The Villains
After watching Wilson Fisk and Benjamin Poindexter, are you even interested in what Ricardo Diaz or Cicada are doing in the Arrowverse? The performances and depths of these two characters are gulfs apart from any other villain on TV today. Much like with any good narrative, they were also the heroes of their own stories.
Fisk was undoubtedly the main antagonist as he schemed and plotted a master plan, turning everyone around him into willing – or unwilling – pawns. Akin to the Joker, he knew which buttons to push and how to manipulate everyone he needed to. The biggest difference between Fisk and the Clown Prince, though, is that everything was for his beloved Vanessa. His end goal was pure, even if his methods were despicable.
Poindexter played the Harvey Dent role, meanwhile. While it’s debatable if he ever had any real moral compass, seeing his descent into a monster was fascinating. Actor Wilson Bethel told Uproxx that it was the character’s struggles with mental illness that ultimately drove him to a darker place:
“It’s the unraveling of all of the mechanisms that he used to have in place, the things that bolstered him against the hardness of the world. It’s all coming apart for him and it leads to so many horrible things.”
Again, like The Dark Knight, Fisk takes advantage of Poindexter for his own devious purposes, mimicking the dynamic between the Joker and Dent after the death of Rachel Dawes.
