deathstroke

In the on and off love affair between DC’s television and cinematic arms, The CW’s ‘Arrow‘ has once again been told they can’t use Deathstroke on the show. We’ve seen a lot of fun uses of Deathstroke on the show but now we’ve heard from Arrow’s executive producer Marc Guggenheim that they were told the character was off the table.

I’m sure we can all guess that this has to do with Joe Manganiello‘s take on the character in the ‘Justice League’ film and potential future standalone movie and rumored inclusion in ‘The Batman‘.

Guggenheim shared the sad news at the ACE Comic Con where he was responding to a character question as to how the upcoming film slate would play into the future of the shows:

“These are DC’s characters, we’re just renting them ya know, so we use the characters that they tell us we can use when we can use them, and we work around whatever limitations that places us.”

A bit vague, but when he was specifically asked about Manu Bennett returning as Slade on the show Guggenheim went into more detail:

“Yeah, I think you know as a result we’ve been on and off. For a time they were saying ‘you can’t use Deathstroke’, and that changed and we were able to have Slade Wilson back on the show, and now we’re back to ‘you can’t use him’. They’re working on the feature film version, it really is sort of now that you’ve got obviously Slade, spoiler alert, Deathstroke appears at the end of the Justice League movie.”

He is clearly hoping that they’ll have a chance to bring the character back but it isn’t something I would hold my breath for. Which is a shame as he was one of the more interesting actors that they had in the series in recent seasons.

As to what he thought about the single scene that Manganiello appeared as the character?

“Yeah, it was a great scene. I think Joe is a great actor. You know Manu’s been very encouraging of his work and, you know, there’s these intervals, and we try and take advantage of our opportunities when we have them.”

At least it seems like he and Manu enjoyed what they saw. Though, it wouldn’t surprise me if the pair were a bit annoyed at how things worked out for them.

Are you annoyed that we won’t be seeing Deathstroke on the small screen in the immediate future or did you prefer the very short ‘Justice League’ take on him which may or may not develop into something more down the line? Share your thoughts below!

Source: Comic Book