Who could have guessed that Arrow on The CW would have turned out to be such a wildly fun and impressive show, featuring not only the Emerald Archer himself, but an ever-increasing amount of DC comics characters, too?
Over the course of the second season we’ve seen the early beginnings of what will eventually lead into The Suicide Squad, and now we have our first look at the full lineup for the antihero team. For those unfamiliar, the Suicide Squad is a group of imprisoned supervillains led by Amanda Waller, who take on black-ops missions for the government in exchange for shorter prison sentences. Waller, who first appeared in the sixth episode of this season, also came back in episode twelve to lay the groundwork for the team’s eventual appearance on the show.
The image above comes courtesy of CBR, and gives us a rather surprising look at the squad’s roster. From left to right, we have Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White), Shrapnel (Sean Maher), Amanda Waller (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), Deadshot (Michael Rowe), Lyla Michaels (Audrey Marie Anderson) and…John Diggle (David Ramsey)?!
In order to provide us with some clarification, CBR spoke with executive producer Andrew Kreisberg about the crew, who gave a little hint at the reasoning behind Diggle teaming up with the former criminals (especially Deadshot, the man who killed his brother).
“Dig was our way into Amanda Waller, and in this episode, Amanda comes to Dig and Lyla, and she recruits Dig for a mission, and tells him he’s going to need a team — and she saddles him with the Suicide Squad.”
It will be interesting to see how Diggle handles working with the rest of the team, but hopefully we’ll find a few more answers in the weeks leading up to the “Suicide Squad” episode of Arrow, which is due to air on March 19th.