Is the Green Arrow Zack Snyder’s big ‘Justice League’ cameo?

Are you ready for The Snyder Cut to blow your mind? Even if you watched the original Justice League – you know, The Whedon Cut – Zack Snyder has promised lots of surprises in his four-hour cut of the film. It’s not just because of the extended runtime, but also because Whedon reshot three quarters of the movie. That means the world has only really been privy to a quarter of Snyder’s vision for the DCEU superteam.

What this means is: when you finally fire up Zack Snyder’s Justice League on HBO Max (coming March 18th!), pretty much anything goes. The trailer has already shown us Jared Leto playing The Joker – though not quite The Joker he played in Suicide Squad. And Snyder has teased a “hero cameo that will blow hard-core fans’ minds”, according to an interview with Variety.

Could that mind-blowing cameo be the Green Arrow’s first appearance in the DCEU? The emerald archer – DC Comics’ equivalent of Marvel’s Hawkeye – is a fan-favorite. A cameo from the Green Arrow at the end of Zack Snider’s Justice League would be a typical Snyder flex.

Servicing the fans

It’s safe to say that Zack Snyder’s Justice League wouldn’t have a release date without the relentless efforts of the #ReleaseTheSnyderCut movement. If you’re a fan of superhero movies, you’ve probably ran into the hashtag. In fact, you might have even grown to resent it because the people attaching themselves to it could come across as aggressive fanatics sometimes.

In the Variety piece, Snyder himself condemns the harassment and questionable tactics from some of the most toxic #ReleaseTheSnyderCut followers. At the same time, he’s quick to praise all the good the movement has done: they’ve raised half a million dollars for the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention – a powerful gesture acknowledging Snyder’s daughter Autumn’s suicide.

Autumn’s death in 2017 is one of the reasons Zack Snyder left Justice League. Almost four years later, he’s finally releasing the Justice League movie he always planned to make. Everything points to it being full of easter eggs & cameos, along with a darker narrative more in line with Snyder’s previous DCEU movies. So yeah, a cameo by the Green Arrow isn’t out of the question. The fans would love it.

What we know

The number of differences between Zack Snyder’s Justice League and the theatrical Joss Whedon cut already seems to be staggering, just from what the trailer has shown us and what Snyder has hinted at in interviews. While the basic story beats might be the same, Snyder’s take on the origin of the Justice League and Superman’s return from the dead appears to aim for a more epic scale than Whedon’s almost comedic version.

The Superman in Zack Snyder’s Justice League is decked out in a black suit – a clear nod to his resurrection in the Superman comics. That bit of fan service should tell you that when Zack Snyder says he’s going to blow your mind with a hero cameo at the end, you should take it seriously.

So far, we have confirmed appearances from the Martian Manhunter (although we may not meet him under that name), an alien Green Lantern (who we barely saw in Whedon’s cut), and The Flash’s love interest Iris West (rescued from a deleted scene), along with villains Darkseid & The Joker. The appearances of these characters alone make the Snyder Cut a completely different beast from the original Justice League.

Green rumors

So why is the Green Arrow currently trending as a potential cameo? Unlike someone like Green Lantern, it’s not like Snyder has already put in breadcrumbs leading to the Green Arrow’s DCEU introduction. Unless . . . he has?

Look, this is tiny, but worth looking into. Back in the Batman v. Superman days, there were some marketing materials depicting a Wired fictional interview with Jesse Eisenberg’s Lex Luthor. Because of course Wired would interview Superman’s archnemesis. The piece included a chart that showed Queen Industries tracking along other major DCEU corporations like Wayne Enterprises & LexCorp.

Queen Industries, as in Oliver Queen’s business. Oliver Queen, as in the Green Arrow. Stranger things have happened.

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What do you think? Could the Green Arrow be that mind-blowing cameo Zack Snyder is teasing? Or do you have other candidates? Let us know in the comments!