The Arrowverse’s legacy is only getting bigger and better as time goes on, and nostalgia inevitably sets in. Sure, it was easy to nitpick at a time when fans were getting new episodes from multiple DC TV shows, but nowadays, when DC is still in the midst of figuring out its next era of TV programming, the Arrowverse looks like a much more signficant achievement, at a time when building an entire comic book universe on television was a pioneering effort.
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Ten years ago today, the Arrowverse premiered an episode that saw the Arrowverse take one of its biggest swings at a popular DC franchise, and managed to execute on it before the DCEU film franchise could get it done. And, if you were to ask some fans today, they might say the Arrowverse actually did it better.
Arrow’s “Suicide Squad” Episode Aired 10 Years Ago Today
Arrow Season 2 is looked at as one of the best installments of the series, with good reason. The seasonal storyline revealed Oliver Queen/Arrow’s (Stephen Amell) history with Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett), the elite mercernary who came back to terrorize Oliver in present day as the armored super-soldier known as “Deathstroke.” That conflict pulled in more elements from Arrow’s checkered past, including his dark history with Sara Lance and Slade on the island of Lian Yu, and Team Arrow’s connection to Amanda Waller (Cynthia Addai-Robinson) and her shady A.R.G.U.S. organization.
It was that latter story beat that came into the spotlight during the backhalf of Season 2, culminating in Episode 16, “Suicide Squad”, which aired on March 19, 2016. The Episode saw A.R.G.U.S. target Gholem Qadir (Lee Majdoub), a Afghan drug lord and businessman who was secretly a member of Damien Darhk’s H.I.V.E. organization. John Diggle (David Ramsey) and his wife Lyla Michaels (Audrey Marie Anderson) saved Qadir years before during a high-stakes mission – which is exactly why Waller taps them to get close to and stop Qadir, who has acquired a deadly nerve agent and intends to sell it.
Waller assigns a team to back Lyla and Diggle in the field: a group of criminals that have battled Team Arrow, and ended up conscripted into Waller’s “Task Force X” a squad of expendible agents she can deploy for deadly missions. The first Arrowverse Suicide Squad was made up of Floyd Lawton/Deadshot (Michael Rowe), Digger Harkness/Captain Boomerang (Nick E. Tarabay), Ben Turner/Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White), and Mark Scheffer/Shrapnel (Sean Maher). However, there was one character that didn’t make the Squad, even though fans got teased with her presence…
“Suicide Squad” Teased Arrowverse Fans With The Best Harley Quinn
When John Diggle finds out that Deadshot is being recruited onto Task Force X, he has a major problem with it; after all, Lawson was the one that John believes (at the time) is responsible for killing his little brother, Andy. That sparks a big fight between John and Lyla over putting the mission first, and inmate overhears it and tries to offer a helping hand: Harley Quinn.
We only get to see her from the back, locked in her cell, but it unmistakenly Harley. In fact, “Suicide Squad” director Larry Teng and the Arrowverse producers went so far as to tap actress Tara Strong to come in record the vocals for Harley’s brief dialogue: “Do you cuites need some counciling? I’m a trained therapist!”
Strong was very first actor to play Harley Quinn, building the character up from scratch when she was first introduced in Batman: The Animated Series during the early 1990s. For many diehard fans, Strong is the only true “authentic” voice and spirit behind Harley, with later actresses like Margot Robbie or Kaley Cuoco inevitably having to navigate the expectations and admiration that Tara Strong created. However, for those who don’t recall there were strict limits imposed on the Arrowverse, especially when it came to being prohibited from using anything related to Batman or his universe.
Arrow fans had settled into the idea that the series was ostensibly doing a bait-and-switch, with a distinctly more Batman-esque take on the Green Arrow character from the comics. But it was often a tightrope walk to imitate so much Batman lore without being cornered by the usage rights. Moments like Harley’s cameo in the “Suicide Squad” episode were the tidbits that Arrowverse producers coud feed to fans, just to let them know that they, too, wished to play will all the figures in the DC toychest.
Arrowverse Did Better With Its Suicide Squad Than the DCEU Did
Arrow‘s “Suicide Squad” aired on in March of 2016; in August of that same year, Warner Bros. Pictures released the DCEU feature-film Suicide Squad (2016) as a bold new lane of superhero movies. The film similarly sees Amanda Waller (Viola Davis) conscripting a group of supervillain inmates (including Will Smith’s Deadshot and Jai Courtney’s Captain Boomerang) into a deadly covert operation, in exchange for time off their prison sentences. To keep the various villains in line, Waller has their skulls implanted with miniature bombs, which she could set off whenever she wanted, killing them instantly if they don’t obey. The squad is led by an actual military operative tied to Waller (Joel Kinnaman’s Rick Flag Jr.), and tries to stop a dark witch called Enchantress (Cara Delevingne) from unleashing supernatural evil upon the world. Along the way, however, the villains double-cross one another, constantly try slip Waller’s leash, and have to avoid the insane malevlence of The Joker, along the way.
One of the biggest roles of the dice was the casting of Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn in Suicide Squad. Fans were so used to Tara Strong’s animated version that Robbie was practically handed orders to imitate the animated version before she ever started shooting. Thankfully she found her own way, managing to return for a second film, The Suicide Squad (2021), and getting her own spinoff film, Birds of Prey (and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn). At this point, Robbie’s Harley has become one of the biggest icons of DC movies, to the point that many fans still want her transplanted into James Gunn’s new DCU franchise. We’ll have to wait and see if that happens, but for now, fans can take a moment to rewatch how Arrow opened the door for the Suicide Squad franchise to grow into what it is today.
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Courtesy of Bones Film
