Arrow: First Look at Tommy and Prometheus’ Returns

Last week, Arrow fans were surprised with news that Colin Donnell and Josh Segarra will both be returning to The CW series for its eighth and final season. Donnell notably played fan-favorite Tommy Merlyn in Arrow‘s first season while Segarra played Adrian Chase/Prometheus, the big bad for Season 5 and arguably Arrow‘s best villain yet. In the new, final season trailer released at San Diego Comic-Con on Saturday, though, fans are getting their first look at Donnell and Segarra’s returns.

In the trailer, after something of a visual recap of the series’ previous seven seasons, we get our first looks at both Donnell and Segarra and while we know thanks to the previous news that Segarra is coming back as Chase, it’s a bit unclear if Donnell is coming back as Tommy — and neither character is going to be quite what fans are expecting.

“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.”

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