Why Couldn’t Arrow Use Blue Beetle?
By Nick Tylwalk
Ted Kord is already a pretty well-established presence in the world of Arrow. His company, Kord Industries, has been mentioned on the show more than once. It was heavily rumored that Kord/Blue Beetle would join the show in Season 3 as a technology-oriented businessman with his eye on Felicity Smoak, but that turned out to be Brandon Routh’s Ray Palmer instead.
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So what’s the deal, and could we see Kord elsewhere? Comicbook.com reporter Russ Burlingame had an interesting tidbit on that front suggesting that Kord was supposed to be on the show — until he wasn’t:
"The showrunners admitted at Comic Con International: San Diego this summer that they had originally planned to use Ted Kord, but that there were other plans for the would-be Blue Beetle at the Warner Bros. level and DC Entertainment had told them they couldn’t use him for the storyline."
That sounds like one of those classic bad news/good news situations for fans of Blue Beetle: he won’t be on Arrow, but only because he’s supposed to show up somewhere else. Burlingame thinks that could be on The Flash, which would be logical though certainly doesn’t explain why he couldn’t be on Arrow since the two shows exist in the same fictional universe.
So here’s a more out of left field suggestion: with reports that a Teen Titans live-action show is in the works, maybe the Jamie Reyes version of Blue Beetle is going to be used there, and it’s best to just keep Kord an unseen presence in the Arrow-verse to avoid confusion.
Just a thought …