Five DC Comics Characters We Want to See in Arrow Season Four

The writers for Arrow and The Flash are already back at work, planning for what promises to be a [...]

By Russ Burlingame

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The writers for Arrow and The Flash are already back at work, planning for what promises to be a chaotic season for each show.

After all, they've got an ever-growing cast of guest stars to make room for, in addition to adding on a new plot, presumably a new big bad for The Flash (we already know it to be the case for Arrow) and setting up DC's Legends of Tomorrow to debut -- apparently without Ronnie Raymond? -- in early 2016.

But even with all of that going on, they will have to introduce new DC superheroes. At this point, the number of guest heroes and villains in the last few years on Arrow alone has resulted in a pair of spinoffs and a ton of fan enthusiasm.

So, while we'll address The Flash soon...who would we like to see on Arrow? Read on...

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Midnighter

With a hot new series on the stands, Midnighter is a street-level character that would allow Arrow to do one of the things they really enjoy: mirror Batman.

While up to now, Oliver Queen has stood in for the Dark Knight on a number of occasions, Midnighter was created as a stand-in for Batman in a Brand-X Justice League and would give them a chance to make Oliver more likable -- without having to do too much to him.

Midnighter, after all, is more Batman than The Arrow, so he could be so driven and obsessed that even Oliver sees it isn't safe.

It would also give them an opportunity to feature a prominent and badass LGBT character on the show -- something that Arrow has done pretty well so far with Sara Lance and Nyssa Raatko.

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Gangbuster

Jose Delgado is a character who would fit perfectly into the mythology of Arrow. Like Laurel, he's a public servant (in Jose's case, a teacher) whose drive for justice pushed him to look outside of the law for relief.

In the comics, Jose was badly injured early in his career, only for a powerful, manipulative villain (in this case, Lex Luthor) to help him defy the medical odds and walk again.

That in and of itself would be rife with storytelling possibilities this season, since we already know that Damian Darhk and H.I.V.E. have worked with extremely skilled individuals like Deadshot in the past.

A great supporting character for Superman in the '80s and '90s, Delgado would nevertheless fit in much better with the cast of Arrow than he would Supergirl, at least as far as we can tell from the Supergirl footage that's been officially released.

He would also make for an interesting romantic foil for Laurel, mirroring his chemistry with both Lois Lane and Cat Grant at various points during his time in Adventures of Superman, although given that he's so incredibly straight-laced and nice, one would run the risk of repeating the Ray Palmer material a second time.

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Connor Hawke

This is the kind of thing that's been teased out for a while now. By Season Four, Connor would necessarily be coming up on ten years old (since Oliver impregnated the boy's mother before he left with Sara on the boat). We've now known for more than a full season that the child is out there somewhere.

Oliver's baby is a time bomb waiting to go off -- and after last season, where he was "outed" as the Arrow, Connor's fascination with his father's extracurricular activities, which played out in the comics by seeing the teenager take up archery at Oliver's old monastery, wouldn't be an unreasonable story thread to start pulling at, perhaps for a "full" reveal of the character in some way in Season Five.

There would also be a nice symmetry to introducing Connor the same year The Flash will reportedly roll out Wally West, Barry Allen's nephew and eventual successor as The Flash.

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The Question

This is one that comes up every year, but there's a good reason for it: he would be a great fit.

As written in the comics, The Question is often depicted as Randian in his philosophies politically, a counterpoint to Oliver Queen's outspoken liberalism. While showrunners have expressed that it's nearly impossible to make a character too political on TV given how divided the country is, carrying that over and making The Question an invaluable ally on the battlefield but one Oliver can't stand personally -- maybe even going the Watchmen route, there -- could be an interesting dynamic.

They flirted with that a little bit with Merlyn last season, but Merlyn is a special case. His status as Oliver's arch-nemesis tends to supercede any one storyline they try to put him in, and so they can't play a "wow, I hate that guy" subplot too straight lest the audience basically collectively say, "Well, OF COURSE."

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Hal Jordan

This is the obvious choice.

With Oliver on a boat bound for Coast City at the end of Season Three, fans will likely be very upset if he doesn't at least cross paths with Hal -- his longtime best friend and hard-traveling companion in the comics -- at some point.

Making him a full-time or even recurring guest might be problematic, of course: even if we are to assume, as many do, that Hal will not be the Green Lantern in the forthcoming Justice League and Green Lantern movies, he's still a character so closely associated with a major, feature film-driving DC property that it's hard to imagine they'd be willing to give The CW much leeway with his depiction.

That said, there could be something fun about seeing Green Lantern-before-he-was-Green Lantern and Green Arrow-before-he-was-Green Arrow palling around a bit. It might even feel a bit like when Bruce Wayne, Oliver Queen and Hal Jordan were part of Superman's "team" for a while in The Supergirl Saga by John Byrne. Those characters, part of a nearly-destroyed "pocket universe," appeared in a way that played up their essential personality traits even without their costumes and powers. Similar stories were told years later in the world of Flashpoint.

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