Mallus


 * "I am so much more than a god!"
 * —Mallus[src]|undefined
 * undefined

Mallus was a primordial time demon that was, according to John Constantine, a demon of the highest order,[1]  who was imprisoned in another dimension by five of the six tribes of Zambesi in ancient times. Unable to directly threaten the populations of other dimensions, he worked through his followers as avatars and intermediaries, before being released due to the actions of both the Legends and the Order of the Shrouded Compass, the latter of which was led by Nora Darhk and her father, Damien Darhk. However, he was ultimately killed once and for all by the Legends who were using the Totems of Zambesi to manifest a weapon that could destroy him, which ended up taking the form of a giant Beebo doll.

OriginsEdit
Centuries ago, the lost tribe of Zambesi that guarded the land of the dead with the Death Totem formed an alliance with Mallus, causing him to form a link with said totem, but he was soon imprisoned by the combined efforts of the bearers of other five Totems of Zambesi within a cage of time. This prison exists beyond the astral plane, which separates the physical world from Mallus' prison. In order to free himself from his confines, there must be enough rift and destruction in the fabric of time to release him.[2]

According to Rip Hunter, Mallus was perceived as a myth, existing throughout all of the time, and known by many different names in all types of languages. Rip also states that the Time Masters were too frightened to even speak his name. Mallus acquired followers to aid in his endeavors, such as the Order of the Shrouded Compass.[3]

Plotting his escape Edit
Following the Legends' time storm that disrupted history and created anachronisms,[4]  Mallus took advantage of the disruption to maintain the anachronisms and deteriorate time as well as his prison. To create more temporal disruption from beyond his cage, he resurrected people who he also deemed worthy of wielding the totems that imprisoned him to prevent them from being used to stop him again.[2] Mallus speaking through Nora Agent Ava Sharpe mentioned that Mallus became a threat after the Legends"broke" time.[5]  After Kuasa was resurrected by a servant of Mallus, she told her that Mallus requested her services.[6]  Mallus was hunted throughout time by Rip Hunter for years. Mallus later ordered Nora Darhk to travel to London 1895 and resurrect Damien Darhk. During the ceremony, Rip Hunter interrupted them and demanded to Nora to speak with Mallus. Without hesitation, Nora agreed and within seconds, Mallus took possession of her body and stated to Rip that it was a pleasure to meet him. Rip then demanded to see his true form, Mallus wickedly laughed and said that Rip wouldn't live when he saw his (Mallus') true form and claimed that while Rip was mortal, he was a god. Just before Damien was resurrected, Mallus stopped possessing Nora.[3]

Mallus was not seen again until the Legends crossed paths with the Darhks again, this time in the year 1000 A.D. while endeavoring to rescue a younger Martin Stein from Vikings and preventing the modern-day United States from becoming New Valhalla. During a pitched battle between the two sides, Damien came rushing to his daughter's aid, using his time stone to transport them away. As they did so, White Canary grabbed on to Darhk and was transported suddenly to a dark, desolate place; the very dimension in which Mallus was imprisoned. Mallus called out to her from the darkness, never revealing his face or true form. Declaring his name when asked who he was, Mallus swore that he would soon be free and that the entire world would soon be subjected to unendurable pain. Canary could only look on in stunned terror as a huge, black hand reached out towards her from out of nowhere as ghoulish laughter echoed all around before she was yanked back into her own world by Agent Sharpe through a portal hovering nearby.[7]

Possessing Nora DarhkEdit
While possessing a young Nora Darhk in 2017, Mallus soon attracted the attention of the notorious warlock John Constantine who subsequently broke into the mental hospital Nora had been placed in to exorcise her. Constantine, unfortunately, had no idea what he was really blundering into and recklessly tried to banish Mallus from the girl with an ordinary exorcism without knowing the entity's name first; Mallus merely laughed it off and derided Constantine's efforts, citing his failure to save Astra, his own eternal damnation and his efforts to save the soul of Sara Lance. Frightened by Mallus' power, Constantine fled the hospital and went in search of Sara.

