What’s an intelligent supervillain? It’s definitely not one who simply enjoys beating everyone around and destroying buildings. It takes more than that. A smart supervillain one who gives the heroes and the whole world a hard time. Smart supervillains always come up with creative, well thought out plans that make superheroes look like fools (at least for a little while). After all, it’s never fun to see the hero saving the world so easily.
Luckily, the Arrowverse has about a dozen of brainy villains that make Aristotle, Albert Einstein, and Marilyn Vos Savant look like dummies. Okay, there’s a little exaggeration there but they really are smart. However, we’ll only focus on the ten most outstanding ones. Everything about these villains exudes intelligence, from the things they say to the moves they make. Almost everything they do may seem evil but there’s always a major goal attached to it.
Tobias Whale
It was not until recently that Black Lightning was confirmed as part of the Arrowverse. Tobias Whale, the archenemy of Jefferson Pierce is, both smart and brutal. These two factors have made him impossible to defeat. He also dishes out golden, mockery-rich quotes on the regular like bullets out of a Kalashnikov rifle. At one point when Black Lightning is trying to defeat him with his powers and its not working, Tobias says, “You are going to have to fight me like a man, not a little lightning bug.” Ouch!
Tobias is the leader of The 100—a gang that terrorizes residents in the small town of Freeland. He also happens to be a former politician who was exposed for being corrupt by Black Lightning’s journalist father Aaron Pierce. He ended killing Aaron by stuffing his revealing articles down his throat. A young Jefferson Pierce (Black Lightning) saw the whole incident and has grown to despise Tobias. In as much as he’d like to exert revenge, he just can’t because Tobias always outsmarts him.
Malcolm Merlyn (Dark Archer)
Despite receiving special training from the League of Assassins, Oliver Queen’s nemesis Malcolm Merlyn is a poor fighter. Oliver defeated him too many times. However, his real strength lies in his brains. Every time we felt his time was up, he managed to elude death.
In the first season, he faked his death when it appeared that Oliver had killed him. He also managed to brainwash Oliver’s sister Thea Queen and convinced her to work with him. And as if that’s enough, he made Oliver kill the League of Assassins head honcho to save his sister so that he could become the new Ra’s al Ghul. A classic case of using your enemies for your own benefit.
Damien Darhk
Darhk is the leader of the terrorist organization known as H.I.V.E (Hierarchy of International Vengeance and Extermination). H.I.V.E. agents are known as “the Ghosts” because Darhh has trained them to take their own lives when captured instead of ratting out other members.
However, Darhk is more like the supervillain Stromberg in the James Bond movie The Spy Who Loved Me. He wants to wipe out the earth’s population using a nuclear holocaust while. How will he survive? By protecting himself and his agents in an underground facility called the Ark. Okay, Noah Darhk. By doing this, he figures he’ll be able to rule the humans who survive the Holocaust. Sadly for him, Green Arrow kills him before he can achieve his dream.
Hunter Zolomon (Zoom)
After watching his father brutally murder his mother as a child, Hunter became a psychotic serial killer and eventually got sent to a mental asylum. As he was being electrocuted for his crimes, the S.T.A.R. Labs particle accelerator malfunctioned and exploded, releasing dark matter that gave him super-speed. He thus decided to call himself Zoom.
At some point, after capturing Earth-3’s Flash, Zoom pretended to be the Earth-2’s Flash to give people hope. And to make it believable, he used past copies of himself to ensure Flash and Zoom were seen in different locations at the same time. He also sent multiple metahumans to kill Barry Allen. As if that wasn’t intelligent enough, he tried to destroy every single earth in the Multiverse except Earth-1 so that he could rule it. Go slow with the ambition Hunter!
Prometheus (Adrian Chase)
In Earth-1, Adrian Chase is a District Attorney in public and Prometheus in secret. Adrian uses his position as District Attorney to destroy Oliver’s reputation and his strengths as a supervillain to try and fight Oliver. Adrian is bitter because he believes that Oliver killed his father.
Examples of his intelligent decisions include planting evidence on Quentin Lance to frame him for his own violent murders, convincing Team Arrow member Evelyn Sharp to betray her colleagues and manipulating Oliver Queen into killing a police detective by dressing the detective in his Prometheus attire.
Deathstroke (Slade Wilson)
Manu Bennet’s Portrayal of Deathstroke in the second season of Arrow is widely considered one of the best performances by an actor in a supervillain role. Manu who also starred as the gladiator Crixus in Spartacus took the role and completely owned it.
No other villain has managed to give Oliver Queen a hard time like Slade Wilson. Being both tough and bright, Deathstroke took Oliver’s company and flashed him to the streets. He also managed to use Queen Consolidated’s resources to further his personal goals.
Vandal Savage
Vandal Savage is said to have served as a mentor to most of history’s greatest conquerors for over 4000 years. Alexander The Great? Genghis Khan? He helped them all. He is also said to have amassed a vast wealth of knowledge in nearly all subjects.
Vandal was the antagonist of Legends Of Tomorrow and “Heroes Join Forces” the second-ever Arrowverse crossover event between The Flash and Arrow. He managed to destroy both Star City and Central City. However, Flash survived and time-traveled backward to warn Green Arrow about the impending doom. When the destructive events happening again, the heroes finally manage to defeat him.
Reverse Flash (Eobard Thawne)
Eobard Thawne is Barry Allen’s archenemy from the future. He was once a scientist responsible for the accident that made Barry develop his powers. The fact that he’s a former scientist already qualifies him to rank high up in the intelligence charts of Arrowverse villains.
When Eobard time-traveled and learned that he’d be Barry’s enemy in the future, he developed a deep hatred for the red speedster. He thus decided to create his own unique version of the Speed Force. As a result, he became immune to changes in time.
Lex Luthor
Throughout the history of DC Comics, Lex Luthor has always been smart. And in the Arrowverse, he maintains his streak of deviousness. Most recently in the ‘Crisis On Infinite Earths’ crossover events, The Monitor brought him to help solve the crisis but instead, he stole The Book Of Destiny and used it to traverse the multiverse to kill all the existing supermen.
He’s also been a master of betrayal. In the fourth season of Supergirl, Luthor created a copy of Kara known as Red Daughter. After the Red Daughter thought she had killed Supergirl, Lex disowned her so that he could be seen as the new hero. Despite the fact that his plans end up getting foiled, he is never reluctant to come up with newer, interesting ones.
Clifford DeVoe (The Thinker)
What if your professor was a supervillain? Clifford DeVoe isn’t called The Thinker for no reason. Wanting to influence how others think as well as to increase his intelligence, he developed ‘The Thinking Cap’ together with his wife Marlize.
Despite his experiment being a massive success, it made him develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. To counter that, he and Marlize’ created a hoverchair to delay the progress of his disease. This, in turn, caused him to morph into an indestructible cyborg. As if that’s not enough, Clifford managed to kill his former self off metaphysically with the aim of taking over the Flash’s body so that he would have the power of omniscience. Of course, he didn’t succeed but you have to give him credit for creativity.
