Arrow: Oliver and Diggle Are Closer Than Ever in Final Season

The CW’s Arrow has years of ground to potentially cover in its eighth and final season, but it sounds like one of the show’s core relationships will be on pretty good footing. ComicBook.com was on hand for Arrow‘s panel at this month’s Television Critics Association press tour, where the relationship between Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) and John Diggle (David Ramsey) was brought up.

The pair have largely been rebuilding their relationship since their Civil War-esque conflict in Season 6, but that will apparently be water under the bridge in the final episodes.

“The space has been closed.” Ramsey revealed. “I can say that. Diggle’s always been on Oliver’s side. It will be no different in Season 8. And we’ll see the relationship gets even tighter, I think, in ways that they haven’t been before, certainly since Season 7, when they had their big blowup or 6, when they had their big blowup. So some of that reconciliation has happened, and these guys are closer than they ever have been, and the season begins that way.”

With all of that in mind, it will be interesting to see how Diggle’s narrative factors into Oliver’s final days, in the lead-up to the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover. Diggle’s future is expected to play an interesting role in the show’s flash-forward sequences, with Connor Hawke (Joseph David-Jones) and John Diggle Jr. (Charlie Barnett) set to appear. And of course, there’s the whole John Stewart of it all too.

“I think that’s the great thing about John Diggle,” Ramsey told ComicBook.com earlier this year. “The writers and I have always talked about this, that the characters on Arrow are so rich and they really have been from the beginning. You can tell the story you want, but if you want to tell a story about any of those characters, you’re not hurting for story. You can do a six- or seven-episode arc on any one of these characters and get great storytelling out of it. You haven’t seen a lot of his backstory…and I think people are curious about it — particularly when you find out that his father’s name is Stewart, for God’s sakes, and he has a mother who’s alive and well, that he doesn’t call. These types of things make the character rich.”

“I think that’s the type of stuff that makes a seventh or eighth season interesting — that there is more interesting story to tell.” Ramsey added. “‘Is he Green Lantern? Is he not? What’s going on with his family?’ You’re asking these questions at the end of the seventh season of a show. That’s a testament to the storytelling of the show, but I think John Diggle is a really rich character, and I think we’re still scratching the surface to all of his story, both backstory and future. I mean, he adopted a son at some point [in the flash forwards], and there’s conflict between his biological son and his adopted son. How did he play into that? Just tons of story left to tell.”

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

Additional reporting by Scott Huver.