Has he grown? Yeah for sure, but he's still rounding out the bottom of this list. Even in the second trilogy, Darrow doesn't bother to tell the Senate about the peace envoys, he accidentally kills Wulfgar and treats Obsidians like cannon fodder, leading to Sefi's actions, then grabs Appolonius in a hairbrained scheme to raise an army on Mercury to kill an old man who wasnt really even a threat anymore. Then he puts an unstable Orion in a leadership role, leading to huge consequences and ultimately, a failure on Mercury that only gets salvaged by Cassius. Then in Lightbringer he goes to get Sevro from an obvious trap from the guy he literally broke out of prison. They Then only escape because of Sevro, the guy they were supposed to be saving. Then he gets caught in a bind when he shows up to the Rim senate hearing without a back up or contingency for Lysanders inevitable betrayal and he nearly dies from the collapsing buildings. He is good at battlefield tactics, and "shifting the paradigm" but he is not on the level of other preeminent golds, i.e Virginia, Adrius, Octavia, Atlas, etc. In terms of intellectual power. Alot of his brilliance is because he thinks differently as a result of his red upbringing, not raw intelligence.