The success of Jane The Virgin has temporarily delayed The CW’s transformation into a network that’s all about superheroes and undead teenagers, but it’s cramming so many masked vigilantes into its upcoming Arrow/Flash spinoff series that it’d need to have Jane The Virgin on every night in order to re-balance the scales. When the show—which we’d really like to start calling The Super Friends—was announced, we knew that Brandon Routh’s Ray Palmer, Victor Garber’s half of Firestorm, Wentworth Miller’s Captain Cold, and Caity Lotz’s (presumably) Black Canary would be joining it, and then The CW added Dominic Purcell’s Heat Wave for good measure.
Now, according to a pair of reports from Deadline, we can add two more heroes to the roster: Hawkgirl and Rip Hunter. The former will be played by relative newcomer Ciara Renée, who probably got the part thanks to her skills with a mace and the enormous wings growing out of her back. Based on Deadline’s article, it sounds like this version of Hawkgirl will skew more toward the traditional “reincarnated Egyptian princess with wings” backstory than the “secret alien spy” of the Justice League cartoon. Seeing as how a lady with wings would look a little silly—even by CW standards—Deadline says her wings will only pop out when “her ancient warrior persona manifests itself.”
As far as DC characters go, Rip Hunter is quite a bit more obscure than Hawkgirl, but the guy playing him will definitely be familiar to fans of genre TV: Arthur Darvill, also known as Rory “The Last Centurion” Williams/Pond from Doctor Who (more recently, he played “One Of The Guys Who Didn’t Do It” on Broadchurch). Deadline describes Rip Hunter as “a roguish time-traveler who hides the strains of being responsible for history itself behind a facade of charm and wit.” This sets him apart from DC’s other (more famous) time-traveler, Booster Gold, who hides the strains of being responsible for history by not caring about anything except being famous. Also, with Hunter joining The Super Friends (still not the real title), that means Booster Gold is probably out, but at least he opens the door for a bunch of wacky adventures through time.
There’s apparently at least one male character that has yet to be cast, which means there’s still a chance for The Question to join this show and make all of our dreams come true. C’mon, CW. Keep the fan-service coming and put The Question in your show.