Arrow: Paul Blackthorne Returns as Quentin Lance in “Reset” Preview

Arrow continues its march towards not just “Crisis on Infinite Earths” but the end of the series, visiting significant places and people from the show’s run in the process. This week that meant that Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) returned to Russia one more time as he sought a way to defeat The Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) but even the best laid plans don’t always work out so well and next week, having been double-crossed by Lyla (Audrey Marie Anderson) that means Oliver will find himself revisiting an event from the past with a surprisingly different outcome.

The CW has released a preview for “Reset”, the Arrow episode set to debut on November 26. The episode will see Oliver reunited, in a sense, with Quentin Lance (Paul Blackthorne) but certainly confused as to how that’s possible. As fans will recall Quentin died at the end of the series’ sixth season having taken a bullet to save Laurel (Katie Cassidy Rodgers) and from the looks of things that event — the taking a bullet part — did indeed happen, but it didn’t work out quite the way Oliver recalls. You can check out the synopsis for the episode below.

YOU CAN’T FIGHT YOUR FATE – After being double-crossed by Lyla (guest star Audrey Marie Anderson), Oliver (Stephen Amell) finds himself facing a life or death situation that seems very familiar. Laurel (Katie Cassidy) has the opportunity to make amends with the past. David Ramsey directed the episode written by Onalee Hunter Hughes & Maya Houston.

News of Blackthorne’s return to Arrow for the final season broke earlier this month. Following the news of his return, Blackthorne took to Twitter to react to the news of his return, saying: “Delighted to be popping back for a spot of #Arrow …. A pleasure and a privilege!”

Blackthorne’s Quentin Lance isn’t the only familiar and previously deceased face to return this season. Byron Mann as Yao Fei Gulong (Oliver’s original mentor on the island in the first season), Susanna Thompson as Oliver’s mother Moira Queen, and Colin Donnell as Oliver’s best friend Tommy Merlyn as well as John Barrowman as Malcolm Merlyn and Josh Segarra as Adrian Chase all have or are set to return.

Next week’s episode will also likely help connect things a bit more to the coming Crisis as Oliver and his allies are now aware that Lyla has been working with the cosmic being behind their back and it’s that moral ambiguity that resonates so much with how The Monitor is presented.

“You have to unlearn everything — your morals, your ethics, what you define as right and wrong. You have to throw that all out the window,” LaMonica Garrett, who plays The Monitor, once told me. “I think that’s the part where people were having a hard time grasping The Monitor as being this person, this antagonistic character. ‘Cause we all know him from Crisis, and he paid the greatest sacrifice, to me, to become one of the biggest heroes in the DC mythology. But he went about it his way. So, preparing for someone like that — everything you know, right is left, up is down, that’s all gone. He’s not good or evil. That was a challenge in itself.”

Arrow airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on The CW. “Reset” airs November 26.