For all that the various Arrowverse shows get right about the DC Universe, they have a pretty spotty track record when it comes to villains. Nuanced, compelling villains like Deathstroke and Reverse-Flash are all too rare on these shows. It took Supergirl three seasons to finally conjure up a foe worthy of Kara Danvers. Even Legends of Tomorrow , consistently the best of these shows over the past few years, has struggled in this area. But if there's any takeaway from Legends' soon-to-be concluded third season, it's that Damien Darhk may be the MVP in the Arrowverse rogues gallery.

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The weird thing about Legends is that the series has never really succeeded in creating its own villains. Season 1 failed to achieve its full potential because Vandal Savage never felt like an enemy worthy of this new team of time-traveling heroes. With only one episode to go in Season 3, Mallus still comes across as little more than a bland CG demon with a cool voice. Legends has found much more success in borrowing familiar villains from its sister shows - Reverse-Flash and Captain Cold from The Flash, Kuasa from Vixen, and Malcolm Merlyn from Arrow. And, of course, Damien Darhk.Darhk is unique among these characters in that he's been a major Arrowverse villain three years in a row. He got his start as one of the few bright points in the otherwise forgettable Arrow Season 4. Then he jumped over to Legends' second season as a member of Reverse-Flash's Legion of Doom. And despite Darhk's death in the year 2016, he's managed to return to menace the Legends all over again in Season 3.It's easy to picture viewers getting burnt out on Damien Darhk after three years. Actor Neal McDonough made a great first impression with his energetic, charismatic take on the character, but that alone wouldn't have been enough to sustain Darhk all this time. The key is that he's continued to evolve and gain new layers with each new season. In Legends' second season, Darhk was confronted with the realization that his plans of world domination were doomed to fail and that he himself was going to die. He became a man determined to change his own fate, while also bristling at the prospect of playing subordinate to a more powerful villain.Darhk failed to change his fate then, but thanks to the power of Mallus and the intervention of his own daughter Nora, he returned to life in Legends Season 3. His character arc has continued to unfold and grow richer with time. We've seen Darhk's commitment to evil wane as he's realized that Mallus' rise can come only with Nora's death. A man who once plotted to wipe out most of humanity now cares only about saving the one family member he has left. At this point, he no longer fits neatly into either the villain or hero category, and that's very much to the character's benefit. It's not Mallus who's the driving force of the Season 3 finale, but Darhk and his single-minded quest to save his daughter.Most major Arrowverse villains are given one season to sink or swim. They make their debut, their background and motivations are slowly revealed over the course of the year, and then they have their climactic showdown with the heroes at the end of the season. That's been the general pattern with characters like Ra's al Ghul, Zoom, Savitar and Prometheus. But as Legends has frequently shown us, there's a lot to be said for villains that stick around and remain active players in the Arrowverse for years to come. Darhk has evolved into perhaps the most compelling and complex villain in the Arrowverse, and it's only because Legends chose to give the character a second and third chance after his original run on Arrow.Perhaps there's a lesson to be learned there. Are there other Arrowverse villains with similarly untapped potential? Maybe these shows should start worrying less about introducing new faces each year and more about making full use of the characters already in the mix. Even in the comics, there are plenty of DC villains who didn't truly come into their until years or even decades after their first appearance. Darhk is proof that long-term storytelling investments pay off in the end.

Jesse is a mild-mannered writer for IGN. Allow him to lend a machete to your intellectual thicket by following @jschedeen on Twitter , or Kicksplode on MyIGN