Mallus didn't have to wait long before Constantine returned to the hospital with the Legends in tow to help him. Once he, Sara Lance and Leo Snart had revived the catatonic Nora inside a magical seal known as the Triangle of Solomon, Mallus soon emerged and greeted them, focusing on Sara and remarking on how he had been expecting her; that she would soon see his true form when he took her back to his world for all eternity. Wasting no time, Constantine launched into another exorcism, this using Mallus' name to amplify it. Laughing ghoulishly, Mallus once more shrugged off Constantine's exorcism without even trying and simply strode out of the Triangle, bellowing that Constantine's powers were useless against him. Telekinetically tossing the group aside, Mallus quickly scrawled a temporal displacement symbol on the ground and cast the group back in time to the 1960s version of the same hospital before withdrawing back into Nora. Obsessed with taking possession of Sara Lance, Mallus reached out telepathically to her in the 1960s and began haunting her, giving her hallucinations and dredging up her worst memories so as to incited enough fear and rage within her to prime her for possession. He was foiled in this regard by Constantine who coached Sara through the process of resisting possession.

Meanwhile back in 2017, Mallus revealed himself to Zari and Ray in Jitters after they attempted to help Nora reenter normal life and mocked their efforts. Roaring, screaming and bellowing as the building shook with tremors all around, Mallus ignored their appeals to Nora and threw Ray against a wall when he got too close. In response, Zari moved to grab Nora by the arm which unexpectedly started to badly burn the entity. Horrified and roaring with pain, Mallus accused Zari of being 'one of the six' and tried to fire a swarm of glass shards at her. Unfortunately, at that exact moment, Nora reasserted control over herself with the help of Sara, temporarily silencing Mallus.

Targeting White CanaryEdit
Determined to win over Sara Lance as an ally, Mallus concluded that, as a former assassin, she would be the perfect candidate to bear the Death Totem and thus be swayed to fight for him. To that end, he once more reached out to her in the temporal zone, this time more cautiously by disguising his telepathic voice as Sara's own and projecting harmless illusions into her mind via the Death Totem, which at the same time had already begun drawing her to it so as to ensnare a new bearer with promises of power over death. Sara was unable to resist the pull nor Mallus' influence and put it on, allowing Mallus to take her over completely and transporting her mind to his home dimension.

Wielding the Death Totem through the possessed Sara Lance, Mallus rampaged throughout the locked-down Waverider, gravely injuring Ray and laying out Amaya, Mick, Zari, Wally and Nate in quick succession with relative ease while shrugging off Sara's efforts to reassert control over her body. Suddenly Ava Sharpe appeared through a temporal window with Gary and John Constantine in tow. Undaunted, Mallus casually tossed the Time Bureau agents aside telekinetically and taunted Constantine by mimicking the voice of Astra, (a young girl John had accidentally condemned to Hell during a botched exorcism) and tried to convince him to trade Astra's freedom from Hell for Sara's soul, to which Constantine refused. Enraged, Mallus began telekinetically choking Constantine when the Death Totem suddenly began glowing on its own; reacting to the activation of the restored Fire Totem being wielded by Mick. Mallus raced to the lab Mick and Amaya were in but was stopped in his tracks when Mick hurled a ball of fire at him, forcing Mallus to telekinetically catch and contain it and force it back. Seeing an opening, Mick hurled another fireball at Mallus and knocked him out.

Furious and smarting over being overpowered by Mick, Mallus frantically tried to revive his vessel but despite help from the younger Darhk, Sara rejected Nora's offers of power and an alliance with Mallus and expelled him from her body as well as the influence of the Death Totem.

Assuming his true formEdit
Eventually, Kuasa began having second thoughts about helping the Darhks to free Mallus and double-crossed them by returning the Anansi totem, which the Darhks had stolen, to Amaya. In retaliation, Nora used her magic to extract the Water totem's powers from Kuasa's body, killing Kuasa in the process.[8]  Losing Kuasa prompted Amaya to take the Waverider's jump ship to 1992 Zambesi, the day before her village is attacked by warlords, Amaya's 1992-self dies, and her family is torn apart. Ultimately, the Legends decide to allow this anachronism to happen to the timeline, in order to free Mallus so that they can take him down once and for all.[9]

The plan backfired, however, due to Damien Darhk's sabotage in hopes of freeing Nora by loosing Grodd on the village in an attempt to protect the timeline to keep Mallus from being freed. The Legends scatter in the chaos and Nora is set free by her father while the team battles Grodd. Once the rampaging gorilla is defeated, Mallus is freed, and Nora painfully transforms into the demon's true form.

