Damien Darhk

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## Magnificent Baddie

### Alias

Mr. Darhk
Kenneth Bender
Admiral
Odin
Black Knight

### Allies

Mallus †
Eobard Thawne †
Ra's al Ghul
Quentin Lance
Lonnie Machin (all formerly)
Nora Dark
Ruvé Darhk †
Ray Palmer
Malcolm Merlyn †  (sometimes)
H.I.V.E.
Andy Diggle
Wally West
The Legends
Ghosts
Danny Brickwell
Bronze Tiger
Joe West
Iris West-Allen
Barry Allen
Ava Sharpe
Mick Rory/Heatwave
Amaya Jiwe/Vixen
Nate Haywood/Steel
Rip Hunter
Vandal Savage

### Powers/Skills

Charisma
Genius-level intellect
Manipulation
Master strategist
Martial arts
Dark magic
Longevity
Telekinesis
Life force absorption
Teleportation
Accelerated healing factor
Superhuman strength
Superhuman endurance
Pyrokinesis

### Goals

Escape death from Ra’s Al Ghul and found his own criminal organization to continue the League’s mission in his vision
Defeat the Legends and rewrite reality to his image with the Legion of Doom  (both succeeded)
Destroy the world to rebuild it anew  (failed)
Help free Mallus from his imprisonment  (abandoned)
Sacrifice his life to save his daughter from Mallus
Reconcile with the Legends and his daughter and vaporize himself to prevent Astra from recalling him back to Hell
Help Flash reset the timeline and defeat Eobard Thawne  (all succeeded)

### Crimes

Mass murder
Malefic
Blackmail
Organized crime
Public endangerment
Populicide by proxy
Kidnapping
Weapons dealing
Attempted genocide
Conspiracy
Terrorism
Theft
Treason
Mass destruction
Brainwashing
Smuggling
Bribery
Slavery
Incrimination
Sabotage
Altering reality
Crimes against humanity
Corruption
Embezzlement
Abuse of power
Physical and psychological abuse
Usurpation
Extortion
Illegal dealings
Hacking
Vandalism
Pollution
Possession
Attempted world domination
Assault and battery
Attempted omnicide

### Type of MB

Charismatic Sorcerer

**Damien Darhk** is the secondary antagonist of the *Arrowverse*, serving as the main antagonist of Season 4 in *Arrow* and one of the secondary antagonists of Season 2, a major antagonist turned anti-hero in Season 3, and a supporting character in Season 5 of *Legends of Tomorrow,* and a supporting character in Season 8 of *The Flash*.

He was a former member of the League of Assassins and best friend of Ra’s Al Ghul who escaped death at Ra’s hands to go on to found the H.I.V.E organization to continue the League’s mission in his vision. He is the infamous murderer of the Black Canary and the former archenemy of her sister, Sara Lance.

