With Manu Bennett’s Slade Wilson unlikely to return for Arrow‘s eighth and final season and the character now being played by Esai Morales over on DC Universe’s Titans, The CW somehow managed to have him remain in the Arrowverse in some fashion. Ingeniously enough, the Deathstroke animated series we’ve been hearing about for some time will serve that purpose.
In the tradition of Vixen, Freedom Fighters: The Ray and Constantine: City of Demons, Deathstroke: Knights and Dragons will be the next animated web series to air on The CW Seed online streaming site. No concrete premiere date has been given at the time of this writing, but the first of twelve episodes will air beginning sometime in the first quarter of 2020.
Here’s the official synopsis:
Ten years ago, Slade Wilson—aka the super-assassin called Deathstroke—made a tragic mistake and his wife and son paid a terrible price. Now, a decade later, Wilson’s family is threatened once again by the murderous Jackal and the terrorists of H.IV.E. Can Deathstroke atone for the sins of the past—or will his family pay the ultimate price?
For some reason unknown to this reporter, the services of the aforementioned Manu Bennett weren’t retained. Instead, Michael Chiklis will voice Slade for the duration of the animated outing. This isn’t his first foray into comic book-based storytelling, though, as he’d previously played the Thing in two Fantastic Four films and the Executioner on Gotham.
Rounding out the rest of the voice cast are: Sasha Alexander as Addie, Chris Jai Alex as Jackal, Faye Mata as Rose, Griffin Puatu as Jericho, Asher Bishop as Young Joseph, Colin Salmon as Wintergreen, Delbert Hunt as Tiger, Panta Mosleh as Lady Shiva, Imari Williams as President/Hive Pilot, Minae Noji as Secretary of State, Noshir Dalal as Kapoor and Castulo Guerra as General Suarez.
If history is to continue repeating itself, then Deathstroke: Knights and Dragons will be cut together as an animated movie and released on Blu-ray sometime down the road. My best guess would be for later in 2020 or early 2021, but we’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, feel free to let us know what you think about the first trailer (embedded at the top) in the comments section below.
