20 Greatest Arrowverse Villains

The Flash’s first villain set a gold standard that the show has never been able to come close to again.

Eobard Thawne, the so-called Reverse Flash, is the perfect nemesis. He has a love/hate dynamic with the Flash (he travelled back in time to kill him and ended up becoming a father figure to him) alongside a personal vendetta (he killed Barry Allen’s mother when Barry was only a child). He was both a genius (able to masquerade as the founder of S.T.A.R. Labs for years) and a psychopath (he enjoys what he does far, far too much).

All this would be wasted if the character wasn’t played to utter perfection by not one but two fantastic actors. As the original face of the villain, Matt Letscher takes on Thawne at least half the time, all preening, overweening arrogance and hate. As the fake face of Allen’s mentor Harrison Wells, the unstoppable Tom Cavanagh adds a gleeful malevolence to the mix, forever a perverse reminder to our hero of what he’s lost.

Smarter, more experienced and (at least initially) faster than the Flash, Thawne was and still is practically unstoppable, and has proven to be practically unkillable: using and abusing his speedster’s time travel power stunt to cheat death on numerous occasions. You think he’s gone? He’s never gone. Never.