Arrow and The Flash have succeeded in featuring DC Comics characters in their respective series, and now it looks like NBC’s Constantine will follow suit. The show has an entire supernatural corner of the DC universe to explore, giving it an exciting opportunity to stand out among its sister shows. We’ve already seen an Easter egg hinting that Doctor Fate may one day appear on the show, and now we have casting news that points to someone else joining John Constantine in the battle against evil. According to IGN, Guardians of the Galaxy actor Emmet Scanlan has been cast as Detective Jim Corrigan, the man who will go on to become DC’s iconic vengeance seeker The Spectre.
Executive producer Daniel Cerone previously teased that Corrigan could wind up as a series regular, saying:
“For those who don’t know, Jim Corrigan is a police officer who kind of takes the law into his own hands… he ends up dying and is reincarnated as The Spectre. So it’s a perfect opportunity for us, because we can name this character Jim Corrigan and within our story, for the general viewer, that works, because now Constantine has a friend on the force. For the comic book fan, ‘My god, that’s Jim Corrigan!’
And we can get back to that character and can slowly develop that character and who knows, maybe there’s an opportunity in the future to even see the origin story unfold within the framework of our TV series. It creates opportunities and creatively you just have to go in and lay that groundwork in and try and let it unfold naturally.”
As of right now, Scanlan is only playing Corrigan, but from the sound of Cerone’s comments there’s a very good chance that we’ll see him make the supernatural transition into the Spectre at some point down the line.
Constantine premieres on Friday October 24th, 2014 on NBC.