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The Super Trope to Filler Villain and Starter Villain, an Arc Villain serves as the Big Bad for one Story Arc, having an Evil Plan, The Dragon, and Mooks with which to threaten Our Heroes. After that, though, he's killed off, sent into a Humiliation Conga, or makes a Heel Face Turn, and Our Heroes go on to unrelated adventures and the next arc.
There's no Man Behind the Man for the Arc Villain and no greater threat inspiring him, and he's certainly not something so minor as a Monster of the Week. But he isn't really the single Big Bad of the series, either, since his defeat doesn't mark the end of the plot - or even the end of the hero's character arc. He isn't a member of a Big Bad Ensemble, because he's definitively removed from play after the arc (though if two or more of these are present in one arc, then of course they form their own Big Bad Ensemble). Not to be confused with the Disc One Final Boss, who is a Red Herring for the Big Bad.
Isn't the same as the situation where a character is intended as the ultimate Big Bad, but a Post Script Season (or sequel) starts an entire new story. In fact, Arc Villains are often used as middle rungs on the Sorting Algorithm of Evil.
Compare Big Bad Wannabe. Contrast Disc One Final Boss and Interim Villain.
Examples
Anime and Manga
- Bleach:
- Most villains in Dragon Ball and Dragon Ball Z, most notably Pilaf, Commander Red and Garlic Jr.
- Gato as well as Zabusa in Naruto.
- One Piece is the Trope Codifier for anime and manga, featuring a new Arc Villain for almost every arc. The examples that best fit this trope are Eneru and Arlong, though both left their respective marks on the Straw Hats (Haki for Eneru; Jones for Arlong).
- Soul Eater has Arachne in the Arachnophobia arc and Noah/The Tables of Contents in the Book of Eibon Arc.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: Bakura is in seasons 1, 2 and 5 (brief cameo in 3 and Call Back in 4). He is in a Big Bad Ensemble ot Big Bad Duumvirate in the first two, and serves as The Dragon or rather, a Projected Avatar for the Big Bad of 5, who was the Bigger Bad of the entire series.
- Season 1 (Duelist Kingdom): Maximillian Pegasus
- Season 1 (Virtual World): The Big Five
- Season 2: Malik Ishtar -> Dark Malik.
- Season 3: Dark Malik, though Gozaburo Kaiba sidetracks his plot for a bit.
- Season 4: Dartz
- Season 5: Zorc Necrophades
- The Pokemon anime makes Colress and Ghetsis of Team Plasma the villains of the Episode N arc. Less straightforward examples make Team Magma, Aqua, and Galactic these.
- Sailor Moon in the anime:
- Series 1: The Dark Kingdom
- Sailor Moon R: Filler Arc: Ali and En, the Maikaiju aliens
- Sailor Moon R: The Black Moon Arc: The Black Moon Clan
- Sailor Moon S: The Death Busters
- Sailor Moon Super S: The Dead Moon Circus, though Nehellenia bled into the first filler arc of Sailor Stars
- Sailor Moon Sailor Stars: Shadow Galactica
- The manga technically has a similar progression, though the arcs referred to each other and the final story arc reveals that each arc's Big Bad is in reality a reincarnation of the final enemy in the series.
- Fairy Tail has Bora the Prominence, Duke Everlue, Lyon Vastia, Master Jose, Jellal Fernandes, Laxus Dreyar, Brain, and Faust. The only recurring villains are Ultear and Master Hades, the latter of which is less of a true Big Bad than a Bigger Bad until the arc where he's the primary threat.
Comics
Fan Fiction
- Perfection Is Overrated
- Chapter 1-4: Hitomi
- Chapter 6-7: Toki
- Chapter 8-10: Shizune
- Chapter 14-15: Sekai
- Chapter 17-19: Bachiko and Meiko, as well as Ishigami
Film
- The SPECTRE organization for the Connery and Lazenby eras of the James Bond series, with the exception of Goldfinger.
Literature
- Newsflesh:
- In Feed it was Gov. David Tate
- In Deadline it was Dr. Joseph Wynne.
- Nicodemus in The Dresden Files. He's one of the few villains unconnected with the Black Council.
- The New Jedi Order has several of these, which makes sense when one considers that the series is largely composed of linked duologies and trilogies that together tell a Myth Arc. The most prominent are Shedao Shai from the Dark Tide duology and Lord Nyax from the Enemy Lines duology.
- The Artemis Fowl series has one every second book. There's Artemis himself in the first book, Spiro in book 3, and Abbot in book 5. Opal Koboi is a recurring villain in the other books.
Live-Action TV
- Buffy the Vampire Slayer always had these (and may be the Trope Codifier, at least for live-action western TV shows.)
- The Master in Season 1.
- Angelus in Season 2.
- The Mayor in Season 3.
- Adam in Season 4.
- Glory in Season 5.
- The Trio and Willow and LIFE itself in Season 6.
