Ever since the post-credit scene of the much-maligned Justice League, fans have held on to the glimmer of hope of a hardcore cinematic imagining of Slade Wilson aka Deathstroke, but nothing has come of it.
That is, at least not yet.
Actor Joe Manganiello, who appeared in the armored, one-eyed assassin-for-hire in the last few moments of the film, offered fans a glimmer of hope for Deathstroke’s future in his own solo venture.
In a recent interview with MTV at Comic-Con International, Manganiello claimed:
“It’s in the works. Because it is, and there’s nothing further that I can say [about it.] Because I’m part of a team, I’m apart of a locker room, and you don’t talk outside the locker room. But all I can say for the hardcore fans, it’s in the works. They want the character to happen. It’s just when he happens.”
Deathstroke, in a much broader capacity, was embodied on the small screen for the past five years by Manu Bennett on the hit CW series Arrow as Oliver Queen’s trainer-turned-foe-turned-friend. The show’s producers purposely wrote that version of Wilson out of the series so to allow Manganiello’s incarnation to soldier onward, which Bennett has given his blessing on.
Deathstroke was created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez in 1987 during their monumental run on Tales of The Teen Titans. He is a military man who underwent physical augmentation that made him able to use 70% of his brain and enhanced strength. When his mercenary life caught up with him with the mutilation of his youngest son, his wife shot him in the eye, giving him his trademark eyepatch. A man of honor, Wilson chose to avenge the death of his son – a mercenary whose own augmentations killed him while trying to complete an assassination contract on the Titans – by taking up the contract and became one of their more persistent enemies. Since then, he has become one of the most prevalent DC antagonists and even had his own solo series following the New 52.
