By: Russ Burlingame on September 9, 2012
It seems like every week or so, there’s a new story coming out of Green Arrow TV that another new DC Comics character has been added to the cast of the forthcoming CW Network series Arrow.
Some, like Felicity Smoak or Kate Spencer, are likely to be little more than a supporting character or guest with a familiar name while others–notably Deathstroke and Deadshot–have already been established as somewhat more major players.
So who would we like to see in this show?
Certainly you can say you want Superman and Green Lantern all you want, but that doesn’t make it any more likely to happen. This is a show where the showrunners have said they don’t want powers to be part of the equation, and expect that to be kept up at least early on.
That said, there are plenty of DC characters–The Huntress is already teased, for example–who can fit perfectly well into that kind of show.
Ted Kord
There will be a handful of people on this list who are here mostly because they would run in the same social circles as Oliver Queen, and therefore could plausibly show up in his town without necessarily having to stop and stay there permanently. That’s where Ted Kord comes in. While the comics may dismiss his existence at this point, it would be nice for Arrow–like Smallville before it–to at least have a wink-and-a-nod to the fact that the second Blue Beetle might exist.
And, really, how many young, ultra-rich adventurer-technocrats can there be in the DC Universe? Assuming that a few of them are off-limits due to their connection to bigger characters with movie deals and the like, Ted seems a perfectly likely candidate to be a competitor for Ollie, both in business and maybe in his personal life, as well. Love triangle, anyone?
Eddie Fyers
As a huge fan of the Chuck Dixon Green Arrow run that saw Connor Hawke take the mantle for a while following Zero Hour, Eddie Fyers is one of those great supporting characters that we got so many of in the ’90s that could have, in the ’70s or ’80s, probably supported a series or at least a miniseries of his own. We got the same thing with Buck Wargo and his Monster Hunters over in Guy Gardner: Warrior, and with a number of the Daily Planet staff in Superman at the time.
Eddie, an old buddy of Ollie’s, resurfaced to help Connor figure out the whole “living in the real world” thing after he came out of the monastery to take on his dad’s role as Green Arrow. While it’s unlikely bordering on impossible that we’ll ever see Connor appear onscreen, it could be pretty cool to see the relationship between Ollie and Eddie developed, giving the show a great supporting character and fans a taste of how that dynamic might have worked in the days before Ollie became an icon.
He’s also a retired mercenary-slash-killer-for-hire who’s had a few shots at Ollie in his day. That could make him a nice foil for Deathstroke!
Shado
Yeah, they’re basing most of this show on the events of Green Arrow: Year One by Andy Diggle and Jock, but is there any question that most Arrowheads would love to see some of the characters and concepts from Mike Grell’s iconic run on the character appear in the comics.
Speaking of which…
Travis Morgan
Here’s a character that could be fun to play with; we’ve already said we’d like to see Justin Hartley take the part, just for the “Hey! you look alike!” in-jokes.
And as great as that one issue in which they appeared together was, this idea could go well past being a one-note joke. These are both guys whose entire lifestyles were upset when they found themselves stranded in an unfamiliar tropical paradise, and who came out of it with a renewed sense of purpose and identity. They’re similar characters in that way, and it could make for a very interesting conversation.
Scott Free & Oberon
Again with the, “Well, it just makes sense” argument. You wouldn’t even need the New Gods to be expressly identified, but you could use Scott Free, Oberon and maybe even Big Barda as carnival entertainers or even just show them on TV (as Scott was sometimes depicted as being the most media-friendly DC hero this side of Booster Gold), as a fun little in-joke for fans that still colors within the lines of what they can do with the no-powers edict.
Plus, if the Justice League movie ever happens it will likely involve Darkseid, which would make a non-powered Scott a perfect candidate to be the tie between the two properties, dragged offscreen on Arrow just before the film was released in theaters.
Maxwell Lord
There’s conspiracy afoot, as far as we can tell from the teasers for the show, and who better to help Ollie get to the bottom of it (or maybe obstruct his path, if that’s what’s in his own best interests) than the Black King of Checkmate? Even if you didn’t want to introduce the Checkmate idea, you’ve got the fact that Max is a billionaire philanthropist who at one point in his history strongly believed that superheroes and other costumed avengers can do a lot of good in the world. Sounds like teh kind of guy who might find his way to Starling City once Green Arrow started making headlines.
Amanda Waller
See what we said above about Max in terms of the espionage community portion of Arrow. Amanda is an iconic DC character who has appeared in a number of different media. The biggest problem, of course, might be that DC Entertainment and Warner Brothers don’t want to create confusion between her depiction here and the one in Green Lantern a couple of years back–but that’s really only likely to be an issue if The Wall is actually going to be a through-line that carries into Man of Steel. That’s probably not very likely, since nobody’s mentioned anything about Angela Bassett paying a visit to the set or anything, but one never knows.
Dick Grayson
Like Scott Free before him and Rex Mason after, Grayson could show up mostly as an Easter egg but certainly could set the stage for the Batman appearance that showrunners have said they’d like to try eventually. After all, any world in which the Flying Graysons exist, must by logical extension have a Batman, right? Even Flashpoint, where there was no Bruce Wayne, had a Batman!
Rex Mason
We’ve talked about the possibility of the well-dressed man having a connection to Mason, and there’s the fact that his powers operate very similarly to Firestorm’s, whose stepmother is already announced as being a character on the show. What does that mean for our would-be Metamorpho? Likely next to nothing, but if Simon Stagg were to show up as a potential character in the show, maybe we’d get to meet his lovely daughter and her boyfriend.
Moonday Hawke
This one’s a pipe dream, for any number of reasons, but wouldn’t it twist your mind in a knot after all the build-up to using Dinah Lance as the major love interest, if the season ended with Ollie hooking up with the gal who would one day turn out to be Connor’s mom? That way if the show didn’t get picked up past the first season, you can still imagine what comes next.
