Zack Snyder’s Justice League: Joe Manganiello Confirms Ra’s al Ghul Easter Egg

Ra’s al Ghul has become one of the most prolific Batman villains in non-comics media, appearing not only in Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed Dark Knight Trilogy but also on Gotham, Arrow, and Pennyworth. Now, it seems, the ancient evil will be at least alluded to in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, as well. That’s according to Joe Manganiello, who was tapped to play the villainous Slade Wilson, better known as Deathstroke and another character who has been popping up in a lot of live-action adaptations of DC Comics of late. The actor has been talking about Snyder’s cut of the superhero team-up flick, and on social media, spilled a little bit of new information.

After a fan at AT&T’s Zack Snyder’s Justice League display tweeted a photo of Deathstroke’s costume, complete with a pair of red-and-black logos on the hilt of his sword, Manganiello confirmed that one of the two was the sigil of the League of Shadows. The other logo is a little harder to parse, although it does look a bit like the Deadpool logo…and since there’s a school of thought that has always accused Deadpool of being influenced by Deathstroke, it could be an inside joke on the designer’s part.

(For his part, Deadpool creator Rob Liefeld has always denied those claims, saying that the costume design was influenced by Spider-Man and the personality was unique to Deadpool.)

In Zack Snyder’s Justice League, determined to ensure Superman’s (Henry Cavill) ultimate sacrifice was not in vain, Bruce Wayne (Ben Affleck) aligns forces with Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) with plans to recruit a team of metahumans to protect the world from an approaching threat of catastrophic proportions. The task proves more difficult than Bruce imagined, as each of the recruits must face the demons of their own pasts to transcend that which has held them back, allowing them to come together, finally forming an unprecedented league of heroes. Now united, Batman (Affleck), Wonder Woman (Gadot), Aquaman (Jason Momoa), Cyborg (Ray Fisher) and The Flash (Ezra Miller) may be too late to save the planet from Steppenwolf, DeSaad and Darkseid and their dreadful intentions.

Originally removed from the film during production amid a family crisis and jittery executives reeling from the fallout of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Snyder has always maintained that he had a near-complete film, and a vision to execute it. That vision changed, at least somewhat, when HBO Max finally came to him with a budget for reshoots and the promise that Zack Snyder’s Justice League could finally see the light of day.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League will be available to stream on HBO Max on March 18.