‘Arrow’: Oliver Goes to Jail in New Season 7 Premiere Photos

The CW has released new photos from “Inmate 4587”, next month’s season premiere episode of Arrow.

The new photos, which build on a previously released batch featuring Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) with pink hair and injuries, give fans their first look Oliver Queen/Green Arrow (Stephen Amell) and his new normal: prison life. You can check them out in our gallery below.

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As you can see, things are definitely grim at Slabside Maximum Security Prison as one might expect for a correctional facility, but Oliver’s situation is made even bleaker by the other inmates he’s incarcerated with. In the photos are a handful of Oliver’s former foes, criminals he put behind bars as Green Arrow including Derek Sampson, played by wrestler Cody Rhodes and Danny Brickwell/Brick (Vinnie Jones).

There are also some teases in the photos about just how dangerous prison is for Oliver as well as how far Oliver may have to go to protect himself. Arrow‘s longtime stunt coordinator James Bamford said in a recent interview that some of the things Oliver experiences in prison actually required a phone call with the network censors to see just how far they could go.

“Beth [Schwartz, Arrow showrunner] and I had a phone call with BNSP, which is our censors… a very lengthy phone call about a particular scene that we never had before,” Bamford said. “So, we are really trying to push the limits on the show in the gritty factor. We are trying to go as far as you can go within the confines of our network and what is expected of us and what we can do and can’t do. We are not on Netflix, so we will never be able to X, Y, and Z, but we are damn sure going to try.”

What the limit-pushing scene is isn’t clear, but Amell has been open about Oliver doing something “reprehensible” in the season premiere and depending on just how bad things are, that might be enough to push the limit.

“One scene in the premiere, what Oliver does is reprehensible,” Amell said at San Diego Comic-Con. “There’s nothing about him that is heroic at all [in the episode].”

Amell elaborated a bit on that idea in a previous interview, noting that he hopes the premiere upsets fans.

“Obviously, you want to lean into things that you think fans would want, right?” Amell suggested in a previous interview. “Concurrently, I’m all for things that make fans mad, because mad is no different than happy. The only thing that I don’t want is indifference. I always joke with fans about my alter-ego, Evil Story Steve. If you were to tell me, you know, that four people died in the season premiere of Arrow in season seven, I’d be very sad … but my alter-ego, Evil Story Steve, would be like, ‘Oh – that’s very exciting; why’d that happen?’”

“So, I think that making fans happy, clearly, is what you wanna do when you’re on a show in general because you want people to keep watching, as long as you’re not afraid to lean into things that may make them go, ‘But why would you do that? I hate that. That’s awful,’ because that’s not actually what they mean. If someone screams out on Twitter, ‘I’m gonna stop watching the show!’ they’re probably not gonna stop watching the show, you know what I mean?” Amell added.

What do you think about these new Season 7 premiere photos? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

The season seven premiere of Arrow, which is titled “Inmate 4587”, will debut on Monday, October 15th, at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.