Now that Joe Manganiello is confirmed to return as Deathstroke for Justice League’s Snyder Cut, he is talking about the assassin’s role in the reshoots.
He told ET Canada what he will be doing and how he will be putting his own spin on Slade Wilson. “I’m back, for starters,” he said, conceding “that cat’s out of the bag.”
Joe Manganiello talks about reprising his Deathstroke character for “Zack Snyder’s Justice League”, and reveals there will be Easter eggs for hardcore fans. pic.twitter.com/wsTwCfh0x8
— ET Canada (@ETCanada) December 9, 2020
Manganiello added he made “a few modifications to the character.” “I was able to put a little more of my stink on the character this time,” he said, revealing he went in the direction he wanted to.
He mentions – without explicitly saying what it is – an Easter Egg for fans very familiar with Slade that requires the ready employment of a pause button. “So we’ll see if anyone catches it,” said Manganiello. “I snuck some little, tiny subtle thing in there that I wonder if people will get.”
Whatever the subtle detail is, it’s probably something other than the mohawk we know his Deathstroke will be sporting. Manganiello previously shared a black and white shot of it on social media.
Here is a better look at that.
Manganiello mentioned elsewhere the cropped new hairdo was his idea, inspired by a twist meant for Slade’s abandoned solo movie that had the Terminator shaving his head into the hawk before going into what he figured might be his last battle.
“So there was a [climactic] moment in my standalone story where I wanted Slade to shave his head into this war-like Mohawk knowing that he was going off to his own death,” the actor revealed in a Yahoo! interview.
Continuing, he disclosed the mohawk was cleared with a Zack Snyder open to new ideas. “I said to Zack, ‘I always envisioned him with a big white Mohawk,’ and he was totally down for it.”
If Manganiello shaved most of his head to play Slade rolling into what could be a penultimate confrontation, his appearance may be part of the expanded Knightmare sequence also said to be gifting us with a new look for The Joker played by Jared Leto.
There is also a new end scene between Slade and Lex Luthor taking place during a prison riot Commissioner Gordon is present for too. By all accounts, there is sufficiently more of Deathstroke than before in 2017’s Justice League.
Manganiello also discussed the Army of the Dead: Las Vegas animated series he has been working on with Zack Snyder throughout the break granted by the pandemic. The star says it’s “mindblowing fun and I cannot wait to see it…it’s awesome.”
Are you looking forward to more Deathstroke in Snyder’s Justice League cut?