‘Arrow’: Juliana Harkavy on Team Arrow’s Mission in Season 7

With Oliver in prison and Ricardo Diaz still on the loose when Arrow returns for its seventh season next month, Team Arrow is going to have to find a way continue to protect Star City without Green Arrow and it sounds like that challenge will be a driving force for the team.

Speaking with ComicBook.com at San Diego Comic-Con back in July Dinah Drake/Black Canary actor Juliana Harkavy explained that the heroes would have to get “crafty” with Oliver behind bars.

“Well, everything is a little bit under constraints because of what’s going on with Oliver so it’s definitely going to be there, but they’re going to have to be a little bit crafty in how they go about it,” Harkavy said before explaining that defining themselves as heroes without Oliver would be a significant part of the season.

“I think everybody kind of has to step up in their own way. In a large part I think that’s what this season is really going to be about like how do we see ourselves as heroes without our leader,” she said. “It’s going to come in a lot of different forms for Dinah.”

Of course, there will be challenges to seeing the team step up. As fans of the show will recall, Team Arrow completely broke apart last season. First, Renee/Wild Dog (Rick Gonzales), Dinah Drake/Black Canary (Juliana Harkavy), and Curtis/Mister Terrific (Echo Kellum) broke off as their own team after what they felt was hypocrisy on Oliver/Green Arrow’s (Stephen Amell) part. Then, Diggle (David Ramsey) and Oliver had a similar falling out. While they all came back together to face down Ricardo Diaz (Kirk Acevedo) and Oliver appeared to make amends before going off to prison, things aren’t totally resolved.

The idea of the team continuing to be broken is something that Harkavy herself talked about in an interview with Entertainment Weekly at SDCC as well.

“I think the team is definitely broken, after all of the animosity that happened between us last season.” Juliana Harkavy, who plays Dinah Drake/Black Canary, added. “And now the predicament Oliver is in, and just the sacrifice that he made for us. The hierarchy is broken, so we need to restructure and reevaluate how we approach the team.”

They likely won’t have any time to waste, either. Not only have photos from the season premiere revealed that at least one member of Team Arrow — Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) — may be in direct danger, but Diaz is set to be even more dangerous than ever before with the addition of his Longbow Hunters in season seven.

What do you think? Let us know your thoughts about Arrow‘s upcoming seventh season in the comments below.

The season seven premiere of Arrow, “Inmate 4587”, will debut on Monday, October 15th, at 8/7c on The CW.