Boss of the season.
- Season 6:
- Blood and Truth: Ramsey Rosso, a.k.a. Bloodwork, whose out-of-control Mortality Phobia drives him to kill people so as to slow down his cancer, his victims being turned into zombies under his control (which he views as giving them immortality). Black Hole serves as a background threat.
- Reflections and Lies: Eva McCulloch, the Mirror Monarch, who wants to escape the Mirror Dimension she's trapped in and get revenge on her husband Joseph Carver (the leader of Black Hole) for abandoning her. She traps Iris West-Allen in the Mirror Dimension and replaces her with an impostor, before escaping, killing Carver, and usurping leadership of Black Hole. Due to the pandemic causing the season to end prematurely, Eva continues to serve as the main antagonist for the first three episodes of season 7, attempting to replace everyone with duplicates after realizing she herself is a mirror clone, as well as being behind the actions of Mirror Master from season 3.
- Season 7:
- God Complex: The Forces (Strength, Sage and Still) inadvertently created after defeating Eva are a Big Bad Ensemble that the heroes must stop, but eventually the Speed Force (taking the form of the late Nora Allen) proves to be the most dangerous of them all in her insane desire to murder her "siblings". Team Flash has to team up with the other Forces to stop her, as well as prevent a "force storm" created by their presence.
- The Godspeed Imperative: August Heart, a.k.a. Godspeed, a speedster from the future who is the Arch-Enemy to one of Barry's children (Nora in the pre-Crisis timeline, Bart in the post-Crisis timeline). Having sent several drone copies of himself to the present in Season 6 to test Barry, many more now arrive while fighting each other, tearing the city apart in the process. This turns out to be a plan to force Barry's hand into giving Godspeed organic speed (as opposed to the artificial variety he's using), so that he can make himself a god, a gambit that forces the heroes to recruit Eobard Thawne; he only accepts the Enemy Mine because he wouldn't let anyone else kill the Flash.
- Season 8:
- Armageddon: A Big Bad Ensemble between Despero, an alien refugee who claims he has to kill Barry to prevent a Bad Future, and Eobard Thawne, having finally found the means to bend reality so he can take over Barry's life and place in history. Once Barry undoes what Eobard did and realizes he was likely behind the Armageddon instead, he has to protect Eobard from Despero.
- Death Revisited: Deathstorm, an entity who targets people who are grieving by incinerating them, his goal being to target Caitlin and force her to marry him.
- It's All Negative: The Negative Forces, the Evil Counterparts of the Strength, Sage and Still Forces. Throughout the earlier story arcs, they infected Iris with a "time sickness" to weaken their Positive counterparts by proxy, and then manipulate Barry into aiding them in a scheme to restore Thawne's connection to the Negative Speed Force so they can then make him an avatar of all four Negative Forces and permanently disrupt the balance of the universe.
- Season 9:
- Rogue War: Red Death, an Evil Doppelgänger of Ryan Wilder from a timeline where she was enemies with Flash, seeks to force the original Flash to power a Cosmic Treadmill for her to return to her timeline. When he ends up destroying it in a fight with her, she decides to Take Over the City and turn it into a Police State (as a precursor to the rest of the world) in order to wipe out all crime at the cost of freedom.
- A New World: Cobalt Blue, a resurrected Eddie Thawne who becomes corrupted to become the new host of the Negative Speed Force, is the cause behind singularities that send Barry into the future shortly after Barry time traveled to become the future version of himself he saw as a child.
Legends of Tomorrow
- Season 1: The Legends are brought together to prevent Vandal Savage from conquering the world in the future, though they also face a secondary threat from the Time Master Council, which seek to stop them from changing history. The Time Masters turn out to have been working with Savage the whole time, but are wiped out near the end of the season, leaving him as the Final Boss.
- Season 2: The Legion of Doom, composed of Eobard Thawne/Reverse-Flash, Malcolm Merlyn/Dark Archer, Damien Darhk, and eventually Leonard Snart/Captain Cold, all working to gather the Spear of Destiny so that they can rewrite reality to suit their needs. However, while the Legion is technically a Big Bad Duumvirate Thawne is clearly the dominant threat, and makes it clear that he has no equal and no respect for his fellow villains whatsoever.
