With HBO’s Lanterns set to feature at least one Season 1 cameo from the mop-headed Guy Gardner (as portrayed by Nathan Fillion) ahead of his big-screen return in James Gunn’s Man of Tomorrow and other upcoming DC movies, comic books fans can feel a certain amount of confidence in the DCU’s ability to connect its worlds across film and TV. Such confidence used to be far less common not that long ago, however, particularly during the Arrowverse era, with Deathstroke as a prime example of the studio’s messy situation.
As fans will no doubt remember, actor Manu Bennett was introduced as Oliver Queen’s former mentor Slade Wilson back in Season 1 of Arrow ahead of his official transition into the lethal machine Deathstroke in Season 2. That arc took place around 2012-2013, around the time Arrow’s creative team introduced its version of DC’s Suicide Squad, only for that to get flipped around by the studio’s head honchos. Co-creator and comic scribe Marc Guggenheim told The Cosmic Circus those same execs were the ones who requested the Squad’s introduction to begin with, saying:
The funny thing about the Suicide Squad was, first they asked us to do the Suicide Squad. They said, ‘Have you guys considered, would you consider doing the Suicide Squad in Arrow?’ And we said, ‘Yeah, great.’ And then we did it, and we brought the Suicide Squad back, and they were like, ‘Yeah, we’re doing a Suicide Squad movie. So could you kill them all off?’
We unfortunately may never know the full "why" behind that initial request; was it to test the Suicide Squad's live-action popularity on a smaller scale? Was it some other kind of rights issue that needed working out? Was The Joker running DC Entertainment in the 2010s?
Fans will no doubt remember Arrow's infamous Harley Quinn tease in Season 2's "Suicide Squad," complete with Tara Strong's vocal cameo, though more from the fact that the character was never formally introduced in an official capacity after that. The episode also introduced Floyd "Deadshot" Lawton, Ben "Bronze Tiger" Turner, and Mark "Shrapnel" Scheffer, but without any of them being turned into huge Arrow characters in the aftermath, thanks in large part to David Ayer's 2016 feature based on Amanda Waller's antihero team.
Even at the time, all of the heightened sensitivity over seeing two different versions of comic book characters seemed overwrought and unnecessary, but that feeling is even more relevant in hindsight, considering neither Ayers' nor Taika Waititi's sequel actually utilized Deathstroke. Which is, it seems, why that character was allowed to make sporadic returns to Arrow, even if that just made Guggenheim & Co.'s jobs harder. As the EP put it:
That was often the case, where one day, someone would be off limits, the other day they’d say we could use them and the reverse was also true. That’s one of the reasons why Deathstroke, Manu Bennett’s character, came in and out of the series, because there were moments when DC said yes, and there are moments when DC said no.
Deathstroke did appear destined for greatness on the big screen, especially after Joe Manganiello was cast to play the villain for the end credits sequence for Zack Snyder's Justice League. As reported in the years since, that version of Slade Wilson was reportedly set to face off against Ben Affleck's caped crusader in a standalone Batman film. Bizarrely, however, Manganiello's only return to the Deathstroke role was for the team-up movie's Snyder Cut release in 2021.
As such, it's maddening that Arrow's creative team was hampered by anything happening on the cinematic side of the studio. Given Margot Robbie's returns as Harley Quinn in Birds of Prey and The Suicide Squad, I can more easily understand some qualms about having a different iteration of the character on The CW, even if I think audiences are beyond smart enough to handle such a duality.
Those days appear to be long gone, with James Gunn and Peter Safran's DC Studios making it more of a priority to cross-pollinate between mediums. Which is part of why we'll see Aaron Pierre's Lanterns hero John Stewart appearing in Man of Steel along with Supergirl's Milly Alcock and Peacemaker's Frank Grillo as Rick Flag Sr.
Just don't expect to see Stephen Amell popping up as Oliver Queen; he's set to be a completely different kind of life-saving hero on Baywatch. More red that green on that show, for sure.
