Stephen Amell Teases an Unexpected Return for Arrow’s Final Season

When Arrow returns this fall for its eighth and final season, while fans already know that there will be connections to “Crisis on Infinite Earths” as well as that the show will be working its way to an ending, there are still quite a few unknowns. Today, however, series star Stephen Amell gave fans a tantalizing behind the scenes look at Season 8 by revealing a photo of a very surprising and unexpected location — Queen Mansion.

In a post to Twitter today, Amell shared the behind-the-scenes look featuring an interior of the mansion with a sort of cryptic caption. You can check it out below.

“Blast from the past! Blast from the past? Blast from the present?” Amell wrote.

The timeline from which this look at Queen Mansion comes is actually a pretty big deal. As fans of Arrow will recall, Queen Mansion burned down sometime between seasons two and three, an event that happened off-screen but was documented in the tie-in comics where it was revealed that Church of Blood member Caleb Green went after Oliver, with Queen Mansion burning down in the process. Audiences got a good look at the rubble in Season 7 when Emiko Queen (Sea Shimooka) visited the grave of her father, Robert, on the Mansion’s grounds.

With the Mansion having been gone for some time, it’s not impossible that Arrow‘s final season will see some sort of revisitation of Oliver’s past — and we have at least one more clue that that is a real possibility. Last week, showrunner Beth Schwartz revealed in a photo that the season premiere’s title will be “Starling City.” As fans of the show will recall, Arrow’s central location was known as Starling City for the first three seasons, eventually being renamed Star City after the apparent death of Ray Palmer (Brandon Routh.)

Arrow‘s final episodes currently have a lot riding on them, now that Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) has learned of his impending death in the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover. Now that Oliver is well aware of his fate – and was tasked by The Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) to help stop the coming “Crisis”, it sounds like the show could be taking some narrative risks — and possibly include some interesting character returns.

“There are so many characters [to consider]. So many characters,” Schwartz explained in a recent interview. “And we’re definitely thinking about all of 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.”

“That’s the exciting part of next season, only having 10 episodes,” Schwartz revealed. “We’ve [been] brainstorming and thinking about who we want back, because there are so many characters that we love… I think every episode is just going to be humongous. We’re going to fit it all in, and it’s definitely going to be an amazing season.”

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