- Season 3: The mysterious Mallus, a demon imprisoned within time itself by Amaya's ancestors. In order to escape his prison he resurrects deceased villains (notably Damien Darhk and Kuasa) and recruits Damien's daughter, Nora, to serve him by creating anachronisms throughout time that weaken his cage.
- Season 4: The demon Neron chasing after the Legends for John Constantine's soul. As part of a plan to overthrow the rulers of Hell, he positioned himself in the Department of Defense to use the magical creatures the Legends are hunting as a means to strike terror into the hearts of humans, tricking them into signing away their souls. Neron also wants to awaken his mysterious partner and lover Tabitha...the Fairy Godmother.
- Season 5: Two of the Fates, Lachesis and Atropos, are looking for the Loom of Fate in order to eliminate The Evils of Free Will. In the first half of the season they use Astra Logue as their Unwitting Pawn in order to retrieve the Loom's pieces, Astra trying to take advantage of the Evil Power Vacuum in Hell after Neron's destruction by releasing the souls of infamous historical figures ("Encores") to wreak havoc through time.
- Season 6: Bishop, a scientist from the future who abducts Sara and other humans and aliens from across time in order to create a new, more powerful human race of his own design. While he originally plans to do this in a Bad Future where humanity's gone extinct on its own, after the Legends blow up his lab he decides to enact a plan to enable an Alien Invasion in the early 20th century to wipe the slate clean sooner and start from there.
- Season 7: Rogue Gideon, a copy of the Legends' AI reset to her factory settings by a younger version of Bishop who mistakenly believed the Legends to be evil, sets out to destroy the Legends in order to undo the damage they're perceived as doing to the timeline. She destroys their Waverider and starts hunting them across time in their efforts to get back to the present, unleashing robot duplicates of historical figures (ultimately including of the Legends themselves).
Supergirl
- Season 1: Initially Kara's aunt, General Astra, as the leader of the escaped Kryptonian criminals that cause most of the trouble throughout the season. However, after her death, her husband Non assumes control of their forces and the progression of their Evil Plan, teaming up with Indigo to brainwash most of Earth's inhabitants. Maxwell Lord also serves as a secondary threat throughout the season, though eventually pulls a Hazy-Feel Turn and forms an Enemy Mine against Non.
- Season 2: Initially Lillian Luthor, the leader of Cadmus and mother of Lex Luthor, seeking to use a Kryptonian virus to wipe out all aliens on Earth. Lillian is overshadowed by and has to form an Enemy Mine against Queen Rhea of Daxam, who at first seeks to simply bring her son Mon-El home to rebuild their empire. When he refuses, however, she orchestrates an Alien Invasion of Earth.
- Season 3: Samantha Arias/Reign, leader of the three Worldkillers — though everyone, even herself, is initially unaware of it — with the mysterious Kryptonian cult who created them serving as the Greater Scope Villains (their leader Selena comes to Earth in the final episodes, though Reign is still the greatest threat). Morgan Edge serves as a Big Bad Wannabe keeping Kara and her friends busy until halfway through the season.
- Season 4: Benjamin Lockwood a.k.a. Agent Liberty, who heads an anti-alien movement known as the Children of Liberty. However, he's unwittingly just The Heavy for Lex Luthor, who set up Lockwood and the Kaznian invasion led by the Red Daughter clone of Supergirl in order to get Villain with Good Publicity status, gaining control of a powerful superlaser so he can — what else — destroy Superman. Manchester Black briefly serves as a major threat, wanting revenge on Lockwood after he killed his girlfriend Fiona and forming the Elite, clashing with both the Children of Liberty and the heroes (J'onn in particular) due to his ruthlessness.
- Season 5: Initially a Big Bad Ensemble between Lena Luthor, who plans on mass-brainwashing the entire population of Earth into a peaceful state, and Leviathan, an Ancient Conspiracy of aliens which have manipulated events on Earth for millennia, with Rama Khan initially as The Heavy and the Anointed One as the Greater-Scope Villain. After Crisis the recently resurrected Lex Luthor, using his new Villain with Good Publicity status, begins manipulating both Lena and Leviathan's new representative Gamemnae. The former pulls a Heel Realization while the latter is tricked into letting Lex into Leviathan, before putting into motion her own plan to get humanity addicted to specialized VR and killing them. Due to the pandemic causing season five to end prematurely, the season six premiere features Lex having stolen the powers and immortality of Leviathan, intending to brainwash everyone into loving him and destroying all those he couldn't affect as the next Anti-Monitor.
