Lucas “Hilt” Hilton

Lucas HiltonOh well, I almost forgot another recurrent character from the Arrow series, detective Lucas Hilton, portrayed on screen by Roger Cross. At first, I didn’t even realize he was a character from the comics, since his appearances as Quentin Lance‘s partner are most of the times without a dialogue, and he’s seldom named. Anyway, yes, he comes from the comics, and, despite there’s not much to say about him, here we go.

First of all, he’s another young characters, created a couple of years ago on the Green Arrow/Black Canary series; here’s his story. Lucas Hilton was a lieutenant in Star City Police Department. He was a good man, who kept good relationships with both his underlings and his superiors. He had a son, Luke Hilton Jr., a nice boy that saw him as his hero. You lucashiltoncomics1know, you cannot work in Star City as a cop without meeting at least once its protector, Green Arrow. Hilton, or Lt. Hilt, as his subordinates called him, met the Arrow, and, unlike some other cops, befriended him, becoming a precious ally in some of his adventures. In the time Hilton met Green Arrow, he was teaming up with his wife, Black Canary, and she also became one of Lucas Hilton’s superhero friends. It was during Hilton’s service that Green Arrow, after a battle with his long time nemesis Merlyn, was found by Carrie Cutter, a lunatic who called herself Cupid and that committed several murders to gain the Arrow’s attention, since in her madness she believed to be in love with him and wanted to “do him a favor” by killing criminals from the hero’s rogue gallery. Lt. Hilt proved himself to be helpful by informing the Arrow and the Canary about his investigations, leading the heroes to capture Cupid (for the first time, she would have broken out soon after under strange circumstances). During the hunt for cupid, Hilton found out that another supervillain was involved in the girl’s outbreak, the sonic villain Discord (real name Sean Sonus). Again, Hilt’s investigations brought the two heroes closer to the villain’s capture.

Lucas Hilton’s adventures were far from being over, anyway. When Big Time, the son of the criminal of the same name killed by Cupid, came in town looking for vengeance, Black Canary found herself forced to take Cupid out of prison, with much of Hilton’s initial displease. He chose to trust the heroes and to help them, anyway, and ended up caught in the fight between the second Big Time (a super hunter with impressive fighting skills) and the odd alliance formed by Black Canary and Cupid. lucashiltoncomics2The battle ended well for Green Arrow’s wife, but Cupid fled after it (she would have allied herself with Hannibal Bates, the former shapeshifter Everyman now believing to be Oliver Queen himself and going under the alias Dark Arrow) and, above all, Hilton was severely injured by Big Time. The villain in fact had stabbed the cop with a hunting knife, piercing his skull and leaving him for dead (who wouldn’t believe a man with a knife in the skull dead?). Hilton survived and was taken to the hospital by the heroes, but in there the doctor informed them that any attempt to take away the knife from his skull would have certainly killed him. If living with a big knife sticking out of his head wasn’t enough, the brain suffered great damage from the wound (big surprise…): the doctor declared that the brain’s situation “could” have created massive personality disorders. That surely was the case, since not too much time after the incident, Lt. Hilton became more and more aggressive and violent, arriving to the point of shooting another cop point blank, with apparently no reason. From a life of good deeds and law-abiding citizenship, Lt. Hilt suddenly became a murderer and a criminal; if that was not enough, it was up to his friend and fellow crime fighter Green Arrow, who he had worked many times with in the previous years, to hunt him down in order to protect Star City from its former protector.

Lucas Hilton is basically a good man and a good cop, a honest officer who cares for the peace-keeping and who takes his job very seriously. His wound transforms him in an unstable psycho, a violent and dangerous man that uses his policeman training for doing bad things instead of good ones. Not such a good evolution for a character.

1 Comment

Leave a comment