Oliver Queen’s days as the Green Arrow are through.
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That’s what series star Stephen Amell says, anyway; following last night’s game-changing cliffhanger, it is easy to assume Arrow’s status quo will revert quickly, but Amell told EW that Oliver will not be coming back to lead Team Arrow anytime soon. He acknowledged that there are instances where Oliver might find himself working with Team Arrow, but taking the job back from Diggle isn’t in the cards right away. That said, will he just NEVER suit back up? Well…
“No,” Amell answered simply. “Look, I remember one season of 24 when Jack Bauer had been taken prisoner, Jack was in China. They’re like, ‘Well, how long of this season is Jack going to be in China for?’ and the producers were like, ‘He’s landing like six minutes after it starts. The show is the show.’ Our show’s the show, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t surprise people. If he suits back up again, it doesn’t mean that all of a sudden it goes back to the status quo.”
That last bit, about Oliver suiting up again, is not hypothetical; in posters for the upcoming “Crisis on Earth-X” crossover, Oliver is wearing the Green Arrow costume. Diggle, for his part, was absent from that poster, which frustrated some fans. In hindsight, it seems likely the change of his costumed identity is why.
Fans will likely have a hard time believing Amell’s claim that he will not step back into the role; after all, Oliver “died” in season 3, but was back shortly thereafter; he also “retired” at the end of that season, only to return to the role of Green Arrow in the season 4 premiere. In each of those cases, though, the city was left unprotected — or at least with a Team Arrow that sharply felt Oliver’s loss. This time around, Oliver has confidence in Diggle to handle what comes.
“I give it to Diggle; I don’t give it to him with a heavy heart, I give it to him with a full heart,” Amell said of the transition. “I give it to him expecting him to be able to handle it. I like the idea that I give it to him because the city needs a Green Arrow, right? The Green Arrow can be more than one person. The Green Arrow is a symbol and his team is a symbol. The fact that we are pushing Star City in the right direction is something that is important to me because I don’t want the city to get destroyed every year, because then what’s the point of what we’re doing? We’re a team of vigilantes that are the definition of insanity, because we’re just doing things over and over again and hoping for a different result. Obviously I don’t know what’s going on with Diggle, but I give it up and there’s not a lot of angst.”
Even with a crossover suiting-up in the cards, Amell told EW that there were members of the cast he had not interacted with in several episodes — something unusual for a series lead who has traditionally appeared in almost every scene of the show.
Arrow airs at 9 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, following new episodes of Supernatural.
