Arrow: Colin Donnell and Josh Segarra Returning for Final Season

Production on Arrow's eight and final season is officially underway with showrunner Beth Schwartz revealing the season premiere's title last week in a photo on Twitter. That title, "Starling City", had many fans of The CW series wondering if Arrow would be headed back to the past as that particular city name hasn't been used since Oliver Queen's (Stephen Amell) hometown was renamed Star City after the apparent death of Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh). While that is something that will have to wait until Season 8 debuts this fall, fans will get two other blasts from the past -- with a twist.

Both Colin Donnell, who played Tommy Merlyn in Arrow's first season, and Josh Segarra, who played Season 5 big bad Adrian Chase/Prometheus, are returning for appearances in Arrow's final season, according to Schwartz but neither character will be quite what fans remember them to be.

"Adrian Chase comes back in a different way than expected," Schwartz told Entertainment Weekly. "We're really excited about that because obviously he's one of our favorite villains."

Executive producer Marc Guggenheim also noted that Donnell is "not coming back as the Tommy we know."

The idea that both Segarra and Donnell are returning characters different than their original versions isn't a new idea for Arrow. As fans well know, Chase died at the end of Season 5 while Tommy's death was one of the more traumatic moments in Season 1. Since then, both characters have appeared on Arrow within Oliver's head. In Season 6 episode "Fundamentals", Chase appears as a hallucination to a drugged Oliver while Donnell most recently appeared in Season 7's "Living Proof", giving voice to Oliver's conscience and voice of reason.

That said, with this being Arrow's final season, anything is possible. At the end of Season 7, The Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) came to collect on the bargain Oliver made in "Elseworlds" and in the process revealed his impending death before the pair left to stop the impending "Crisis on Infinite Earths". With the massive scope of that event looming, it's likely Arrow could take some surprising twists and turns on its march to the end.

"There are so many characters [to consider]. So many characters," Schwartz explained in a recent interview. "And we're definitely thinking about all that, because just as much as our fans want to see it, as people who have been on the show for a long time, we are also fans of these characters. So we're going to make sure that everyone has a great final season."

You can check out the synopsis for Arrow's final season below.

"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, Oliver successfully saved his city with the help of his team including former soldier John Diggle (David Ramsey), computer-science expert Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards), former protégé Roy Harper (Colton Haynes), street-savvy Rene Ramirez (Rick Gonzalez), metahuman Dinah Drake (Juliana Harkavy), brilliant inventor Curtis Holt (Echo Kellum) and Earth-2 Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy). In the wake of discovering what his future holds, Oliver will find himself pit against his most challenging battle yet, one that will leave the multiverse hanging in the balance. In Arrow's final season, Oliver Queen is forced to confront the reality of what it means to be a hero."

Arrow's final season will begin Tuesday, October 15th, at 9/8c on The CW.