Fans of Arrow may not have tuned in just to see Brandon Routh suit up as Ray Palmer a.k.a. ‘The Atom’, but the show has been slowly building to the Justice League member’s reveal nonetheless. The show’s brilliant billionaire may still be constructing his suit of armor, but today DC Comics has released the very first official image of the finished suit, in all its glory.

So far fans have only been given glimpses of a holographic blueprint of the Advanced Technology Operating Mechanism (A.T.O.M.) and a detached gauntlet, but DC and The CW apparently felt the finished product was too impressive to wait any longer. Brandon Routh will first don the armor in the show’s universe in Episode 15 of the season, “Nanda Parbat”, but take an early peek at the Arrow/Flash universe’s next certified costumed hero below:



The finished suit, as expected, is a far cry from the blue and red spandex of the classic comic hero. But given the removal of the hero’s shrinking powers from the show’s fiction (for now, at least), that’s not too surprising. Executive producer Marc Guggenheim recently claimed that the biggest challenge for the Arrow showrunners was crating a metal suit of armor that didn’t seem to be copying… another prominent superhero with similar powers.

“Our goal when we had an idea to do a super suit was ‘How do you do it in a way that’s not Iron Man?’ That’s the trick creatively. Because we don’t want to duplicate Iron Man, we want to do our own thing. So there’s a lot of practical elements to the costume that on Iron Man they have done with CG. We’re gonna do it practically.”

Thankfully, it seems the result has succeeded in that aim, resembling more of an exoskeleton than an all-out suit of armor. Sticking with with blue and red color scheme of the comics, and maintaining the ‘atom’ insignia on the forehead and the signature red triangle on the chest, the finished rig straddles the line between source material and practicality quite well (not to mention packing more of a punch than the early plans).

Constructed from a super-strong ‘dwarf star alloy’ it seems that Ray Palmer has constructed a system to amplify his strength (in tandem with the show’s ‘Salmon Ladder’ technology) as opposed to encase his body. How it will be put to use protecting the streets of Starling City – and not just obliterating its criminals – will become clear in the coming weeks.

The network has already claimed that Routh would be a “natural” choice for another DC Comics spinoff series, and while those comments may have seemed like wishful thinking at the time, the effort and polish put into Palmer’s A.T.O.M. Exosuit implies otherwise. It has yet to make its debut, but this superhero costume might just be the best-received in The CW’s shared universe.

What do you think of the finished suit? Share your thoughts in the comments, and stay tuned for more official details and comments, likely released in the near future.

Arrow airs Wednesdays @8pm on The CW.