'Legends of Tomorrow': Is Damien Darhk a Product of Bootstrap Paradox?

Damien Darhk is arguably one of the Arrowverse's most formidable villains. First appearing on Arrow before jumping over to Legends of Tomorrow, Damien always manages to come back from whatever defeat he suffers at the hands of the heroes -- including death -- making him the ultimate thorn in the good guys' side.

But this season on Legends, not only has Damien (Neal McDonough) been resurrected from after his death at the hands of Green Arrow during Arrow's fourth season finale, but fans have gotten to see a version of the villain before he had his magic powers. In the episode "No Country for Old Dads", Damien orders a captive Ray (Brandon Routh) along with his own daughter, Nora (Courtney Ford), to go back to East Germany in the 1960s to stop a younger version of himself from killing a scientist who had discovered cold fusion. Damien can't really go himself do battle, well, himself, but ends up there anyway as things go sideways for Ray and Nora.

In the process of trying to save his daughter, present-day (sort of) Damien uses magic which his younger self in turn sees, with the younger Damien commenting that he would have to investigate magic. This one line from the episode has made some fans wonder if the Damien is now a product of bootstrap paradox.

Bootstrap paradox -- also referred to as a causal loop -- is a situation where an event is among the causes of another event and then that event is among the causes of the first event. In the case of Damien, a magic-using Damien going to the past and using magic that young, non-magic using Damien then sees could be want prompts the young Damien to go looking for magic. That in turn could cause the situation where Damien gains the magic that he then uses in present time to travel back into the past where his younger self first learned about magic. If that sounds incredibly complicated, that's okay. It is. The general gist is that the magic Damien has in the present caused past Damien to go hunt for the magic he ended up with in the present.

Damien's magic being the result of bootstrap paradox doesn't necessarily have huge implications on the timeline at least as far as we've seen on Legends but it's interesting to consider that, in a manner of speaking, the Legends are sort of responsible for the events of Arrow's fourth season when Damien -- with all his magic -- showed up with H.I.V.E. and attempted remake the world via nuclear holocaust. It would also imply that Sara Lance (Caity Lotz) would, in a small sense, be part of the death of her sister, Laurel Lance/Black Canary (Katie Cassidy) as Laurel was murdered by Damien in Arrow's eighteenth episode in its fourth season, "Eleven-Fifty-Nine".

Bootstrap paradox or not, fans will next see Damien with all his magic in tomorrow's Legends season finale. The demon Damien and his daughter had been serving all season, Mallus, has finally escaped his temporal prison as is poised to destroy history and the timeline as we know it. It makes for an epic showdown, one that will see several familiar faces return to Legends and, possibly, one of the heroes leave.

Legends of Tomorrow airs Mondays at 8/7c on The CW.

Do you think Damien's magic is the product of bootstrap paradox? Let us know your theories in the comments below!