‘Arrow’ Star Manu Bennett Denies Slade’s Season 5 Return?

Arrow fans were elated to learn that Season 2 star Manu Bennett would finally reprise his role as Deathstroke for the Season 5 finale, but were celebrations premature? Either Bennett is having fun trolling fans, or something seriously strange is afoot.

Stephen Amell himself tagged Bennett in a tweet welcoming back the former series regular, while executive producer Marc Guggenheim followed suit to clarify that the actor’s return would coincide with Arrow Season 5 finale “Lian Yu.” Strangely, Bennett himself seemed to deny the report over Twitter, tweeting “WTF” back to Amell, and subsequently proclaiming fans had it wrong:

Ordinarily, those tweets might be hand-waved away as playful jest between actors, or clever wordplay that Bennett’s character wouldn’t return “for” the Green Arrow. Still, Bennett curiously took the denial a step further, in the process sharing a first look at his costumed alter-ego’s return (and what looks like Nick E. Tarabay’s Captain Boomerang, who was also locked up on Lian Yu):

Again, one could just as easily read Bennett’s tweet as misdirect; specifically that a costumed stunt-double is filming in Vancouver, while Bennett himself will shoot unmasked Slade scenes at a later date. Arrow has certainly used stunt Deathstrokes in the past, between a Season 4 cameo, and a dream-sequence fight in the 100th episode, and one imagines neither Amell nor Guggenheim could get their wires so crossed as to mistakenly confirm Bennett’s return.

We’ll see if Bennett pops up on set before long, but how else might Arrow use Deathstroke for its Season 5 finale? Should we tug a collar at Bennett’s playful (ish) denial?

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