Matt Ryan's time playing a live-action version of DC Comics' John Constantine was cut short earlier this year when NBC decided to not order a second season of the character's show, Constantine. Since then, we've heard whispers that the same incarnation of the character could live on - and now it's been confirmed. Matt Ryan will be reprising his comic book role for an episode of Arrow's fourth season.
The CW portion of the Television Critics Association Press Tour was held this afternoon in Los Angeles, and it was during this presentation that John Constantine's appearance on Arrow was confirmed. The CW later sent out a press release noting the character will pop up in the fourth episode (formerly fifth) of the fourth season.
Right now details are obviously slim, and we don’t know much more about the plot of the John Constantine episode beyond the fact that the story will see the Occult specialist take a trip to Star City and pall around with Stephen Amell’s Oliver Queen – “[providing] critical support to Oliver (Stephen Amell) when arrows aren't enough.” That being said, the events of the plot should have an interesting effect on the small-screen world. As Marc Guggenheim notes in an official statement, the show has already touched on the idea of magic and mysticism, and including John Constantine into the mix allows them to walk through that door.
Matt Ryan himself also posted a special video on his personal Twitter page, which you can watch below:
This is exciting news, if not only because it broadens the scope of DC Comics’ television universe but those of you who are really flipping out right now should know that Matt Ryan isn’t exactly going to become a new regular castmember. During the TCA panel, CW President Mark Pedowitz was quoted saying,
The series is no longer on the air and luckily, one of our parent companies Warner Bros. is the production company on ‘Arrow’ … it’s a great one-shot episode.
While we obviously haven’t gotten to see what it looks like when the worlds of Constantine and Arrow mash up yet, hopefully this is just the beginning of something much bigger. It would be cool if Matt Ryan could wind up being a recurring character in not only Arrow, but across the board in all the CW shows – including both Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. There’s some great potential here, and it would suck to see it squandered.
Arrow Season 4 is scheduled to begin on October 7th with the airing of the premiere episode, “Green Arrow.” At this time we don’t know when in the season we can expect to see Matt Ryan’s special appearance, so stay tuned for more details.
