Deity Supervillain pedals review: masses of grip and support, but they don’t come cheap

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Deity's Supervillain pedals are designed to offer maximum grip and support for riders who aren't keen on clipping in.

At 113x105mm, the platforms are sizeable, with even more length than Deity's TMACs, which are among my favourite mountain bike pedals.

In fact, the Supervillains are some of the biggest pedals on the market.

The build quality and finish are excellent, and they deliver tons of grip. However, at £149 / $170, they're expensive pedals.

Deity Supervillain pedals specifications

Huge cutaways within the platform help to shed mud, while the 14 pins per side are designed to dig into your shoes.

These grub-screw style pins can, in theory, be accessed from either side, although once you’ve installed one side, you can’t access the rear of the pins on the reverse.

That means you may have to carefully unclog the mud from the hex heads at the top of the pins should you need to replace them.

At 4mm deep and relatively thin, they’re fairly aggressive, too.

It helps that the Supervillain platforms have around 3mm of concavity, dipping lower at the axle to help cup your feet comfortably.

The trailing and leading sides of the pedals are 18mm deep and all edges are chamfered to help them glance rather than hang up on obstacles, should you make contact.

The side-on profile of the pedals is still quite boxy, though, and not offset or heavily chamfered like some.

If and when you need to rebuild the Supervillains, parts are available from Deity, along with a full rebuild kit ($24.99), which includes the custom socket required to strip them.

My sample set of pedals weighed 423g.

Deity Supervillain pedals performance

I rode the Supervillain pedals in a variety of conditions and used a couple of pairs of MTB shoes, including Shimano’s GF800 GTX boots and Unparallel’s Roost shoes.

Neither of these offer as much grip as Five Ten’s Stealth rubber soles, but I was consistently impressed by how solid the connection was from shoe to pedal.

Thanks to the massive platforms and grippy pins, once you’ve placed your foot on the pedal, it’s hard to shift it around, unless you actively lift it up to re-position it.

They feel secure and sure-footed straight from the get-go. The concave design enables your feet to sink naturally into the platform, helping to boost comfort and keeping you feeling better connected and locked in.

This also takes some of the strain from your legs because your feet don’t need to claw at the pedal, trying to find grip.

Pedals without that concave shape can leave your feet shuffling back and forth when things get rough, or your shoes are caked in mud.

This isn’t the case with the Supervillains. Even with the soles of my shoes slathered in mud, I had no issues with traction.

This means quick bursts of power out of turns or hard efforts on tricky climbs can be handled without a second thought and no need to tweak your foot position once the watts have been laid down.

After months of riding in grim, rainy British winter, my test samples are still spinning smoothly with plenty of obvious water ingress inside and plenty of grease.

Despite a couple of hefty impacts into tall tree stumps and the odd rock, they’ve remained straight and true.

Deity Supervillain pedals bottom line

The Supervillain pedals from Deity are well-made and beautifully finished. More importantly, though, they work exceedingly well.

If you liked the big platform of the TMAC pedals, you’ll love these – which feel even grippier but just as supportive.

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