20 DCEU villains ranked by sort of scary to absolutely sinister

11. Black Manta

In Aquaman, we were given two different villains, but ultimately one of those villains never really had the chance to shine like they could have. Instead, Black Manta was potentially set up to be a problematic villain in the future, while leaving us wishing they had done better by this character.

Unfortunately, we can’t rank this villain higher because we didn’t really get enough of his story. Sure, we understand some of his motivations, especially his overwhelming anger at Aquaman after the death of his father, but even before that happened, he seemed determined to take on the superhero.

As the story progressed, we learned that Black Manta was working for King Orm. We don’t really know how or why these two are paired up (we get what Orm is doing and even what Black Manta gets out of this, but there are still a lot of questions). Although, we know they are. It feels like Orm was his puppet master in many ways and that certainly lowers the character in the rankings.

Hopefully we get to see Black Manta really shine in a sequel, because he certainly deserves that chance. After all, in the comics, he is one of the major villains that Aquaman goes up against. And his story is usually more in-depth and richer, which is something we believe could happen if he is the sole villain of a film.

For now, it just feels like we didn’t get to see enough of our villain to rank him higher, but at least we know even if we had gotten more, it would have only improved his villainy rather than detracting from it.