Is This The Best Arrow Villain? Fans Seem to Think So

Oliver Queen went up against some major threats over the course of Arrow, but fans online clearly favor his mentor-turned-nemesis Slade Wilson. Slade, or Deathstroke, is a popular figure in all DC Comics adaptations, but the Arrowverse portrayal by Manu Bennett seems to stand out among fans. It’s not hard to see why — Slade is the main villain of Season 2 where his story is gripping in the present and illuminating in flashbacks at the same time. He’s a character that fans have seen in many different incarnations now, so it’s not hard to recontextualize him here and appreciate what sets him apart and makes him special to the fandom even now.

Arrow wrapped up its eight-season run back in 2020, while the Arrowverse franchise just said its final goodbye on TV in December with the end of Superman & Lois. Looking back now, fans on Reddit and other forums are taking in the whole franchise in its totality and picking out favorite stories, characters, and twists. In talks like these, Slade comes up a lot as the fan-favorite Arrow villain, and in some cases a favorite villain for the entire Arrowverse.

Arroverse Deathstroke

Slade was introduced in Season 1 in flashbacks to Oliver’s time on the mysterious island of Lian Yu. The island was an effective hook, making fans crave more information about Oliver’s time away and how it turned him into the vigilante he became. Slade was strongly associated with these mysteries from the start, and he would have been cool enough if he had stayed in the past. However, seeing Slade alive in the present in Starling City set Season 2 off to a great start.

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Slade’s story arc definitely maximized the potential of Arrow‘s split timeline, drawing out suspense in both settings and promising climaxes on both fronts. This is really where we learned most of the basic information we have about Oliver’s time shipwrecked, and in the context of Season 2, it seemed like Slade is the main mentor that gave Oliver most of his fighting skills. All this exposition raised the stakes on their clash in the present as we were left to wonder what came between these two and why it can’t be resolved.

We learn that Slade was an Australian intelligence agent stranded on Lian Yu during a mission to rescue his comrade, Yao Fei. With Oliver’s help, he resumes this mission, and they are able to rescue Fei’s daughter Shado. However, Slade is later wounded by Dr. Ivo and can only be revived with Ivo’s new drug, Mirakuru. While Slade is under its influence, Ivo convinces murders Shado and convinces Slade that Oliver did it. Oliver is unable to convince him otherwise, and is forced to fight him to the death. Oliver stabs Slade in the eye and believes he is dead, but he is later rescued by other ASIS agents.

In the present timeline, Slade is still on a misguided mission for revenge, and he doesn’t just want a rematch. He tries to destroy Oliver’s burgeoning reputation, attack his family, and take over the city Oliver is trying to protect from crime. He uses more Mirakuru-enhanced soldiers to enact his plan, and even murders Oliver’s mother. All the while, Oliver is grappling with his recent resolution to fight crime without taking anymore lives, wondering if he can stop Slade without killing him.

Oliver is eventually able to reverse the effects of Mirakuru, and in later seasons, he and Slade even team up again. This character returns several times in future seasons and he was always a welcome sight for fans, providing some of the best ongoing stories the show had to offer.

Bold Strokes

Arrow was very bold in its use of DC Comics characters early on, and Deathstroke may be the best proof of how well that strategy paid off. The character was well-known, but was not too strongly associated with any particular hero or team, so he slotted into the Green Arrow’s rogues gallery nicely. Even casual superhero fans who had not read any comic books would probably be quite familiar with Slade at the time when Arrow began — he was the main villain of Cartoon Network’s Teen Titans, he appeared in Young Justice, and even made cameo appearances in Teen Titans Go! He was also a staple in DC video games.

Early successes like this should definitely get credit for some of the bigger swings the Arrowverse was allowed to take later on, and for that alone, Slade deserves the love he is getting lately from the fandom. Arrow is streaming on Netflix in the U.S. at the time of this writing.

Was Deathstroke your favorite Arrow villain? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!