My Top Ten Favorite Villains on Arrow

              I have to admit, I wasn’t going to watch Arrow at first. I am an avid comic book fan and I am totally into other comic TV shows such as Gotham, Powers, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. etc.., but for whatever reason I didn’t want to watch Arrow. It could have been because I had not read a lot of Green Arrow comics as I was more into Batman and I sometimes found the Green Arrow to be too similar. It could have also been that it is on a channel filled with television shows about utter nonsense that I do not ever want to watch (I am out of Chicago, USA). But, I am glad that I finally came around to watching it because after binging through 3 seasons in 2 weeks I can say that it is one of my favorite adaptations of a comic book TV series. There is a lot I like but I think the best part of the show has been its ability to bring different types of villains to fold. Some are campy, some are menacing and some are downright diabolical and I believe that this collection of rogues allows Arrow to soar above its peers.
              So many shows suffer an identity crisis after they are on for a couple years, but Arrow has been able to progress its different narratives comfortably and in unison. The show tells basically two or more stories at a time that are all intertwined with heroic as well villainous events. In each season we have seen many faces from the Arrows past show up in Starling City and we have been able to watch their stories evolve as the protagonist does in all these different time periods. That is pretty rare if you think about it. So far Oliver Queen has had to fight everything from a guy with his mouth sewn shut for some reason to an army of super soldiers and for the most part it has all been at the very least been entertaining because of the villains.
              Here is my list of my 10 favorite baddies and I would love to hear what all of you think as well. I am not going to say I was ever a huge Green Arrow fan growing up but I have read some, so my knowledge will be based on what I have seen on the show and the few things I have read. I will be picking up a good chunk of Green Arrow books in the near future, so if anyone has any suggestions I would love those as well.

10. Carrie Cutter / Cupid – played by Amy Gumenick

“I’m Cupid, stupid.”

               I really liked this character, even if she was campy and only in a few episodes. Cupid was a villain in the third season, and she came into the Arrow’s life after he actually saved hers during a riot. She became infatuated with him and of course, learned how to shoot a bow and arrow (with heart shaped tips no less) and started killing criminals. She also came back in a later episode as a member of the Suicide Squad and developed a new infatuation for another sharpshooter, Deadshot, after he stepped in front of a bullet for her. I loved her character because she reminded me of the old Adam West Batman era villains and in my mind; she is the 2015 version of that type of villain. She was totally ridiculous down to the puns and very fun to watch, but also deadly and totally sexy. In the comics, her backstory made her a much more interesting character as it is explained that the reason she becomes so invested in her lovers is because of some treatment that was supposed to make her immune to fear. She was also a trained agent and very deadly even before the treatment, which was briefly touched upon on the show. I hope that if she does get another chance these elements of her backstory are worked into her character because I would love to see Cupid find the right guy.

9. Digger Harkness / Captain Boomerang – played by Nick Tarabay


“...what goes around, comes around.”

             This is a character that really had to walk the line of being totally scary and too campy to take seriously. Digger Harkness is an Australian special agent with custom boomerangs that he uses to kill people for the highest bidder. He is also a former member of the Suicide Squad and in the third season he came back with a grudge against Lyla Michaels, a friend of the Arrow, and tried to kill the team along with most of the city. If I didn’t lose you at ‘custom boomerangs’, you really should see this guy in action. He uses those things not just as designed but also as slicing weapons as well as bombs and with great precision. After seeing him rip through a bunch of A.R.G.U.S. agents I sure would not want to be up against him, even with a gun in my hand. The only problem I have with the version of the character on Arrow is….why the hell did they get a Lebanese actor to play a guy from Australia?? And they didn’t change his characters backstory so he was still supposed to be from Australia, which just didn’t make much sense to me (unless I missed something). Still, I think they did a great job in bringing a difficult character to the screen and he proved to be a deadly foe for the Arrow and A.R.G.U.S.

8. Sebastian Blood / Brother Blood – played by Kevin Alejandro

“…you’ll kill for me.”

              Brother Blood is another villain that could have been ridiculous. He comes to Starling City in the second season as a secondary villain who starts off as a well-meaning city alderman with an unfortunate last name. Before long he is shown to really be on a mission to take over the city through the mayor’s office and secretly testing out a super serum on his cult-like followers in case the whole election thing doesn’t work out. I have seen Kevin Alejandro in a lot of different shows, and I bet you have too (True Blood, S.O.A., 24, Southland). While he was on Arrow I found him just as believable as a savvy politician as I did a criminal megalomaniac (I guess those things may not be that different come to think) and I believe that speaks to the talents of the actor. He brought a lot to the second season through his own transformation and we got to see some layers to his character without the benefit of much of a backstory (his dad was a bad guy). If I had any problems with the character it would be that at times he reminded me too much of the Scarecrow from Batman when he had the mask on, even if he did look more like a member of Slipknot. But all in all I found it to be a successful representation of a character by a talented actor.

