Warning: SPOILERS for the Titans episode “Super Super Mart” are ahead!
Remember in the Titans Season 1 episode “Asylum” when the title heroes found themselves imprisoned at an abandoned asylum by followers of Raven’s father, then they escaped the facility and Starfire burned it to the ground. Well, the latest Titans episode, Super Super Mart” (viewable now to HBO Max subscribers), saw the gang revisiting that location, but along with a sinister supermarket having been constructed on that ground, this time around they found themselves being attacked by zombies controlled by Mother Mayhem. Among this horde was the reanimated body of Slade Wilson, a.k.a. Deathstroke, and actress Lisa Ambalavanar, who’s recurring this season as an Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.-inspired Jinx, talked with CinemaBlend about what it was like shooting her scene with the one-eyed DC villain.
Esai Morales’ Deathstroke served as Titans Season 2’s badass main antagonist, and in that season’s finale, he was seemingly killed by his daughter, Rose Wilson. Well, there’s nothing ‘seemingly’ about it anymore, with Zombie Deathstroke attacking the Titans and trying to kidnap Joseph Morgan’s Sebastian Sanger, a.k.a. the future Brother Blood. Luckily, the magically-gifted Jinx (don’t go comparing her to Doctor Strange though) was not only able to visually disguise herself as Sebastian and fool Zombie Deathstroke into taking her instead, she also froze the undead mercenary and jabbed a blade through his one working eye. I asked Lisa Ambalavanar what it was like shooting this scene between Jinx and Deathstroke, and she answered:
That was really good fun. Doing something like that is very stop and start to get angles so you don’t see certain things or whatever it is, and also because there’s the switch, I won’t say with which character. So obviously that had to be done in little bits as well. I’ve never done anything like that before, I’ve never done stunts of any kind, so all my really badass moments were fun to do.
While Lisa Ambalavanar has previously starred in TV shows like Doctors and The A-List, Titans is the most action-heavy project she’s done yet, but she’s had a blast getting to do stunt-heavy work, including this Zombie Deathstroke scene. Sure, there was a lot of stopping and stopping with filming in order to stitch together it looking like Sebastian morphed into Jinx, and then the sorceress taking Deathstroke truly out of commission, but the end result is her further showing off her ingenuity. Would a living Deathstroke have fallen for such a ploy? That’s hard to say, but the Titans should cross their fingers that Mother Mayhem doesn’t find a way to put Deathstroke back in play.
On the other hand, as a Titans fan, I’m hoping that the show does find a way to bring Deathstroke back to his non-rotting state, i.e. have Esai Morales actually reprise the role. The Ozark actor did a great job playing Slade Wilson, but it still felt like there was more that could be done with the character. Between Lazarus Pits and other kinds of available dark magic, surely there’s a way to get Deathstroke back in his prime and have him resume his vendetta against the young heroes. That’s assuming, of course, that Titans comes back for Season 5, but we’re likely a long way off from learning whether or not that will happen.
There’s only two more episodes left in the first half of Titans Season 4, which will respectively drop on November 24 and December 1. The remaining six episodes of the season will premiere on HBO Max sometime in 2023. Plan what other programming you’ll watch for the rest of the year with our 2022 TV schedule.