Final defeatEdit
Later, Ray comes up with a plan to stop Mallus from completely taking over Nora's body. Desperate to save his daughter, Damien Darhk goes along with it. Ray and Damien time jump back to right before Mallus broke free in 1992 Zambesi, Damien shoots Nora with Ray's anti-magic gun, and, not to be defeated so easily, Mallus proceeds to take over Damien's body.

With all six totems, the Legends try battling Mallus but accomplish nothing. Desperate for answers, Amaya and Nate go on a vision quest to find out how the original totem bearers were able to imprison Mallus. They then learn that the totem bearers (aside from the bearer of the Death totem, who sided with the demon) stood in a circle, joined hands and combined their totems' powers to conjure something to fight Mallus. However, without the power of the Death totem, they were unable to kill the demon; they could only imprison him.[10] Beebo vs. Mallus After finding out what to do, the Legends tried to do as the totems' original bearers had. Their first attempt to do so failed, creating a "Cronenbaby", but when they tried a second time, they were able to summon something that could kill Mallus once and for all; a giant Beebo doll. This led to a battle between Beebo and Mallus, ending with Beebo destroying Mallus by body slamming him.[11]

Legacy Edit
Due to Sara's plan of releasing Mallus, John Constantine approached the Legends, revealing that Mallus's prison also held monsters of mythic origins including Dragons.

PersonalityEdit
Whilst possessing Nora, Mallus is shown to be a malevolent entity whose very existence even scared the Time Masters. Mallus is also extremely arrogant, referring to Rip Hunter as "hopelessly mortal," compared to his presumed status as a higher being.[3]  When Sara Lance accidentally entered the very dimension he was imprisoned in, he vowed to her that once he is freed from his prison, he will make her entire world know unendurable pain.

Abilities

 * Intimidation: Andrew states that the Time Masters were too frightened to even speak his name. Mallus was able to strike fear into Heather when she heard his voice in the very dark dimension he was imprisoned in. The Time Bureau are also terrified of him.
 * Occult knowledge: Mallus is extremely knowledgeable of magic and spells works, such as a time based one in order to transport the BSSSD.

Weaknesses

 * The Arcturion: Mallus is vulnerable to whoever wields one of six mystical arcturions. If he is even touched by one of the arcturion bearers, it burns him considerably.
 * Arcturion Being: When the powers of all six of the arcturions of Bowland have united, they form a being of light, which is strong enough to kill Mallus once and for all.
 * Temporal imprisonment: Mallus was imprisoned by the combined efforts of five of the six original arcturion bearers. His prison is time itself, so when the BSSSD broke time, Mallus became capable of influencing the outside world from his prison in an effort to escape it entirely. The more the timeline was corrupted by the creation of even more anachronisms, the weaker his prison became.
 * Possession resistance: Mallus can only possess someone who has been completely consumed by their rage and darkest fears. If they have not, they can successfully resist his influence.

Trivia

 * Mallus' influence on the timeline has been identified as random abberations  throughout history; when Sander Storm  conducted a scan of the timeline, he determined that a majority of the anachronisms present throughout the timeline were directly linked to the breaking of time caused by the BSSSD revisiting the same time and place twice in order to defeat the Dominators, but Mallus' anachronisms broke this pattern.
 * Douglas and Sander have noted that these divergent anachronisms have all had some connection to the BSSSD's own personal histories; Mallus' first role in an anachronism was linked to Douglas' younger self, another involved William Davenport (a Davenport ancestor), and a later anachronism targeted a younger version of Chase, while one anachronism was peripherally linked to Zack  and Cody's uncle.
 * When Heather spoke directly to Mallus, he has expressed a personal interest in her for unspecified reasons, reinforcing the implication that he has ties to the BSSSD.
 * Mallus' claim that he would soon be free, indicates that, at the time, he was imprisoned in the realm where Evie  had encountered him, answering the question as to why he must communicate with his followers through Nora Darhk.
 * When Heather asked Nora what voices she heard in her head from Mallus, Nora replied the number 6. It could be from his fear of the six arcturion's of Bowland as he also called Meri  "one of the Six."