Suicide Squad: Here’s Why Deadshot Hates Green Lantern

‘Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’ was released more than a week ago, and although the first impressions landed, they weren’t good. Many fans pointed out several plotholes, inconsistencies, and generally bad ideas (and badly executed ideas) within the game and we would need a bigger post to list and detail them all so we’re just going to focus on one of the strangest rivalries within the game – the one between Deadshot and Green Lantern. So what happened here and why does Deadshot hates Green Lantern with so much passion?

‘Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’ presented us with one of the weirdest rivalries

I’m guessing if you’re here you played or seen some videos from ‘Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’ and you’ve probably seen some of the exchanges between Deadshot and Green Lantern.

If you’re wondering whether that hateful relationship between the two of them is inspired by comics – it isn’t. Deadshot is generally far below Green Lanterns in terms of powers and abilities, and he has never been the villain of the group. It would make sense to make Batman his rival, and yet the game went in a completely different direction. Pitting a cosmic-powered superhero against an assassin. Why?

‘Suicide Squad: Kill Arkham Asylum’ comic book prequel never addressed how exactly Deadshot ended up in prison or why, but this was addressed in the game in one of the cutscenes.

Deadshot can be seen attacking the Green Lantern statue with a pipe while swearing profusely and recounting what actually happened. Apparently, Green Lantern was the one who caught Deadshot during his “last heist” and separated him from his daughter. Ever since then, Deadshot has made it his life mission to kill him, and the best part, he succeeds.

What happens to Green Lantern in ‘Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League’

Luthor-2 transports the squad back to their dimension, warning them about Waller’s dangerous intentions. He reveals that Waller may either let them die or use Brainiac’s mind-control technology on them. The squad breaks into Wayne Enterprises’ secret bank vault and finds Wonder Woman crafting a Kryptonite-based shield. Luthor-2 secures Yellow Lantern batteries Batman kept as a contingency against Green Lantern and gives them to the squad. They confront the Green Lantern with Deadshot being the one to actually kill him by shooting him from point Blank Range while Stewart way lying on the ground injured. Following this, the shield protecting Brainiac’s ship is temporarily disabled. Waller tries to call a nuclear strike on Brainiac, but a brainwashed Superman stops her plans, ultimately leading to yet another showdown.

Why is Deadshot black in ‘Kill the Justice League’?

Now that we’ve resolved this inconsistency in the game, it’s time to address why Deadshot is black despite earlier being depicted as a caucasian man. The explanation is that well, the Deadshot we’ve seen in ‘Assault on Arkham,’ ‘Arkham Origins’ and ‘Arkham: City’ was a variant from Earth-2, the same alternate universe from which Luthor-2 comes from.

Retconning Deadshot’s race drew criticism, but even worse was the studio’s original explanation for why was Deadshot suddenly black. The first explanation was that the white Deadshot was actually an imposter, following a bad reaction to this explanation, Rocksteady Studios claimed that the imposter Deadshot came from Earth-2, accidentally sent to the main Arkhamverse by an alternate Lex Luthor. Audio files suggest that the original Floyd Lawton had retired before the events of previous Arkham games, with the imposter taking his place. However, during interrogation, it’s revealed that both Deadshots share the same fingerprints, confirming them to be the same person, with the Deadshot introduced in ‘Kill the Justice League’ being the original in the Arkhamverse.

So according to the most current canon, black Floyd Lawton is the canon version, the true Deadshot of Arkhamverse, and the one we will be seeing from now on. The character was most likely race-swapped because of the ‘Suicide Squad’ movie in which Will Smith portrayed the character.

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