## What Makes Him Magnificent?

* The man is hamminess personified and certainly the hammiest Big Bad in the franchise, being absolutely entertaining to watch as he is sure to have the most fun while being dramatic at the same time.
* He is a master assassin with a perfect record, having never missed a target.
* He escaped death and outsmarted Ra’s Al Ghul himself, eluding him for the rest of his life whilst going on to engage in conspiracies from the shadows for centuries and create a world-wide terrorist organization from scratch right under the noses of world governments, heroes, and intelligence agencies, even the most pervasive ones like A.R.G.U.S.
* He genuinely cares about his family who are the number 1 priority for him and even when he is eventually revealed to not be a genuine extremist, his motivation for remaking is still more understandable than most as he wants to give his family particularly his daughter the world as a gift.
* He used his charisma to create the H.I.V.E., inspiring fanatical loyalty amongst people to join his cause to the point that they were willing to die for him if he commanded it or have pills within their teeth to bite down and commit suicide if they were captured.
* He orchestrates clever attacks that are able to easily bring Star City to its knees and successfully take down the city council save for the one man he had on the inside.
* He demonstrates honor multiple times from paying Machin half his fee even though he completely failed in his mission because he respected his theatrical flair or calling a periodic truce with Oliver after Oliver saves his family from Machin.
* He fires Lonnie Machin for kidnapping and brutally torturing a mayoral candidate’s daughter (even if this may be pragmatic villainy) and gives Detective Lance and Team Arrow Machin’s location so they could rescue her.
* He is responsible for one of the biggest plot twists in the franchise being that he faked Andy Diggle’s death years ago and recruited him and his whole redemption was just an act to outsmart Team Arrow and strike them at the right moment.
* He deduced Team Arrow’s identities without needing Diggle to tell him who they are despite the fact that he could have easily done so if he wanted.
* He orchestrates his own prison escape and acquires the Khushu idol to regain his powers and utterly defeat Team Arrow,
* While he was petty and suffered a bad VB following the death of his wife in Arrow, he returns in Legends having completely recovered and moved on from his VB and abandons his pettiness with his comedic moments, enjoyability, and hamminess increasing much more instead.
* He has an epic resurrection scene where he utterly defeats Rip Hunter and the Time Bureau while dancing to the beat and nonchalantly drinking a glass of wine before escaping with his grown up daughter.
* While initially Faux Affably Evil, being resurrected gave him a fresh perspective on life and he transitions into being Affably Evil, trying to peacefully end things with Sara by offering to take her and the Legends back to 2016 unharmed if they stood down and genuinely being more civilized and personable in general.
* He formed elaborate plots involving deception and trickery, disguising himself as the Black Knight, a British admiral, and Odin (amongst other disguises) in different episodes to not only blend in with the time period, but manipulate its natives into doing his bidding.
* He was willing to sacrifice the Fire totem to Ray to get him to save a dying Nora and when his healed daughter is about to kill Ray, he convinces her to spare his life in what is implied to be a moment of gratitude even if they abduct him instead.
* He has a hilarious moment with the CEO of a new tech company and dating app that he held hostage, asking for advice on how to get back out there and creating his own dating profile.
* He is willing to sacrifice himself to save his daughter from his past self and trusts her to make her own decisions and literally let her go despite the risk, allowing her to access the totem and for them to defeat his past self. After having a “therapy session” with Ray, he realizes his mistake and apologizes to Nora for being overprotective of her and got her her childhood favorite drink, hot chocolate.
* Upon realizing Mallus’ return would destroy Nora, he realizes the true cost of his villainy and fakes torturing a captive Nate with him to trick Nora into not getting onto them and has a heartfelt conversation with him on how villainy didn’t bring him any joy like it used to and informing him of what was going to happen to Nora.
* He defects to the Legends and convinces them to help him save Nora and stop Mallus, springing a trap for Nora/Mallus with Ray and successfully capturing them. He expresses remorse and admits he failed as a father to the Mallus possessed Nora and has a conversation with Sara where he apologizes to her for his petty murder of her sister, admitting it was unforgivable while explaining how he didn’t know the pain he was causing back then and tells her that if he could take it back, he would.
* He sacrifices himself to save Nora by seemingly killing her to trick the smug Mallus into possessing him as a vessel instead and having Ray get Nora out of there before Mallus emerged from his body, instantly killing him.
* Upon being resurrected by Astra to spread torment and damn more souls to hell, he instead goes to check on how Nora was doing and although he initially gets into a fight with the Legends with he thinks they ruined her life, upon seeing that Nora had become a fairy godmother of her own choice, he realizes his mistake and apologizes while telling Nora he was always proud of her. He attends Nora and Ray’s wedding and thanks Ray for being a better man for Nora than he ever was and points out to him that Nora couldn’t pursue her passion if she was constantly traveling with the Legends and they would unfortunately have to leave if they wanted to pursue their own lives. He then has a final conversation with Sara where he once again apologizes for killing Laurel and attempts to reconcile with her which she can’t bring herself to. After walking out, he is revealed to have stolen the Hell sword from right under Sara’s nose, making her believe he was deceiving her all along, storming out only to find that Damien vaporized himself with the sword, killing himself to ensure Astra couldn’t recall him to Hell or ever use him as a pawn.
* In Reverse-Flashpoint, he was a one-man army who single-handedly wiped out several heroes.
* After deducing Barry Allen wasn’t really the evil Reverse-Flash, he agreed to help Barry reset the timeline after he informed him about how Thawne messed with the timeline and how Damien’s daughter should be alive, even though resetting the timeline would kill him once again.
* He respected Joe West as a father and gave West his time stone, deducing he would one day need it before being erased from existence.
* The last remnant of his consciousness in the time stone saved Iris from death and emerge from the time stone at the cost of himself.

