With HBO’s Lanterns set to feature at least one Season 1 cameo from the mop-headed Guy Gardner (as portrayed by Nathan Fillion) ahead of his big-screen return in James Gunn’s Man of Tomorrow and other upcoming DC movies, comic books fans can feel a certain amount of confidence in the DCU’s ability to connect its worlds across film and TV. Such confidence used to be far less common not that long ago, however, particularly during the Arrowverse era, with Deathstroke as a prime example of the studio’s messy situation.
As fans will no doubt remember, actor Manu Bennett was introduced as Oliver Queen’s former mentor Slade Wilson back in Season 1 of Arrow ahead of his official transition into the lethal machine Deathstroke in Season 2. That arc took place around 2012-2013, around the time Arrow’s creative team introduced its version of DC’s Suicide Squad, only for that to get flipped around by the studio’s head honchos. Co-creator and comic scribe Marc Guggenheim told The Cosmic Circus those same execs were the ones who requested the Squad’s introduction to begin with, saying:
