Guardians Of The Galaxy 3's High Evolutionary Actor Chukwudi Iwuji Would Follow James Gunn Back To DC
Chukwudi Iwuji became one of the MCU's best villains with his appearance as The High Evolutionary in James Gunn's trilogy capper "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3." His ego and cruelty know no bounds in this film, but Iwuji was still able to imbue some humanity to the character (even if he couldn't defend The High Evolutionary). And that's without even having two or three previous appearances to set him up as a complicated, if ultimately evil man.
Gunn first worked with Iwuji on his "Suicide Squad" spin-off show "Peacemaker," where the actor got to flex a completely different set of acting muscles. His character in that show could be seen as villainous (and was seen that way for a hot second) because he's an outsider that had to get by on deception.
Ultimately, his Clemson Murn is found to have the same goals as our heroes and, oddly, really fit in with the rest of that messed-up team filled with highly problematic anti-heroes.
The point is, Iwuji has proven twice in a row that he can handle complicated characters within a sillier comic book universe, especially when working off of the writing of James Gunn, so naturally the question has been posed to him whether or not he'll follow Gunn back to DC.
The actor recently appeared on ComicBook.com's Phase Zero podcast and dropped a little bit of a bombshell in this regard. Despite fans already trying to cast him as Gunn's Lex Luthor, Iwuji has his sights set on a more bizarre character.
Etrigan the Demon is DC's Jekyll and Hyde
That's right — if given his choice, Iwuji would play Etrigan the Demon, a prince of Hell who is bound to a human named Jason Blood. The two have a love/hate relationship that Marvel fans might recognize in Eddie Brock and Venom and, I suppose, the earlier depictions of The Hulk, but Iwuji finds the connection in classic literature.
"I was talking to a friend about it: I was like 'This character ... this is Jeykll and Hyde in the DC world. So Etrigan. If you told me to name one it would be Etrigan. Like I just love the idea of having two people existing in one. That'd be my DC one. Etrigan."
Iwuji definitely has the ability to portray his dark characters with a little light and vice versa, so it's not a surprise that he's drawn to Etrigan. Whether or not a character like this has a place in the new DCU that Gunn and Peter Safran are setting up is yet to be determined, but this first phase is called Gods & Monsters, and that fits Etrigan to a T, does it not?
Whatever character Iwuji gets the chance to play in the DCU would be a win for comic book movie fans, and so far Gunn hasn't steered Iwuji wrong yet. If he's gonna pop back up in the DCU it's a pretty safe bet that he'll have a hell of a fun character to play.