10 Wild Ideas For The Perfect Suicide Squad 2

Currently, scuttlebutt (like gossip with wrist-mounted Magnums) is that Deadshot won’t now be back in James Gunn’s upcoming Suicide Squad sequel. The rumour is that Will Smith has a scheduling conflict preventing him from reprising the role, and that the powers that be have decided not to recast, but to simply omit Deadshot from the film to allow Smith to return at a future date.

The thing is, Floyd Lawton is a vital part of the make-up of the Suicide Squad, and has been in pretty much every iteration of the team since its revival in the 1980s. His nihilistic, laconic perspective and latent death wish also perfectly embody the vibe and ethos of the Suicide Squad as a high concept and an intellectual property.

Now, you might be reading that and thinking that this doesn’t sound like the Deadshot from the 2016 movie… and you’d be right. Will Smith was never suitable casting for the character. The part was clearly rewritten beyond all recognition to accommodate the only genuine movie star in the cast - hence why you get Lawton constantly cracking wise and spending most of the movie without his headgear on.

Just to make this crystal clear: it’s nothing to do with race. There are plenty of black actors who could and would play Lawton as he is in the comic books (Jamie Foxx, Michael B. Jordan or Ricky Whittle, for example) and the part should definitely be recast. The Squad needs Deadshot, not the Fresh Prince with a hangover.