Bad-guy Suicide Squad takes aim at ‘Arrow’
They’re on a mission to introduce fresh characters to show
One supervillain isn’t always enough. Sometimes you need a squad of them.
The Suicide Squad, DC Comics’ group of bad guys popularized in the 1980s, makes its first on-screen appearance Wednesday on CW’s Arrow. It continues the superhero show’s run of bringing characters from the comic book to TV, not always in a way that fans might expect.
When it comes to springing them on the viewers, “we have the luxury of waiting till the time is right and we have the right story and the right actor and just the right moment,” says executive producer (and comics writer) Marc Guggenheim.
The second season of Arrow has pitted its hero Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) against his ultimate frenemy, Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett), but the new episode turns the focus — in the past and present — to one of Oliver’s good-guy confidants, John Diggle (David Ramsey).
He’s recruited by his ex-wife,
“Obviously, all these characters facilitate the creation and the exploration of the hero.”
Actor David Ramsey
Lyla Michaels (Audrey Marie Anderson), for a mission connected to a man he saved years earlier in Afghanistan during a specialforces operation. Diggle’s team: a bunch of convicts formed by one of the power players in A.R.G.U.S., the notorious Amanda Waller (Cynthia Addai-Robinson).
There was no grand plan for a Suicide Squad-centric story line; it came about organically, Guggenheim says, much like the team in Marvel’s The Avengers movie. Arrow had introduced enough folks to put together a squad consisting of explosives expert Shrapnel (Sean Maher); clawed martial-arts master Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White); and assassin Deadshot (Michael Rowe), the man who killed Diggle’s brother.
“Obviously, all these characters facilitate the creation and the exploration of the hero. All of the stories lead back to Oliver,” Ramsey says. “What’s been most impressive is making these other characters interesting but also still connecting them to Oliver without being heavy-handed.”
Waller has long been the woman at the heart of the Suicide Squad in the comics — a team of expendable individuals put together for nasty scenarios, usually by shady corners of the government. If they survive, they get time taken off their sentence. If they die, well, no biggie.
Waller has been portrayed many ways in comics and also onscreen. For her take on “The Wall,” Addai-Robinson wanted to portray her as an efficient woman who could be a hero or villain.
“She’s pretty no-nonsense and straight to business,” she says. “There’s a stillness in that — she’s just one of those characters where she looks at you, and you basically know what she’s thinking.”
As much as Arrow producers love to subvert comic-book fans’ expectations, they also enjoy acknowledging that lore and introducing it to the uninitiated. Wednesday’s episode has an “Easter egg ” related to ’80s Suicide Squad writer John Ostrander, plus a blockbuster of a cameo.
“The comic-book fans (in) the audience will lose their mind,” Guggenheim says.