The Case For An Atom Spinoff

The first thing we need to do here is set the terms of the debate.

There will be no "A.T.O.M." in this conversation. You can take it as read that when I'm talking about the costume/armor, I mean the A.T.O.M. system, but at the end of the day, Ray Palmer is The Atom, and it's my opinion there's zero chance that, if he were to get his own series, they would do the thing with the periods. After all, there's another show on TV right now that does that, and they have superheroes, too. You don't want to invite associations with the competition.

In any event, this weekend exploded with The CW news, and one of the biggest things people took away from it was a quote from Greg Berlanti that they're in the very early stages of developing a very rough concept for what might someday be a Ray Palmer-centric spinoff for Arrow.

I'm fully in favor.

Ray Palmer is one of DC's most underutilized characters...in no small part because every time they've attempted to utilize him in recent history it seems to have failed to take hold. He hasn't even had an attempt at a New 52 launch yet, in spite of being featured in Frankenstein, Agent of S.H.A.D.E. almost from the very beginning. So there's huge upside to the hero that hasn't been capitalized on in years. A TV show could be a great forum to explore it, as it would bring him to a wider audience.

"But," you might say, "What about the Ant-Man movie? Aren't the characters too similar?"

Yes and no. On paper they seem very similar, but of course, Ray Palmer is an established, likable personality on Arrow and any show revolving around him would have to deal with his tech guru nature...something that is very different from the approach Marvel is taking with Ant-Man, where the lead character isn't super-scientist Hank Pym but a second-generation hero who's still clever, but not a genius and a bit more morally gray.

And that brings me to my first point...

The science hero is a different archetype than either Flash or Arrow represent. 

Yes, Barry Allen is a scientist, but that's more a day job than a regular part of who he is. In spite of the fact that the wild success of forensic cop shows like CSI had led to people saying for years now that a TV adaptation of The Flash should probably focus a lot of its energy on that element of Barry's character, the show that eventually materialized was arguably a more traditional superhero show than any of the other comic book adaptations on the air.

The idea of a science hero is one that has deep roots in geek culture, from Doc Savage to Reed Richards and many more. 

The O.M.A.C. Project, from which Ray retrieved the design, is fraught with great potential backstory.

In the comics, there are a couple of different approaches to O.M.A.C.: One is that in the future, the Brother Eye satellite will be an extremely powerful artificial intelligence and, to one exent or another, have taken over the operations of government. Another is that the satellite is being used by wealthy and powerful people in the present to keep tabs on super-beings for nefarious purposes. In either case, you could get some mileage out of it...although the latter certainly works better on paper for a show with ties to Arrow.

Brandon Routh is great (and that would be three DC leads Felicity has wrapped around her little finger).

Every recognizable actor has a certain contingent of viewers who hate them, so we won't say Routh is universally liked, but he comes across as a good actor and a nice guy, and many fans have spent the last ten years saying some variation on "...yeah, but Routh wasn't the problem with Superman Returns."

Either way, Routh has done more to make Ray Palmer his own than he ever did Superman, and in addition to his geek cred from projects like Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and Chuck, he's such a compelling character that Arrow has succeeded where Veronica Mars failed in its third season: they introduced a likable romantic competitor for the main character and have, with some exceptions that are, again, inevitable, managed to make him interesting enough that most fans are giving him a chance even though he's currently an Olicity obstacle.

The Atom is incredibly malleable. 

From Sword of the Atom to Countdown (I know, I know...I want to forget it, too) to the Dan Jurgens-era Teen Titans, this is a character who has a wide variety of stories under his size-changing belt...and enough really solid high concepts to give them a lot of flexibility in storytelling.

That we know very little of his background or motivations yet could serve us well here, too.

The Atom costume is an undertaking...why not keep using it?

If The Atom is a supporting character on Arrow, his onscreen time once you get past the season that introduces him (this one) is almost necessarily going to be more limited. But...the exosuit they've created for the character is apparently a heck of an undertaking (they're still finishing it) and something they're very proud of, with producer Marc Guggenheim saying at one point that it's the best costume they've ever done on the show and one that looks worthy of a feature film.

It's hard to imagine they wouldn't want to give that as broad a platform as possible...!