Arrow: Ben Lewis Promoted to Series Regular in Final Season

Arrow‘s “future Team Arrow” is continuing to shape up. According to a new report from TVLine, Ben Lewis – who plays the older version of William Clayton-Queen – has been promoted to series regular for the show’s eighth and final season.

As fans will remember, William (Jack Moore) is the biological son of Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell), who was briefly raised by him and Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards) after his mother died during the fight on Lian Yu. Midway through last season, William left Star City and moved in with his grandparents, after Oliver and Felicity’s time as vigilantes put him into too much danger.

In the show’s 2040-set flash-forward sequences, those events clearly had an impact on Lewis’ older version of William. Throughout last season, William served as a sort of audience proxy through the show’s bleak potential future, as he and Roy Harper (Colton Haynes) traveled to a post-apocalyptic Star City. By the end of the season, William joined Connor Hawke (Joseph David-Jones), Zoe Ramirez (Andrea Sixtos), and his half-sister Mia Smoak (Katherine McNamara) in the fight against the evil corporation Galaxy One.

Since vigilantes are technically illegal in Star City’s future, the blame was placed on the older versions of Felicity, Roy Harper (Colton Haynes), Rene Ramirez (Rick Gonzalez), and Dinah Drake (Juliana Harkavy), who parted ways with the younger heroes in the Season 7 finale. With McNamara and David-Jones already confirmed to be series regulars in the show’s final episodes, it sounds like the group will be navigating Star City in a new way.

“They’re struggling with how to be a team for the first time,” showrunner Beth Schwartz recently explained.

“There’s also the feeling that these kids are just kids and they’re flying without a net.” consulting producer Marc Guggenheim added. “Future-Rene, Future-Dinah, and Future-Felicity are all gone, per the end of season 7, so they’re left to figure things out on their own.”

What do you think of Lewis’s new role in Arrow‘s final season? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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