- Season 6: Nyxlygsptlnz, a fifth dimensional imp trapped in the Phantom Zone by her father, who Supergirl encounters after she herself is banished there by Lex Luthor in the season premiere, and secretly follows her out of the Phantom Zone later in the season. Once free, she seeks out seven magical stones to make herself strong enough to confront her father, capturing Mxyzptlk to do so. During the final episodes, Lex (who had disappeared following winning a trial for his crimes early in the season) returns and allies with Nyxly, whom he fell in love with while visiting the future.
Black Lightning
- Season 1: Tobias Whale is the leader of The 100, and Jefferson's Arch-Enemy for killing his father. However, he's just The Heavy for Lady Eve (whom he later disposes of) and the corrupt A.S.A. government organization led by Martin Proctor, who are conducting a rerun of the twisted experiments that gave Jefferson his powers and left countless black teenagers dead or as unstable metahumans.
- Season 2: Tobias Whale serves as the main villain for the entirety of Season 2, solidifying his power thanks to the secrets within Proctor's briefcase and trying to raise an army of metahumans, all the while avoiding every legal obstacle thrown in his way and seeming unstoppable up to the very end. For all of two episodes, there is also the Looker, a racist metahuman who mentally enslaves her minions and tries to rule over a secluded part of Freeland.
- Season 3: Duties are split between Markovia, an invading enemy state that seeks to eliminate all potential metahuman threats, and A.S.A. Agent Percy Odell, who puts Freeland under lockdown and uses draconic methods that make him just as much of a threat to the Pierce family and the entire city as the invaders. The initial representative of Markovia, Colonel Yuri Mosin, ends up losing his spot to Tyson Sykes (codename Gravedigger), a former U.S. soldier and the first metahuman, who defected to Markovia in a Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal. Gravedigger plans on forcefully extracting every metahuman from American soil to build an independent nation, with Odell deciding to nuke the city to get rid of both him and the Pierce family.
- Season 4: A Big Bad Ensemble between Tobias, using his new Villain with Good Publicity status to screw with Jefferson; Lala, who has taken over the 100 in the previous season and starts going after Tobias for revenge; and the Back from the Dead Lady Eve's Kobra Cartel, led by her right-hand Destiny in her absence. Tobias Whale takes over by the end, getting elected mayor.
Batwoman
- Season 1: Kate's long-thought dead sister, Alice, who now wants to take revenge on her father for giving up on finding her. After he escapes from jail she forms a Big Bad Duumvirate with Mouse, her Only Friend and the son of the man who kidnapped her, and after the two are sent to Arkham she finds The Dragon in the form of Tommy Elliot/Hush.
- Season 2: A Big Bad Ensemble between Safiyah Sohail and Black Mask. The former is the ruler of the island of Coryana that Alice trained on after escaping August Cartwright, who targets Alice after she releases the Desert Rose poison to the world. The latter is the leader of the False Face Society crime organization, who is responsible for faking Kate's death and spreading a new drug known as Snake Bite. The back end of the season eventually reveals that in fact, they're actually working together for the shared goal of destroying the Kane family and Gotham.
- Season 3: A Big Bad Ensemble between Marquis Jet, Ryan's half-brother who was left sociopathic by an encounter with the Joker as a child, becoming the second Joker, and Mary Hamilton, who is infected by one of Poison Ivy's plants and develops a villainous Split Personality that eventually takes over completely as a second Poison Ivy.
Superman & Lois
- Season 1: At first there appears to be a Big Bad Ensemble between John Henry Irons/The Stranger, a resident of an alternate world that was conquered by Superman, and Morgan Edge, a Corrupt Corporate Executive putting a stranglehold on the Daily Planet and buying up land in Smallville so he can mine X-Kryptonite he can use to raise an army. Edge is later revealed to be actually Superman's previously unmentioned half-brother Tal-Rho and plans to restore the Kryptonians on Earth by using X-Kryptonite to bind Kryptonians to human host bodies, even going as far as to force Superman to submit to him to save his family. However, John has a Heel Realization and accepts this world's Superman actually is the hero he's believed to be, leaving Tal-Rho as The Heavy of the season (especially since the version of him from said alternate world was the one that corrupted that world's Superman); when his initial plan fails, he merges with the Eradicator and implants his father Zeta-Rho, the true Big Bad of the season who has been directing his son's actions, inside Superman's son Jordan, attempting to bring back Krypton inside the mines under Smallville.
