Arrow Stole (& Screwed Up) A Major Flash Villain | Screen Rant - Screen Rant

Arrow didn't only steal Captain Boomerang, one of The Flash's biggest villains, but they also screwed over the character massively. With some of the Arrowverse shows, it is not unusual for the DC dramas to borrow each other's villains from the respective mythologies. In the case of Arrow, they ended up using one of the biggest enemies from The Flash mythology. The same season that The Flash premiered on The CW, the network began their annual crossovers that have only gotten bigger and bigger for every season. For their first crossover "Flash vs Arrow"/"The Brave and The Bold", the 2-night event had Oliver Queen and Barry Allen go up against not one, but two of the fastest man alive's rogues.

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The first was Rainbow Raider, who had the ability to awaken a person's inner rage, which caused The Flash and the Arrow to go toe-to-toe with one another. The second half of the crossover, which took place on Arrow, introduced Digger Harkness a.k.a. Captain Boomerang, played by Nick Tarabay. While Captain Boomerang is known as one of the slightly goofier Flash villains, the Arrowverse iteration was a lot darker and was previously a member of the Suicide Squad. During his first appearance, Captain Boomerang is trying to take out Lyla Michaels but is initially stopped by the heroes. Despite his attempts, Teams Flash and Arrow manage to stop the five bombs that he had placed all over Star City. After he gets locked up at Lian Yu through A.R.G.U.S., the villain doesn't make a return to Arrow until two seasons later.

While Captain Boomerang does return in The Flash Season Zero tie-in comic as part of the Suicide Squad, Tarabay's character is absent for a few years on screen. But when Captain Boomerang eventually does make his return to the Arrowverse, Arrow manages to mess the character up. Harkness reemerges in the Arrow season 5 finale "Lian Yu" which took Oliver's war with Prometheus back to the island that began the Emerald Archer's journey. As Oliver needs extra reinforcement, he recruits both Slade Wilson/Deathstroke and Harkness who were locked up together. But it doesn't take long for Captain Boomerang to turn on the Green Arrow and his team.

Captain Boomerang, who joins Prometheus' team, does face a shocking fate before the season finale ended. To save his daughter Thea, Malcolm Merlyn blows himself up after stepping on a landmine, which ends up killing The Flash villain. This was the final straw in Arrow's complicated treatment of Captain Boomerang. Not only did Arrow manage to block The Flash from using Harkness for even a single episode, but it did so with an overly serious and thus somewhat inaccurate portrayal of Captain Boomerang. While he is definitely one of the deadlier villains of The Rogues, Captain Boomerang is also one of the more comic-relief ones - something that can be seen with Jai Courtney's version of the character in the DCEU.

It's possible that one of the reasons why Arrow was so limited in how they could use Captain Boomerang was because of Suicide Squad. Arrow' Boomerang appeared the same month that Warner Bros. unveiled the entire Suicide Squad cast for David Ayer's film, which included Courtney playing the cinematic version of Harkness. Back then, Warner Bros. was picky with which characters could be on TV at the same time as the DCEU used them. It seems like Captain Boomerang was maybe one of them, hence why he had to be written in a more gritty way, and why he only appeared in three episodes across three years.

But now that the rules seem to have gotten looser, The Flash could try again with Captain Boomerang. They'd either use Crisis on Infinite Earths to undo his death and reimagine him (especially now that Tarabay will appear in Stargirl season 2 as a different DC character) or introduce Owen Mercer, the second person to carry that mantle. Even if The Flash never uses Captain Boomerang, there's no denying that Arrow both stole and screwed up the character through its Arrowverse depiction.

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Andy Behbakht (499 Articles Published)

Andy has covered the world of entertainment journalism since 2010, mostly superheroes and comic book media. In addition to his work as a reporter, Andy co-hosts The Flash Podcast, Titans Podcast while running the entire DC TV Podcasts network. He is also the founder/editor-in-chief of The Marvel Report since Fall 2015.

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Arrow Stole (& Screwed Up) A Major Flash Villain | Screen Rant - Screen Rant

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