You can’t really throw a rock without hitting a DC superhero TV show these days, a roster which now includes Arrow, The Flash, Supergirl and Gotham, and is about to see Legends of Tomorrow added as well.
Unlike Marvel TV shows, which are looped into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even if there isn’t that much actual overlap (SHIELD has the most, Daredevil has practically none, for example), DC TV shows are in their own little universe. Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow are all full-blood siblings. Supergirl is a half-sister, but may end up doing actual crossovers with the others. Gotham is more of a distant cousin, set in the past, yet there have been hints it’s still in the same universe as the others all the same.
But something weird has been happening for a little while where DC seems like they’re going out of their way to punish a few of these shows for using a few iconic characters. Namely, it really does seem like they’re killing off characters from shows like Arrow and Gotham in service of protecting their parallel Snyder-universe alter egos in Suicide Squad.
(Arrow and Gotham spoilers follow)
This started last year with Arrow, a show where it seems like it’s practically impossible for characters to die permanently lately, and yet the show unexpectedly did away with one of its most impressive villains to date, Floyd Lawton, aka Deadshot.
Deadshot was responsible for the death of Diggle’s brother, and the two have had a longstanding feud. But over the course of a few episodes which formed Arrow’s own version of the Suicide Squad, Lawton was allowed to develop a hell of a lot of depth, and managed to be one of the most multi-dimensional villains the show has seen. And yet, late into season three, he was killed, effectively sacrificing himself for his former enemies. And it seems like he’s dead-dead, not just “Arrow” dead, implying a later resurrection.
When executive produce Marc Guggenheim was praised for Deadshot’s casting and asked about his possible resurrection, he had this to say:
“First, thanks for the kind words. I agree with you, our casting people — in Los Angeles and Vancouver — are the best. Unfortunately, Deadshot is off the table for the nonce.”
“For the nonce” meaning “for the time being” for those unfamiliar with the phrase. And it certainly does not sound like it was his decision to remove Deadshot from the board.
The idea here is that DC possibly orchestrated this on purpose to make sure that Arrow’s Deadshot (played by Michael Rowe) was not going to produce a conflicting version of the character when Suicide Squad’s Deadshot (played by Will Smith) is one of the leads of the film alongside Harley and the Joker.
And how about that Joker? Well, that’s where Gotham comes in, as the show did something suspiciously similar with its version of the character a few weeks ago, almost literally at the exact moment when the show proved it had a hell of an interpretation of the character on its hands.
The Gotham situation is even murkier. Late into the first season, they had a Joker “origins” episode that built (clumsily) to a grand reveal that a young man named Jerome (Shameless’s Cameron Monaghan) was actually the boy-who-would-become Joker (or at least someone that looks, acts and sounds exactly like the Joker), having killed his mother while employed at a carnival.
The reception was initially mixed for this storyline, but Monaghan’s Joker came back with a vengeance in season two, sprung from Arkham by the show’s new lead villain, billionaire Theo Galavan, and tasked with creating Joker-style mayhem in the city to propel Galavan to “take control” as mayor. This included threatening to burn a literal bus full of cheerleaders alive, and eventually the young Joker puts on a deadly magic show at a charity event with the newly psychotic Barbara Gordon acting as his Harley Quinn in everything but name.
By this point, even skeptics had to give Monaghan’s Joker credit for being a really damn good interpretation of the character, a great mix of Ledger and Nicholson, if judged by past iterations. And then, in the height of his upward turn, he’s killed. Galavan stabs him in the throat, pretending to save Bruce Wayne to earn “Gotham hero” status. Monaghan’s Joker wasn’t in on the plan, and his last words probably echo the actor’s thoughts as well, “I was gonna be a star!”
After this, there’s some implication that the “spirit of the Joker” lives on, as he was broadcast to the entire city and his madness starts to spread, as random civilians start laughing manically and killing people in the end of the episode. The “lore” here is that maybe proto-Joker’s death creates the “real” Joker, someone who will grow up to look and act pretty much exactly like the dead one. Even for Gotham, it’s a really, really far-fetched turn.
The parallel here of course is that DC really wants to hard sell Jared Leto’s new Joker, who will be a significant factor in Suicide Squad, and eventually in new standalone Batman movies, no doubt. After all, Chris Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy was practically defined by Ledger’s villain. And yet here again, DC killed off a stellar villain character on one of its shows for no discernible reason, leading me to suspect a heavy upper management hand in writing the death. Otherwise, it makes little sense to kill two of the best characters from each show in these really awkward ways.
There are more minor examples of this as well. Harley Quinn, for example, was purposefully kept as only an Easter Egg in the Suicide Squad episode of Arrow (with only a single line voiced by Harley voice actress Tara Strong, and even the cameo was reduced from what it originally was supposed to be). And though Barbara Gordon has been acting more or less exactly like Harley the past few weeks on Gotham, she will never actually be the character. This is all despite the fact that either show would welcome Harley as an addition to the cast.
And fundamentally, the sheer concepts of almost all DC TV shows are meant to be separate from the films. Gotham is a Batman show without Batman (and now without the Joker). Arrow exists while Green Arrow has never even been mentioned in an upcoming slate of films. Supergirl will likely not see her own movie either.
But there are some overlap exceptions, which could indicate this is merely a conspiracy theory. Captain Boomerang has appeared prevalently in both Arrow and The Flash, and is also in the Suicide Squad film (though I would argue no one cares about Captain Boomerang). And of course The Flash itself will directly parallel an upcoming Flash movie, with Grant Gustin replaced by Ezra Miller as Barry Allen. And given how much ground the CW’s Flash has covered already, it’s almost impossible the two won’t share both a hero and villains.
I can’t get the Deadshot and Joker deaths out of my head though, and it’s frustrating because the point of having separate TV and movie universes is that you can overlap characters, even major ones. Marvel could never introduce a “low budget” Captain America or Loki into Agents of SHIELD, played by a different actor, because it would break the lore of the MCU. But Arrow and Gotham? Why can’t they have their own Deadshot or Joker? Their viewership can’t possibly be enough to compete with these huge upcoming blockbusters, so why penalize them by taking away some of their best assets?
Or I’m just reading too much into this. Deadshot wanted a vacation. The abrupt proto-Joker storyline went exactly as planned. Who knows. But if not, DC needs to rethink their policy on sharing.
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