- Season 2: Ally Allston, the leader of the Inverse Society cult, whose attempts to merge with her Bizarro Universe counterpart (who has all but outright conquered her world) causes that universe's version of Superman to travel to Earth-Prime in an attempt to stop their plans. His inability to communicate and subsequent rampage drives a wedge between Superman and General Mitch Anderson, causing Anderson to turn on Superman and join Ally. This enables her to merge with her counterpart, at which point they plan to completely merge the two universes in order to do the same to everyone else, whether they want it or not.
Constantine
- In the sole season of the series, Manny is revealed to be behind the Rising Darkness, as the Brujería answer to him. John never finds out about this (on-screen).
Vixen
- Season 1: Mari's own sister Kuasa, who feels the Spirit Totem rightfully belongs to her.
- Season 2: Benatu Eshu, the Zambesi warlord who is behind the destruction of Mari's village and her father's murderer. He wants to collect all the magical totems for himself, gaining control of the Fire Totem and burning down a large portion of Detroit, all just to draw out Mari. He also kills Kuasa, who allied with her sister to stop the madman.
Freedom Fighters: The Ray
- Season 1: Dark Arrow and Overgirl serve as a Big Bad Duumvirate, being the biggest threat to the Freedom Fighters of Earth-X.
- Season 2: Dark Arrow and Overgirl continue to be the biggest and most consistent threat, but during the last few moments of the final episode it's revealed that (at this point) they answer to the unseen "Chancellor", who seems to have been Oliver's predecessor as the leader of the New Reichsmen.
Stargirl
- Season 1: Jordan Mahkent a.k.a. Icicle, the leader of the Injustice Society, a group of Well Intentioned Extremists who intend to create a better world by brainwashing millions of people into following their views.
- Season 2: Eclipso, who initially works with Shiv in setting up Injustice Unlimited, before escaping to start wreaking havoc for the Justice Society to stop. This is eventually revealed to be part of a plot to corrupt Courtney enough that he can possess her and add the light she controls via the Cosmic Staff to his own powers, in order to become a god and Take Over the World.
Crossovers
- Flash vs. Arrow begins with Roy G. Bivolo going on a crime spree, turning Barry against Oliver with his Hate Plague abilities and causing problems for Barry in the next couple episodes of The Flash. He gets beaten and confined halfway through the crossover, leading to Barry and Oliver teaming up to capture Captain Boomerang.
- Heroes Join Forces: Vandal Savage, who hunts down Carter Hall and Kendra Saunders while simultaneously threatening all of Star City and Central City; this serves as the lead-in to Legends Season One, where he retains the Big Bad position.
- Invasion!: The Dominators, an alien race who attack Earth in an effort to purge all metahumans, requiring Barry to gather Team Arrow, the Legends and Supergirl to oppose them.
- Crisis on Earth-X: Oliver Queen's Evil Doppelgänger, a.k.a. Dark Arrow, is the Führer of the Nazi regime and seems to have the most authority among the New Reichsmen. With his wife Overgirl and Eobard Thawne, now known as Dark Flash, as his Co-Dragons, Dark Arrow leads the regime to Earth-1 to steal Supergirl's heart in order to save the ailing Overgirl's life, as well as to conquer that Earth.
- Elseworlds: The Monitor is responsible for kickstarting the plot by bringing the Book of Destiny to Earth-1, but as arrogant and cruel as he may be, he's trying to prepare the heroes for the coming of a far worse threat. All actively villainous actions during this crossover are carried out by the Monitor's chosen recipient of the book, Dr. John Deegan (known in the comics as Doctor Destiny) who screws around with reality to try and make himself the hero and de facto ruler of the world.
- Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Anti-Monitor, the Monitor's Evil Twin, who is seeking to destroy The Multiverse and replace it with an anti-matter universe that he'll rule over. Elseworlds only happened because the Monitor was trying to find heroes strong enough to defeat him.
