Over the course of eight seasons, The CW’s Arrow saw numerous characters depart at various junctures. Thea Queen, Moira Queen, Tommy Merlyn, Roy Harper, Quentin Lance and more all departed at some point, though they and others returned from time to time, either in flashback or as part of larger plots while others made their return in the series finale to say one finale goodbye to Oliver Queen. For all those departures and returns, though, one character was never seen again after they departed — Walter Steele. Played by Colin Salmon, Oliver’s stepfather stopped appearing on the series after Season 2 with the actor (and character) never appearing again. Now, series co-creator Marc Guggenheim explains that while they wanted Salmon’s Walter to return for the finale, they just couldn’t make it work.
In a recent interview with the Fake Nerd Podcast, Guggenheim said that he wanted Salmon to appear and Salmon wanted to appear not just for the finale but for other points in the series as well. It just couldn’t be worked out.
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“Colin and I — we had a really nice exchange of DMs over Twitter afterwards,” Guggenheim said. “He was busy working on another project. He was just such a kind man. He reached out to say how much he wanted to be a part of it and we were able to just sort of catch up. It was really nice. That one was tough.”
He went on to explain that he had wanted Salmon to appear because the finale was meant to be a strong call back to the Arrow series pilot and that Salmon’s Walter was a huge part of that.
“I really wanted Colin in particular, because he’s so synonymous with the first season of the show,” Guggenheim said. “I feel like, when you do a series finale, the more moments that you can harken back to the pilot and back to the first season, the more it just feels resonant. It’s a tricky thing. We had tried to get Colin back over the course of several seasons, and some things are meant to be and some things are not. But he’s a real gentleman.”
Guggenheim isn’t alone in being at least a little disappointed that Salmon didn’t get to be part of the series finale. Oliver Queen actor Stephen Amell told fans at C2E2 2020 in Chicago earlier this year that a scene with Salmon as Walter was one of the things he wished could have happened at the end.
“I would have liked a scene with Colin Salmon who played Walter Steele,” Amell said. “I would have liked to have had a moment with Katrina [Law] who played Nyssa. How long do we have?”
All eight seasons of Arrow are now streaming on Netflix.
