‘Legends of Tomorrow’: Mallus’ True Name Revealed in Season 3 Finale

Legends of Tomorrow‘s season three finale tied up plenty of loose ends — including a tidbit about the season’s big bad.

Spoilers for tonight’s season three finale of Legends of Tomorrow, “The Good, The Bad, and The Cuddly”, below!

Tonight’s episode picked up right where last week’s installment left off, with Mallus (John Noble) revealing his true, demonic form. As the team tried to determine how to defeat Mallus, he angrily clarified something — that the Legends had been pronouncing his name wrong.

As it turns out, Mallus isn’t pronounced “Mall-us”, as it has been all season, but as “Malice”. And as the episode went on, this became a sort of running joke amongst the Legends, as Mick Rory (Dominic Purcell) still believed his pronunciation was right.

Sure, this revelation doesn’t mean too much for Mallus’ story as a whole, but the fact that the show mispronounced his name for a whole season is almost too hilarious to ignore. And in a way, this pronunciation makes sense, as it set the villain apart from a lot of established DC lore (and avoided comparisons to Malice Vundabar). Considering just how many theories surrounded the ever-elusive villain, that makes sense.

“You know, I would say the vast majority of [Mallus fan theories] tend to be really wrong,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim explained to ComicBook.com earlier this year. “Really, really wrong. You know, that said, sometimes someone gets it. You know, if you have enough people out there sort of theorizing, there are going to be a few people who are right, you know?”

Putting how you say his name aside, it sounds like Mallus could be an interesting indicator of what comes next for the series.

“[Mallus] is a sort of bellwether of bad guys to come in Season 4,” executive producer Phil Klemmer explained during a recent interview. “Up until this point, we’ve been dealing with earthly and historical bad guys, and we certainly had fun with all of that, but this year we dabbled in the world of the occult, through Damien Darhk and his enterprises.

“But you know that Constantine is coming onto the show [as a regular] next season,” Klemmer added, “so we want to go deeper, we want Mallus to be used as ‘the tip of the iceberg.’ He is not human, and we want to start playing with the idea that Earth hasn’t always belonged just to our kind.”

Legends of Tomorrow has been renewed for a fourth season. ComicBook.com will provide any updates on the season four premiere as they come about.