When Starz’s wrestling drama Heels returns for its second season, the Stephen Amell-led series will apparently “tie in” to Arrow a few times. If that phrasing is a little vague, that’s on purpose: it came out of a column at TVLine recently, but not a news piece — it showed up in Matt Webb Mitovich’s mailbag, and was lobbed out there as a tease for the audience, more than any specific reveal. One might assume that the most obvious way to tie back into Arrow is simply by bringing in some Arrow guest stars to appear on the show.
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Casting certainly is an area where there is room for surprises; earlier this year, Dave Bautista posted photos from the set, suggesting the WWE and Guardians of the Galaxy veteran may appear in the upcoming season. Of course, Stephen Amell’s love for wrestling was known during his time on Arrow. He actually brought in Cody Rhodes to play a drug dealer whose narcotic of choice — Stardust — took its name from Rhodes’s WWE gimmick.
Heels is created by Marvel Studios writer and producer Michael Waldron. In interviews leading up to the show’s debut, Waldron discussed the process that went into finding the right actor to play Jack Spade. Former WWE superstar and current AEW wrestler C.M. Punk was even in the running to play Jack Spade, but Stephen Amell, an avid wrestling fan, ultimately won the role. However, Punk did get to play Ricky Rabies.
“Well, casting the lead of any show is hard, because they’ve just got to be an awesome, tremendous actor who can carry a show on their shoulders,” Waldron previously told ComicBook.com. “Playing Jack Spade, there’s the added requirement of you have to have the physicality of a great wrestler. We had to have somebody who could believably pull off this stuff in the ring and outside of the ring, when framed against his wife and kids, and other people in the town, you’d believe this is a pro wrestler who lives here. There’s not a lot of people who look like that who are also great actors. Steven Amell is one of those people. We were so fortunate to get him, coming off of the success of Arrow, with the ultimate added bonus of the guy loves wrestling. He might be the biggest fan of all of us, and he’s actually wrestled with WWE. So I mean, God, we were lucky to get Steve.”
Are you ready for Heels to make its return for its sophomore season? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!