- The First Evil in Season 7.
- Almost every season of Dexter has involved some kind of Arc Villain; the Ice Truck Killer in the first season and the Trinity Killer in the fourth season are the two that fit this trope the best.
- Supernatural. Azazel for seasons 1 and 2, Lilith for seasons 3 and 4, Lucifer for season 5 and either Crowley, Raphael or Eve for season 6, which was pretty unclear.
- Season 6 was a Big Bad Ensemble, and only Eve hadn't appeared in previous stories. Seasons 1-5 don't count as this trope, as it was gradually revealed that Lucifer was the Big Bad all along and the others were working for him.
- The end of season 6 revealed that Crowley, Raphael and Eve were Disc One Final Bosses to Castiel.
- Nimueh from the first series of Merlin.
- NCIS has a fair few of these, although there aren't excessive numbers of them; perhaps 1 every season or two. Notable Arc Villains include Ari Haswari for seasons 1, 2 and 3, La Grenouille for season 4 and Colonel Bell for season 7.
- 24 has quite a few of these: Victor Drazen for season 1, Stephen Saunders for season 3, Habib Marwan for season 4, and Alan Wilson for season 7. The others don't technically count as seasons 2 and 5 had the Big Bad working for someone else, while seasons 6 and 8 moreso featured a Big Bad Ensemble. Season 5's Big Bad went on to also later be part of 8's ensemble.
- The Disney Zorro series was almost unique among 1950s television by using an arc-based plot format; following the defeat of Capitan Monistario halfway through the first season, a brief breather was followed by the arrival of "The Eagle", who drove most of the plot for the second half of the season. The second season reverted to a more episodic format.
Manhwa
- Loan Shark Kim Lurker from Tower Of God in the first "episode" *
that's how the different arcs in season two are called of season two.
Video Games
- In Dragon Age: Origins, Keeper Zathrian is the Arc Villain of the Nature of the Beast quest and Uldred is the Arc Villain of the Broken Circle quest, though the other major quests track back to either Loghain or the Archdemon.
- Azala in Chrono Trigger.
- While Mass Effect doesn't exactly have "Arcs" per say, it's worth noting that many of its side villains are standalone, found in single missions or 'campaigns' of missions, where a group of sidequests make up a single story. In the sequel, most of them are antagonists to a certain squadmate on a personal level, and so act as the main villain of that character's loyalty mission. Notable examples include Major Kyle, Helena Blake, and Lord Darius in the first game and Gatatog Uvenk, Weyrloc Guld, Tarak, Enyala, and Donovan Hock in the second game.
- Used fairly commonly in World Of Warcraft. Van Cleef is behind the low-level Defias arc, Naralex's Nightmare and the Crone of the Kraul are responsible for The Barrens' arcs, and following their father's (retconned out of continuity) death, the Big Bad Duumvirate of Onyxia and Nefarian are behind quite a lot of the rest of the plot.
- Grubba in Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door's Chapter 3. He's the only Chapter Boss never to come in contact with one of the major villains, if you count the original purpose of Smorg as canon.
- Kid Icarus Uprising, with its gameplay divided into chapters, has several Arc Villains. Medusa for Chapters 1-9, Viridi for Chapters 11-14, The Aurum for Chapters 15-17, The Chaos Kin for Chapters 18-21, and Hades for Chapters 10, 22-25, and while he serves as the overriding villain for the whole game, he doesn't become a direct threat until those chapters.
Webcomics
Web Original
- In Atop The Fourth Wall, there usually is one major villain per story arc:
- Mechakara in "His Heart is Steel".
- Dr. Linksano in "The Other Insano".
- Lord Vyce in "All That He Sees, He Conquers".
- The Entity in "A Piece of the World is Missing".
- Lord Vyce again in "His Blue Soul".
- The "Guns and Sorcery" story arc is where the main villain is harder to place. Holokara serves as the main antagonist for the first half of the arc, the Gunslinger is the major antagonist for most of the story and Dr. Insano just steals the show by the end of the story arc.
Western Animation
- Commander/Admiral Zhao from Avatar The Last Airbender was part of a Big Bad Ensemble with Zuko in the first season, but he was barely even mentioned following that. In the next season, the most we have is that he was the first that entered the library made by Wan Shi Tong, which led to...problems when the Five-Man Band showed up in it on the second season, but even then, Zhao himself spoke of the details in the previous season; it was a passing mention without a name by Wan Shi Tong when the Gaang inquired about it.
- Brother Blood in the Teen Titans cartoon. He's the Big Bad of the third season, given a bombastic personality, a close personal connection to one of the protagonists, and portrayed as a serious threat. After the season three finale, he's never seen or mentioned again.
- Likewise with Trigon in the fourth season. An unnamed representation of him appeared in Raven's mind in season one, and Raven briefly summed up the events of his arc in one fifth season episode, but aside from that he's never mentioned again (or seen, but that's because he's dead/banished).
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