Arrow’s John Barrowman Talks A Different Malcolm in Season Three

The interview is worth a listen, but here are a couple of key quotes about his relationship with Thea this year, and about Malcolm’s ultimate journey in the series:

I love Willa to death, she is great. She and I have good fun and laughs on set. I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but what I can say is that Malcolm has always done things for the people that he loves dearly, he’s just misunderstood in the way that he does them (laughs). The thing with this is you’re going to possibly see slightly different tactics from Malcolm. He’ll still have his physical aspects and everything, with the fighting and the archery, but he lost people in the past through his seeking of vengeance through power and money, so he’s going to try to use emotion this time a bit, and see how that fares. But his relationship with Thea is going to be dysfunctional, uncomfortably dysfunctional at times, and his relationship with Oliver is going to develop, which is interesting.

[H]is whole journey of life is to find redemption. I don’t think it’s an arc of a story, that’s more of an arc of a life, because he’s been doing the wrong thing for so long in other people’s eyes, that his whole life is going to be about redemption. Things are going to go wrong along the way, I hate to use the word again, on his redemption path. So I wouldn’t say it’s an arc of a story, because no one, not even in television, can resolve that kind of thing in a couple of episodes. That’s a life arc, if that makes sense, so that would be the character’s arc for the rest of the series, but with other smaller minor arcs that are underneath, and underlying.

Arrow returns October 8 on The CW. Barrowman is a series regular this year for the first time.