Arrow has seen a lot of bad guys come and go in the past four seasons, but now it looks like one of those villains may be coming back way sooner than anyone could have thought. It's possible that the one and only Floyd Lawton, a.k.a Deadshot, might actually be heading back to Star City this season.
I know what you're thinking, "Didn't Will Smith just play Deadshot in that Suicide Squad movie?" and "Doesn't that mean that we're not supposed to see him on Arrow again?" Well, you'd be correct on both counts. DC is trying to keep their TV and film worlds separate, and part of that separation is in only having one version at a time of most of their heroes and villains. So, since the current reigning Deadshot is Will Smith's film version of the character, we thought we'd never see Arrow's Floyd Lawton, played by actor Michael Rowe, again. But, according to a report from Green Arrow TV, the anti-hero will be appearing in this week's episode of Arrow.
So, surprising information, right? Well, if you remember, that's not the only thing that's surprising about this possible appearance. Deadshot was last seen working for Amanda Waller as a part of (no surprise here) the Suicide Squad in the Season 3 episode "Suicidal Tendencies." He and a couple of the other Squad members, along with Diggle and Lyla, went to save a US senator who was taken hostage while opening a hospital in the Republic of Kasnia. Deadshot actually covered the team's retreat from the building, which was rigged to explode, and then apparently died when the hospital went boom.
The question now is, just how the hell are we going to see Floyd Lawton again? Well, one possible answer that could easily be used to explain a lot of changes to the Arrow-verse now, is Flashpoint. The DC continuity on The CW has already made one big change to Arrow via that storyline, so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that in this new Arrow reality Lawton never got blown up. A much smaller chance, since Arrow has not been known to mess around with other realities like The Flash, is that he's the Earth-2 Floyd Lawton. Barry Allen came into contact with him during his time on Earth-2, as he worked for the Central City Police Department and wasn't actually a bad guy there.
Of course, the easiest way for Deadshot to show up on Arrow tomorrow would be to use the same classic means as the show did in Season 4: the flashback. It's not like we've seen every moment between Lawton and, I don't know, Diggle, maybe. His current troubles could lead him to remember some time he spent on that mission with the one-eyed wonder.
We can all see if Deadshot does, indeed, return to Arrow when the show airs tomorrow on The CW.
