Yesterday brought the news that Gareth Evans’ Deathstroke solo movie won’t be arriving on our screens anytime soon. But, according to a new rumor, that doesn’t mean we won’t be seeing Joe Manganiello’s assassin show up elsewhere in the DC Extended Universe. That’s because one fan’s claiming that the supervillain will serve as the central antagonist of the upcoming Suicide Squad 2.
Manganiello attended Oz Comic-Con over the weekend and allegedly said that he’ll be appearing in the sequel to the 2016 anti-hero team-up movie, as it’ll involve Task Force X coming up against Deathstroke. Reddit user @thebladex666 claims that the actor chatted with a friend of theirs during a one-on-one meeting and that’s what he told them.
While we’ll treat this as a rumor for now, it’d make a lot of sense for Slade Wilson to show his myopic face in Suicide Squad 2. Dealing with an all-powerful supernatural villain in the form of the Enchantress didn’t work out well for the first movie, so the sequel should definitely bring the threat to a much more grounded level. Interestingly, this is also something that star Joel Kinnaman’s teased that the film will be looking to do.
As for Manganiello, the plan has changed quite a lot for him in his short history with the DCEU so far. Initially, he was cast to act as the big bad of The Batman, though his role in the movie was thrown into doubt when Ben Affleck stepped down as director and the script he wrote with Geoff Johns was discarded.
He then made his debut last November in Justice League‘s post-credits scene, which teased him teaming up with Lex Luthor to form the Injustice League. If he did show up in Suicide Squad 2, we’d assume the movie would build on this evil alliance, but until we learn more, all we can really do at this point is speculate.
