Arrow: The Promises's Easter Eggs, DC Comics References...And Speculation

This week on Arrow, we had a lot of very self-contained material, and so our typical "DC Comics references and Easter eggs" story is probably not quite as factual as it usually is. What we will give you, though, is a few obvious ones, mixed with some speculation. Why? Because tonight saw the introduction of two new characters who seem as though they'll be at least recurring, if not regular, for the rest of the season and possibly next year. We'll start with these guys, and make it clear that they are probably new characters, original to Arrow, but it's fun to speculate who the characters might evolve into, if they were to do so. And, yeah, we'll skip over the fact that Ivo is a villain from the comics, Slade Wilson is a villain from the comics and The Amazo (the name of Ivo's freighter) is the name of best-known creation. Those have all been covered before.

Heinrich Megala?

Hendrick Von Arnim isn't the name of any DC Comics character we could find--but the first time we hear his name spoken aloud, it sounded an awful lot like "Heinrich." Later, we saw him doing one-armed push-ups where the second arm dangled limp at his side. It was likely just a way to emphasize that he was doing so effortlessly, but if we're to stretch our imagination, we could guess that it's foreshadowing. Taking a stab in the dark, there's Dr. Heinrich Megala, a Firestorm villain and a once-vital character who relies now on a high-tech wheelchair to help him function. He last appeared during Dan Jurgens's run on The Fury of Firestorm the Nuclear Man in the New 52, and has been a persistent thorn in the sides of both Firestorm and Captain Atom since the relaunch. Wait a second -- didn't Firestorm's dad used to be married to Felicity Smoak? Of course, Dr. Megala would be a mad scientist who could fill in for Ivo when he's eventually gone, or just replace him. And there's always the outside chance that Hendrik (or somebody else) could be the Arrow-fied version of Thomas Oscar Morrow, Ivo's regular partner.

Rev. Thomas Flynn

Now, that's a good, Irish name if I ever heard one. Again, there's no Tom, Tommy or Thomas Flynn that we can find in the DC Comics Wiki. And while he's got a thing for mice, the rodent-themed heroes and villains are generally about rats, not mice. There was a Joe Flynn -- a name that the Marv Wolfman-created DC character vigilante briefly went by a while back. Wolfman, of course, is best known for his '80s work, especially The New Teen Titans, featuring Roy Harper and Slade Wilson. The DC Animated Universe did include an absurd villain called Pack Rat, who had glasses like the ones Flynn wears--but that seems like a really long shot. And now...on to the actual references.

The Butcher Somehow, we've never noticed that one of Ivo's men is credited as "The Butcher." Or maybe we have, and it just slipped our minds in the meantime. In any event, there are a number of DC Comics characters called "Butcher" or "The Butcher" who could be rolled into the character played by actor Ron Selmour. We can probably disqualify the guy from Darick Robertson and Garth Ennis's The Boys, as well as the Red Lantern since he's an alien. That still leaves us with three potential candidates. Candidate one, a Lois Lane villain, is likely off limits. Why? Well, he only made one appearance, back in the '70s. And also, Superman is like Batman. If there are characters affiliated only with Superman, it's unlikely they'all appear in a non-Superman-branded show. John Butcher is a slightly better guess; he's a kind of anti-hero/vigilante who has been known to work both with and against heroes like Green Arrow and The Question in the comics. The problem? Well, he's Native American, and while you can race-swap, it's generally considered bad form to take a wildly underrepresented group (in comics, that's anybody who isn't black or white, basically) and replace them with somebody else. Even toggling between black and white can be touch and go, but it can be done. It's unlikely, though, that this Butcher is the one who used to be a member of the Lakota tribe. That leaves us with the decidedly metahuman Butcher, who was hired by Hell to hunt Resurrection Man. If you take away his powers, though, and he's just a highly-trained, unstable man who's obsessed with killing an immortal, there's a chance he's a great foil for Ivo's quest for immortality. Of course, whether that's any more likely than racebending John Butcher, or creating an original character, is anybody's guess. Oliver Jonas Queen This may be the first on-camera name drop of Ollie's middle name, which is the same as in the comics. Probably not, since it's listed on The Arrow Wiki, but I can't remember when we've heard it before so I'll just point it out here.

Ivo's wife In the comics, Professor Ivo takes an immortality serum (not unlike why he seemed to be looking for the Mirakuru) which keeps him alive in spite of numerous illnesses, ailments and pains that terrorize his body on a daily basis. In this episode, we discover that he's looking for the Mirakuru for his terminally-ill wife -- but she doesn't particularly appreciate it, indicting him for abandoning her rather than celebrating his desperate search for a cure.

Slade is Deathstroke Both Oliver Queen and Slade Wilson get their "real" costumes on for the first time ever in the flashback sequence this week.