7. William Tockman / Clock King - played by Robert Knepper

“Tempus fugit!”

            Once again, a villainous character gets the benefit of being played by a fantastic actor. William Tockman is a bank robber who has a case of Mrs. Freeze syndrome (also known as MacGregor's Syndrome) and also has a sister in the hospital with cystic fibrosis. He chooses to steal from his former employer so that his can give back to his sister before he bites it. He plans his crimes down to the second and even gets to kill an unruly henchman with a clock hand. Needless to say, this was a far cry from the character on the Adam West Batman series that looked like Colonel Sanders cousin with a clock fashioned on his hat and jacket. Thankfully this iteration was a security hacker with a type-A, obsessive compulsive disorder and a penchant for keeping appointments. Robert Knepper is also an actor who has been in many other shows and in most he is the creepy guy. He is known as the last big bad on Heroes but he has perhaps best known as ‘T-Bag’ from Prison Break. I thought his version of the character was equal parts creepy and believable, which isn’t easy to do with someone named William Tockman. He turned up on the Flash as well and I hope he comes back to Starling City before too long.

6. Count Vertigo – played by Seth Gabel


"I'm Count Vertigo, and I approve this high!"

             There were two versions of the character and I am only talking about the first version since I feel his was more fun to watch. While this villain did not draw much from its comic counterpart’s backstory, Count Vertigo was still a very successful enemy for Team Arrow. Count Vertigo appeared in Starling City in the first season as a drug dealer who gets a taste of his own medicine after some of his custom drug falls into the hands of Thea Queen, Oliver’s sister. He comes back in season two after escaping from prison and making a full recovery, but again he is stopped and ultimately killed by the Arrow after threating Felicity Smoak. I liked Count Vertigo because he seemed like he was one of those villains that really enjoyed what he was doing. Whether it was making money or making people go crazy, he was doing it with a smile. He was also able to amass a large group of followers and figure out the hero’s identity, which are both staples of a successful comic book villain. Unfortunately, he was killed off after picking on the wrong office hottie and won’t be seen again unless it is flashback. The new version is really just a drug dealer with black contacts and a ‘he took Liam Neeson’s daughter’ accent, which is disapointing when I think about all the cool things they could have done with the original.

5. Floyd Lawton / Deadshot – played by Michael Rowe


“I don’t miss.”

           Of all the villains listed so far, this one has the easiest street to badass-ville because he doesn't have a dumb name and he cane kill you without breaking a sweat. Floyd Lawton is a former member of the United States Armed Forces that found it hard to relate to home life and a daughter he did not seem to know. After getting thrown in prison and without options he was recruited into a shadow organization and became a hired assassin that claimed to never miss a target, which included John Diggle’s brother. At first, John and Oliver were on a mission to find and kill Deadshot but after learning that John’s brother’s death was a planned hit he was apprehended by Amanda Waller and put in the Suicide Squad, which made him teammates with some of Team Arrow. After a Suicide Squad mission gone wrong (honestly, do they ever go right?) he meets his untimely end at the hands of an exploding building. You could argue that by his actions at the end of his life that he would not be considered a villain, but I still believe that if you gave Floyd Lawton a bag of money he would put anyone down for you. Also, his ‘sacrifice’ could be seen as suicide since it did not look like he wanted to be alive too much longer given his past. Either way, Deadshot is one of the most popular characters that the Arrow has brought to the screen and they did so in a very successful manner. Floyd Lawton proved to be a complicated man whose main fault was probably that he was too good at killing people. It would have been easy to make him a one dimensional assassin but instead we got a tragic sociopath without the tools to handle a normal life, but the reason to know he was incapable of one. Putting tattoos of his victim’s names on his own chest was a little over the top for my taste, but still Deadshot was an awesome bad guy and I hope we have not seen the last of him.

4. Helena Bertinelli / Huntress - played by Jessica De Gouw


“Last time this happened, I threw you out a window.”

           Although her comic counterpart is based out of Gotham City, not Starling City, the Huntress was a great character foil for Oliver Queen as well as a deadly adversary. Every good hero needs a femme fatale in his story and The Huntress is that for the Arrow. When she came into the Arrows life she seemed to be someone that needed help but also could help Oliver figure out his own path.  At first, Oliver Queen was completely smitten with both Helena Bertinelli and the Huntress until she showed him what happens when you cross the line from vigilante to villain.  Her father was a mob boss who besides being an overall jerk killed her fiancé because he thought the guy was going to the police. Turns out it was actually Helena’s information he found which added to the daddy issues. The Arrow helped train her, gave her a costume as well as a signature weapon but soon she proved to be too unstable to trust on Team Arrow. After that she was on an unreasonable quest to kill her father and would not let anyone get in her way, and killed a lot of people who did. Ultimately she got what she wanted, even if it was not at her hands, and she now sits in jail waiting to hunt again.

