While we don’t know for sure whether Rene “Wild Dog” Ramirez (Rick Gonzalez) made it out of Arrow‘s season 5 finale alive, it’s fair to say that one of the most surprising elements of season 5 was the way he interacted with Quentin Lance, the embattled Deputy Mayor of Star City.
Videos by ComicBook.com
Ramirez took a job in City Hall in spite of having a personal life that was a bit of a train wreck, and it was Lance’s loss of a child that pushed Rene to ultimately pursue a better and more complete relationship with his own daughter, culminating in a heartbreaking scene in the finale in which the kidnapped Rene missed a custody hearing and will have to start fresh in the sixth season.
“I think what I loved about what the writers did with Rene was, we established him as being not a brute, but somebody who can get his hands dirty,” Gonzalez said. “He’s single-minded in that realm. But the other side of Rene is that he’s somebody who can be intellectual, who can be administrative, who can be someone that can help in many other areas and is unpredictable in that way. I think that juxtaposition kind of makes it fun to play, and I think it keeps the characters and the relationships in the show on its toes. You never know who he can interact with and how that relationship can grow. I think him being with Quentin Lance is a great example of that: we’ve established him in season 5 creating a lot of friction with the rest of the characters, but the one character you probably never would think he could have a good relationship is Lance. Then when you think about it, he probably has the best connection with Lance because Lance understands loss and pain. They both have deep pain within them, so they can connect on that level, they can understand the sense of loss, and they can help each other.”
Arrow returns in October, with a new time slot Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
After a violent shipwreck, billionaire playboy Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) was missing and presumed dead for five years before being discovered alive on a remote island in the North China Sea. He returned home to Star City, bent on righting the wrongs done by his family and fighting injustice. As the Green Arrow, he protects his city with the help of former soldier John Diggle (David Ramsey), computer-science expert Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards), his vigilante-trained sister Thea Queen (Willa Holland), Deputy Mayor Quentin Lance (Paul Blackthorne), brilliant inventor Curtis Holt (Echo Kellum), and his new recruits, street-savvy Rene Ramirez (Rick Gonzalez) and meta-human Dinah Drake (Juliana Harkavy).
Oliver has finally solidified and strengthened his crime-fighting team only to have it threatened when unexpected enemies from his past return to Star City, forcing Oliver to rethink his relationship with each member of his “family”.
Based on the characters from DC, ARROW is from Bonanza Productions Inc. in association with Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television, with executive producers Greg Berlanti (“The Flash,” “Supergirl”), Marc Guggenheim (“DC’s Legends of Tomorrow,” “Eli Stone”), Wendy Mericle (“Desperate Housewives,” “Eli Stone”), Andrew Kreisberg (“The Flash,” “Eli Stone,” “Warehouse 13”) and Sarah Schechter (“The Flash,” “DC’s Legends of Tomorrow”).
More Arrow news: