Cody Rhodes Seems To Be Teasing a Villainous Arrow Role

Last week, Stephen Amell announced during a panel at Heroes & Villains Fan Fest that former WWE Superstar Cody Rhodes would come to Arrow in the show’s forthcoming fifth season.

Now, based on a tweet from Rhodes, it appears confirmed that he will play a villain in the new season, with a slogan on the back of his training jacket that says “Destroy Queen,” referring to Oliver Queen, the character played by Amell in the show.

When Rhodes’ casting was announced, fans generally assumed that he would play a villain-of-the-week considering his heel tendency in the WWE and his previous relationship with Amell, but they didn’t say anything about the character Rhodes would actually be coming to Star City to play.

Back when Cody Rhodes was known as WWE Superstar Stardust, his supervillain schtick attracted the attention of Stephen Amell, the star of The CW’s Arrow. The two fought in a highly-publicized WWE bout last year, with Amell coming out ahead.

The match was the culmination of weeks of trash-talk and back-and-forth between the two, starting on social media and spilling over into the WWE telecasts.

While it’s not clear yet who Rhodes will play, the odds are good that he will be a DC Comics supervillain. After all, it seems unlikely they would waste Rhodes’s build on a white-collar criminal, and Arrow in recent years has tended toward bringing in DC villains when they have a physical threat they want to pose to Oliver.

Arrow returns in October for a new season which will bring, among others, DC Comics supeheroes Vigilante and Wild Dog to the small screen for the first time in live action. The series is expected to begin production next week, along with The Flash, Supergirl, and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, in Vancouver.