The fifth season of The CW's Arrow came to an end last week, and the finale featured the death of Oliver's fifth supervillain. He's faced some pretty epic bad guys over the years, ranging from nemeses to metahumans to madmen with nothing to lose. Now, as we head into a long hiatus before the show returns for Season 6, star Stephen Amell has weighed in on which of Oliver's many villains was the best baddie, saying this:
Manu on Season 2 did a marvelous job. I don't think of Josh as a villain so much. Mostly because I know him. . . . I think Josh and Prometheus fit best in terms of a season, but from an iconic standpoint, it's Deathstroke.
Deathstroke was arguably the most damaging of Oliver's many villains, so much so that Stephen Amell considers him Oliver's greatest enemy. Manu Bennett was fairly terrifying as Deathstroke, who went to extreme lengths to keep his promise to destroy everything Oliver loves, succeeding in killing Moira and devastating Starling City before he was ultimately stopped. Josh Segarra was evidently a runner up as Prometheus, but Amell's comments at the recent Heroes and Villains convention (via the Daily Mirror) point to Deathstroke's reign of terror in Season 2 as Oliver's most difficult time.
Interestingly, Deathstroke is the only one of Oliver's supervillains who seems to have truly changed his stance on the Emerald Archer. In the Season 5 finale, Deathstroke was seemingly more sane than he'd been since before he'd been dosed with Mirakuru, and he was instrumental in helping Oliver free his friends and hunt Prometheus. Of course, it's possible that Season 6 will open with Deathstroke revealing his true colors as a traitor who was simply using Oliver to get free of Lian Yu. Still, all signs point toward a changed Deathstroke, and even Malcolm Merlyn couldn't even claim to be wholly reformed. All of his good deeds since the end of the first season have been for Thea's sake, not because he suddenly saw the light.
As of the end of Season 5, Deathstroke is also the only one of Oliver's past supervillains who is still alive. Oliver killed Ra's al Ghul and Damien Darhk at the ends of Seasons 3 and 4, and both Malcolm Merlyn and Prometheus perished in the Season 5 finale. If Deathstroke remains an ally, Arrow could truly enter a new era in Season 6 without one of Oliver's archnemeses returning for another go at him. We'll have to wait and see.
In the meantime, be sure to check out our breakdowns of what we know so far about Arrow Season 6 and all the questions that the Season 5 finale finally answered. We still don't know how many people really died in the finale, so we can spend the next few months speculating. Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for the latest in TV news, and don't forget to check out our summer TV premiere schedule to discover all your viewing options now and in the coming weeks. Be sure to drop by our rundowns for cable/streaming and broadcast TV renewals and cancellations as well.
