'Arrow' Name-Drops The Outsiders in "We Fall"
Tonight's episode of Arrow saw Mister Terrific, Black Canary, and Wild Dog fully embrace their [...]
Tonight's episode of Arrow saw Mister Terrific, Black Canary, and Wild Dog fully embrace their status as a new team, including trying to come up with a name -- and one of potential names has a significant tie to comic book history.
Spoilers for tonight's episode of Arrow, "We Fall," below.
After referring to themselves as NTA or New Team Arrow for the first half of the episode, once they used intel given to them by Vigilante/Vincent Sobel to save people in Star City's subway system, Curtis suggested a new team name: the Outsiders. While Dinah/Black Canary (Juliana Harkavy) shoots that idea down immediately, it was a nice nod to the comic books for fans.
In DC Comics, the Outsiders is a team largely comprised of superheroes with metahuman powers that don't really fit into the mainstream heroic community -- specifically the Justice League. The team was founded by Batman during a time when his ties to the Justice League were strained. The team, like most teams in comics, has undergone numerous incarnations over its history with one of the more recent versions being introduced in Green Arrow comics as a secret society.
But while the Outsiders have a slight connection to Green Arrow, it's probably wise that Dinah shot the name down. The Outsiders is a team that has far closer ties to Black Lightning. In comics, Black Lightning/Jefferson Pierce is a founding member of Batman's Outsiders. More than that, though, the Outsiders are something that fans of The CW's Black Lightning might just see show up in Freeland, or at least a version of it.
According to Black Lightning star Cress Williams, with Jefferson's daughter Anissa (Nafess Williams) having her own powers and, eventually, becoming the hero Thunder, Black Lightning will have his own little team of super heroes, something the actor referred to as their own version of the Outsiders.
"The thing that's gonna be really, really interesting at some point is that there will be, we will on some level be like a super hero team down the line," Williams said. "So it will be like our own little very small version of The Outsiders."
Arrow airs Thursdays at 9/8c on The CW.