Manu Bennett

Whether or not Arrow abandons its flashback device altogether after Season 5, the upcoming episodes will inevitably return Oliver Queen to the bearded castaway we first saw in the 2012 pilot. To wit, star Stephen Amell is now teasing the return of a familiar foe, albeit with a deathly familiar stroke.

Any Arrow fan well-knows that Manu Bennett’s Deathstroke has served as the series’ peak villain, though convoluted movie plans have largely kept the character offscreen since. Now, it appears as if the series’ 100th episode will at last feature Deathstroke’s return, but is Manu Bennett behind the mask?

More and more, TV and film actors of the DC universe have been able to appreciate one another’s shared roles. We’ve seen one Flash digging another’s costume, and now Arrow star Manu Bennett weighs in on Joe Manganiello taking the role of Deathstroke to the big screen for Ben Affleck’s solo Batman movie.

We’ve known for some time Legends of Tomorrow would travel to “Star City 2046” to meet a future iteration of Arrow’s Oliver Queen, as well as Connor Hawke, both of which made their photo debut earlier today. Now that the first trailer has arrived however, it seems Deathstroke has been confirmed for a return after all - with a twist.

Arrow fans have noticed more steadily that any and all Suicide Squad characters shared with the upcoming film have been “taken off the table” through various means, seemingly for good. Manu Bennett’s Deathstroke still draws breath, but may now be “tied up in another DC project” and equally unable to return, according to producer Marc Guggenheim.

Midway through its fourth season, Arrow has admittedly lost a step here and there, never quite regaining the heights of its second season battle against Manu Bennett’s Slade Wilson. Stephen Amell surprisingly concurs, admitting at a recent convention that he hopes the character might return, as Arrow has been “missing something” since Season 2.

After beating a number of villains who could all be accurately described as human, clearly it's time that Oliver Queen faced something a little more... mythical. The CW's Arrow has found its Deathstroke, and he has prior experience as both a Spartan warrior and also a Middle Earth-dwelling orc warrior...