DC fans have been wondering for a while now what exactly is going on with Slade Wilson, a.k.a. Deathstroke. The deadly supervillain, played by Joe Manganiello, showed up in the end-credits scene of Justice League, but we haven’t seen him since then. At last year’s San Diego Comic Con, the actor said that something is in the works, but the ‘what’ and ‘when’ were left a mystery. Now a year later, Joe Manganiello is once again teasing DC fans about Deathstroke. Take a look:
We already knew that Deathstroke was a master of unarmed combat and melee weapons like his swords and firearms, and I guess now you can add dice to that list. Like the party in Stranger Things, Joe Manganiello is an unabashed Dungeons & Dragons fan and he takes it quite seriously. Apparently the most discerning connoisseurs and demanding players, or those who just like stuff that looks cool, can get fancy dice made for them as you see here with Joe Manganiello’s Deathstroke die.
The 20-sided die displays Deathstroke’s image on one side, and while I have no idea what that does in Dungeons & Dragons, based on Joe Mangniello’s Instagram post, it seems that Deathstroke is just as deadly in fantasy tabletop role-playing games as he is in DC comics. So is this just a chance for Joe Manganiello to geek out and show off his D&D dice, or is this tease of the world’s deadliest assassin something more?
We might as well roll a die because it’s anyone’s guess at this point. Bringing up Deathstroke right around San Diego Comic Con is convenient timing, but with Warner Bros. not doing a Hall H panel this year, it seems unlikely that we would get some huge DC movie news, which anything involving Joe Manganiello’s Deathstroke would qualify as being.
The DC film universe is in a different place than it was a year ago when Joe Manganiello said that something was in the works. At that time, Ben Affleck was still technically attached to play Batman in a solo film with Deathstroke as the villain, and the DCEU was still finding its footing post-Justice League and pre-Aquaman and Shazam!.
It was rumored that Deathstroke could show up in Suicide Squad 2. That’s presumably still theoretically possible, as is an appearance in The Batman or Birds of Prey, but that was before James Gunn was signed on to write and direct the Task Force X sequel. We only know bits and pieces about the characters and stories in these future films at the moment.
The DCEU is seemingly in a better place than it has been in a while, but without an especially clear public plan about the strategy moving forward. Perhaps there is an opportunity for Joe Manganiello to play Deathstroke in a movie and perhaps not.
Still, it’s cool that Joe Manganiello is continuing to rep his Deathstroke fandom and carry the torch for the character that he got to play in Justice League in part thanks to fan art showing him as Deathstroke. His casting as Slade Wilson was pretty on point and it would be a shame if we never got to see him in action on the big screen.
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