I haven't been around in a while, but I just had to put this theorizing somewhere...
The Arrowverse has been full of on the nose Genre Legacy casting. Berlanti and Co. live for it and put these folks in place with huge grins on their faces, and we adore it. That being the case, I don't think Adrian Paul's casting as Dante is only about Arrow. I think it's also about Crisis. After all, as cool as Dante is, does anyone think they brought in AP just to play one more uber-criminal with mad skills who gets under Ollie's skin by playing on his damage or the damage of those around him. That's been done -- ad nauseam.
However, I can see TPTB using Dante as commentary on those kinds of villains as the show goes into the final Crisis arc. My theory is that Dante's arc will play out and feed into Crisis as every villain somehow sets the stage for his successor on these shows. The final villain will be The Anti-Monitor. Crisis is DCU's Gathering on Multiversal steroids after all. Who better to act as a Herald, wittingly or otherwise for The Anti-Monitor than a man who's organization is patterned after Hell (The Ninth Circle) and whose goals are destabilization on a smaller global scale for greed and power? And who better to play that man than the erstwhile Highlander himself?
I can even see a scenario where The Anti-Monitor needs a human vessel in order to operate outside his anti-matter universe. Oliver kills Dante or Dante dies in an act of sacrificial redemption to save Emiko after he realizes he's been duped by cosmic forces, and The Anti-Monitor uses him like a Apocalyptic Edgar suit wielding a dwarfstar broadsword for the final conflagration.
The Arrowverse has been full of on the nose Genre Legacy casting. Berlanti and Co. live for it and put these folks in place with huge grins on their faces, and we adore it. That being the case, I don't think Adrian Paul's casting as Dante is only about Arrow. I think it's also about Crisis. After all, as cool as Dante is, does anyone think they brought in AP just to play one more uber-criminal with mad skills who gets under Ollie's skin by playing on his damage or the damage of those around him. That's been done -- ad nauseam.
However, I can see TPTB using Dante as commentary on those kinds of villains as the show goes into the final Crisis arc. My theory is that Dante's arc will play out and feed into Crisis as every villain somehow sets the stage for his successor on these shows. The final villain will be The Anti-Monitor. Crisis is DCU's Gathering on Multiversal steroids after all. Who better to act as a Herald, wittingly or otherwise for The Anti-Monitor than a man who's organization is patterned after Hell (The Ninth Circle) and whose goals are destabilization on a smaller global scale for greed and power? And who better to play that man than the erstwhile Highlander himself?
I can even see a scenario where The Anti-Monitor needs a human vessel in order to operate outside his anti-matter universe. Oliver kills Dante or Dante dies in an act of sacrificial redemption to save Emiko after he realizes he's been duped by cosmic forces, and The Anti-Monitor uses him like a Apocalyptic Edgar suit wielding a dwarfstar broadsword for the final conflagration.
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