David Ramsey on The Challenges of a Potential Green Lantern TV Show

With the departure of Emily Bett Rickards for the final season of Arrow, Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) and John Diggle (David Ramsey) are sure to have quite a few scenes together. The duo have been together from the beginning, and during a chat at Comic Con International in San Diego last month, Ramsey told ComicBook.com that appearing on Arrow and helping to kickstart The CW’s shared universe of DC superhero shows has been a highlight of his life, and something that he does not believe can be replicated. The last thing left for Diggle to do, in the eyes of many fans, is to become the Green Lantern.

Casual fans might not understand what’s going on there, but here’s the short version: Diggle is a new character, created for the show, and since he’s an African-American man named John, who used to be a U.S. soldier, a small but vocal group of fans started to wonder aloud from the start whether he might turn out to be a TV riff on John Stewart, a member of the Green Lantern Corps and former sharpshooter. The idea of being a beloved superhero always appealed to Ramsey, who egged fans on in their speculation early in the game, but over the years it seemed clear that transitioning him into a Green Lantern was not to be. While he had some traits in common with Stewart, Diggle became his own man — and while Green Lantern and Green Arrow are close in the comics, the budgetary and corporate constraints around using GL on TV seemed too much. Then, during the “Elseworlds” crossover last winter, the Flash of Earth-90 (John Wesley Shipp) asked Diggle, “John, where’s your ring?” Fans went nuts for the Easter egg and have been wondering since whether an alternate-Earth Diggle in a GL costume might pop up in this year’s crossover, “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” We asked Ramsey how many times he has knocked on “Crisis” showrunner Marc Guggenheim’s door to ask what’s going on over the years.

“I cannot tell you how many times,” Ramsey told ComicBook.com. “But really, I don’t have to knock on Marc’s door. He’s been incredibly forthright with letting me know the plan, and letting me know some of the politics behind it. Green Lantern is a tremendously large property, and it’s not easily done. If it was done on TV, imagine the cost. So it’s one of those things where it’s going to take a great deal of preparation if and when it’s ever done.”

That is…a very tactful way of putting things, and gives away little information outside of the idea that there is, in some form, a plan. Fans eager to see the idea come to life in live action can latch onto that until and unless we hear more.

Arrow returns to The CW this fall for its eighth and final season, a ten-episode run that will bring the story of Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell), Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards, who exited the series at the end of last season), John Diggle (David Ramsey), and the rest of Team Arrow to a close (unless, of course, there is a spinoff planned). The series’ end will coincide with The CW’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” mega-event, which will run for five episodes over December 2019 and January 2020, featuring episodes from Arrow, The Flash, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, and Batwoman. That seems particularly meaningful since in Arrow’s season seven finale, The Monitor arrived to tell Oliver and Felicity that Oliver would need to join him — and that he would not survive the experience of helping The Monitor defend the multiverse in the Crisis.

Season eight of Arrow will premiere on October 15, 2019.