## What Makes Him a Baddie?

* He is a master assassin and formed his own worldwide terrorist organization to engage in organized crime and conspiracies across the world including providing safe haven to terrorists, attempting to secretly purchase Malcolm Merlyn’s earthquake generator, trying to obtain a nuclear weapon, corrupting Mark Shaw into committing treason, and countless other actions.
* In an altered 1942 timeline, he helped the Nazis create an atomic bomb and destroy New York, killing millions and thereby prolonging WWII to kill an additional 12 million people, although this was luckily reversed.
* He brainwashed King Arthur and dozens of knights and threatened to destroy Camelot to get the Legends and Stargirl to hand over a piece of the Spear of Destiny.
* He altered reality with the Legion of Doom with him becoming the tyrannical mayor of a dystopian Star City, having killed nearly all the heroes and brainwashing Sara and Amaya into being his own personal killers.
* He attempted to destroy the world via nuclear weapons to remake it anew. While initially a genuine extremist, he would ultimately reveal himself to be interested in remaking the world in his image and for his family, not for the greater good. Even though he was mostly stopped by Team Arrow, they couldn’t stop one nuclear missile and the town of Havenrock ended up being destroyed, resulting in over 10,000 casualties.
* He has tried to kill Team Arrow and the Legends countless times.
* He kidnapped Oliver’s son William to successfully force him to drop out of the mayoral race.
* He infamously killed the Black Canary by painfully driving an arrow through stomach and taunting her to tell her father that he kept his promise to kill her if he betrayed him.
* He shot Cooper Seldon to hold him hostage by moving the bullet closer and closer to his spine to force him to help him destroy the world by activating the Rubicon protocol and killed him in the most painful way possible after sensing Seldon redeemed himself and gave Felicity and Curtis access to stop the protocol.
* He massacred Time Bureau agents upon being resurrected and tried to free the inter dimensional demon Mallus from his cage who would wreak havoc on the universe.
* He sent Gorilla Grodd to assassinate Barack Obama when he was a college student and later released Grodd to destroy Amaya’s village to prevent Mallus from being released and stop Nora from being killed even if he had good intentions for it.

## Trivia

* While Damien Darhk was incredibly charismatic, intelligent, and manipulative, he wouldn’t have qualified for MB status had he permanently died in Arrow. This is because he committed one of the pettiest acts in the franchise, killing Laurel Lance aka the Black Canary to spite her father for betraying him and suffered a bad Villainous Breakdown after hearing of his wife’s death. However, upon being revived in Legends, he completely recovers from his VB, being even more comedic and enjoyable and abandoning his pettiness, feeling immense remorse and repeatedly apologizing to Laurel’s sister Sara for his petty murder of Laurel, becoming a prime example of a Wholly Grown MB in the process.

## External Links

* Damien Darhk on the Villains Wiki.
* Damien Darhk on the Heroes Wiki.

## Navigation

*Franchise-Wide*
Eobard Thawne (Flashpoint)

*Arrow*
Tommy Merlyn (Earth-2)

*The Flash*
Goldface

*Supergirl*
Rick Malverne