As the title suggests, this post contains spoilers for Arrow’s third season. You have been warned!
In what is probably the most spot-on casting since Patrick Stewart as Professor X, it has been announced that British tough guy actor and former football bruiser Vinnie Jones has been cast to play crime lord Danny “Brick” Brickwell on this season of The CW’s Arrow. Brick will have a three-episode arc in the middle of the season (episodes 10, 11, and 12), following the mid-season premiere episode 9.
In the comics, Brick is a metahuman who has reddish skin that makes him basically impervious to physical harm. In the TV show, even though metahumans are now a thing thanks to The Flash‘s particle accelerator explosion, he’s going to just be a guy who can’t seem to die even though he’s been shot several times. If you think that sounds slightly familiar, than you are thinking correctly; Jones played underworld enforcer Bullet-Tooth Tony in Guy Ritchie’s 2000 film Snatch. And, of course, there’s that whole thing when Jones played the Juggernaut (bitch) in 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand.
Brick was introduced into the comics during Green Arrow‘s early 2000s renaissance thanks to writer Judd Winick and artist Phil Hester and was letter used extensively during Andrew Kreisberg’s tenure as writer on the series later in the decade. Kreisberg is, of course, the current Executive Producer and one of the head writers of Arrow, and the character had already been teased back in Season One as a name in Oliver’s now-forgotten book of names of people who failed the city.
Brick is just another in a line of DC characters joining Arrow this year. We’ve already seen Ray Palmer (the Atom) but we’ll eventually see Wildcat, Captain Boomerang, Cupid, Manhunter, and of course, Ra’s al Ghul before the season’s up.
If you’d like to see some of Brick in action, watch the below Cartoon Network DC Nation short. And let me know in the comments what you think of this casting, as well as how Arrow is shaping up this season so far.
Image: PolyGram Filmed Entertainment
