A Major Arrow Villain Is Returning For The Big Superhero Crossover, But Not How We Expected

arrow prometheus

The annual Arrow-verse crossover will be bigger than ever this year, and it will take our heroes somewhere they've never gone before. Although the crossover is still a couple of months away, we're already getting some intriguing details about what's to come. One of the biggest villains of Arrow is going to return to the action in the crossover in a very unexpected way. Yes, Season 5 supervillain Prometheus will appear in the 2017 superhero crossover, but he won't be the same Prometheus as we came to know.

The Prometheus who will appear in the crossover will be the Prometheus of Earth-X, and he'll be fittingly known as Prometheus-X. His return was technically teased when the first teaser image was released, as somebody who looks an awful lot like Prometheus could be seen facing off against the good guys with the likes of Dark Arrow, Dark Flash, and Overgirl. What the image didn't reveal was that the man under the Prometheus mask won't be the Adrian Chase of Arrow Season 5.

There are reportedly no plans for Josh Segarra to reprise his role as Adrian Chase in the Arrow-verse, according to EW, which means that somebody else is under the mask as the Prometheus of Earth-X. The big question is whether Prometheus-X is the Earth-X counterpart of an existing Arrow-verse character or we'll get a newcomer who just so happens to go by the same name as an Arrow supervillain.

The absence of Josh Segarra is unfortunate for those of us who came to love his particular brand of crazy as Adrian Chase, especially since the journey to Earth-X meant that he could reprise his role without Arrow making leaps of logic to somehow resurrect Prometheus after he shot himself in the head in the Season 5 finale. There's also been the theory that Adrian had a twin brother, as he did in certain DC Comics stories. It wouldn't be the first time Arrow brought an actor back to play a never-before-mentioned twin.

Without Josh Segarra on board, there are plenty of candidates for Prometheus-X, and some are more off-the-wall than others. The Prometheus in the crossover teaser image is pretty clearly a man, so we can rule out the ladies of Arrow as Prometheus-X. Arrow toyed with making Quentin believe he was Prometheus whenever he blacked out drunk; perhaps the Quentin of Earth-X really did became the bow-toting baddie. Then again, there's Roy as a possibility. The Roy of Earth-1 developed archery skills, and Prometheus-X can be seen with a quiver on his back. Colton Haynes did recently tease his return. Who knows? Maybe Prometheus-X is John Diggle. who was notably absent from the teaser image.

Admittedly, John Diggle is one of the most upstanding characters of the whole Arrow-verse, and it's hard to imagine an evil version of him. That said, the stakes would be raised on Earth-X if the good guys discovered that they would have to battle a version of their good friend Digg, and it would give David Ramsey the chance to get back in the superhero action, if his hints about what's going to happen to Earth-1 Diggle come to pass. We'll have to wait and see. No theory is necessarily too wild at this point.

The four-show crossover will span four hours on two nights, starting with Supergirl and Arrow on November 27 and The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow on November 28. Swing by our fall TV guide for your other TV dates.

Laura Hurley
Senior Content Producer

Laura turned a lifelong love of television into a valid reason to write and think about TV on a daily basis. She's not a doctor, lawyer, or detective, but watches a lot of them in primetime. CinemaBlend's resident expert and interviewer for One Chicago, the galaxy far, far away, and a variety of other primetime television. Will not time travel and can cite multiple TV shows to explain why. She does, however, want to believe that she can sneak references to The X-Files into daily conversation (and author bios).