3. Ra’s al Ghul – played by Mathew Nable


“You have lived your last day.”

              Another villain more commonly known as a member of Batman’s rouges gallery, (although the ‘New 52’ has tried to change that) Ra’s al Ghul was the big bad of season three and a major part of the Arrows story. Besides being the person responsible for training Malcolm Merlyn, Sarah Lance, his bad ass daughter and probably thousands of others over the course of his unnaturally long life, ‘The Demons Head’ fought Oliver Queen one-on-one and seemingly killed him before offering him his old job. By offering, I mean demanding while killing people until he found the right people to kill before the Arrow agreed to become the next Ra’s al Ghul. It took a lot to defeat Ra’s, which included fracturing the ultimate bromance between Oliver and John Diggle while also forcing Oliver to concoct a secret plan with Malcolm Merlyn. The end result gave Oliver a new outlook on life and gave Merlyn the leadership of the League of Assassins. I think the scariest part of Ra’s was how scared he obviously made Oliver. At one point it looked like Ra’s could not be stopped and it forced Oliver into some major sacrifices. In the end it forced the Arrow to lie to everyone around him (more than usual) and team up with one of his greatest foes to date to get his rematch in a winner-take-all duel where he was able to finally slay 'the Demons Head'. Whenever you think Ra’s is gone he pops up out of a Lazarus pit like a groundhog so I would not be surprised to see him show up again.

2. Slade Wilson / Deathstoke - played by Manu Bennett


“Oh, you're a killer. I know, I created you.”

              When Slade Wilson first met Oliver Queen he saved his life and took him under his wing. While both were marooned on the island Slade acted as a mentor who prepared Oliver for his destiny, before he ultimately became a part of it by turning into one of the Arrows deadliest foes. Things got real crazy for Slade on the island after he was injured in a mortar attack and injected with a super soldier serum developed by the Japanese. This not only made him a total badASIS it also made him a lot crazier than he was before. The catalyst for his heel turn was a woman who chose Oliver over Slade, and this gave Deathstroke a different dimension that we don’t really get to read about in the comics. Some say this weakened the seemingly unstoppable mercenary but I think it made him more dynamic than the average Terminator. It gave him a believable motive for his actions against his former padawan which included killing Oliver’s mother in front of him, kidnapping Oliver’s own protégé Roy Harper, draining his blood to create an army of super soldiers and trying to destroy the city. He threatened just about everyone that the Arrow cared about and this came to a head when he showed up on Oliver’s doorstep disguised as a political supporter of his mother, in one of my favorite scenes of the series so far. Even though he has been defeated a couple times now he still sits in SUPER MAX prison and I hope he comes back as the force of nature that he has shown he can be.

1. Malcolm Merlyn – played by John Barrowman


“When you have killed 503 people including your own son, you tend not to worry about scales,”

            Villain or hero, Malcolm Merlyn was my favorite character on the Arrow. Not only was he brought to the screen by a phenomenal actor but the character had so many layers that I couldn’t wait until I found out the next horrible thing he had done. Two years before Oliver Queen went on a ‘three hour tour’, Malcolm Merlyn lost his beloved in a horrible tragedy that would have turned most men toward the darkness. The event caused Merlyn to abandon his son and travel the world until he found the League of Assassins and he became the hand of the head of the demon, or something (he was a big deal). When he came back to Starling City he decided that he needed to exact revenge on the city that failed him and caused an earthquake that in turn caused countless tragedies. All of this happened before the end of the first season (which he was brought back to life after and then appeared in the subsequent seasons). Needless to say, Malcolm Merlyn is a complicated man and he has proved time and time again that he would do anything to further his agenda. Inconsistent characters can be the most dangerous because you don’t know how powerful or vulnerable they really are. He is a character that has shown the capacity to throw his son out (and be responsible for his death) but also keep an enduring attachment to a daughter who was kept at arm’s length for most of her life to ensure her safety. Not to mention that he is so outstanding played by John Barrowman that it can at times hurt the show be he is obviously out-acting the younger members of the cast (which was addressed as an in-joke on the series). Currently, he is the going by the name Ra’s al Ghul which was title handed over to him by the Arrow after they worked together to save the day in the third season. I am sure this new mantle will create new problems for Team Arrow and I for one can’t wait to see them.