For years, fans have wished and speculated that Oliver Queen’s right-hand man — John Diggle, played by David Ramsey on Arrow — might turn out to be John Stewart, the African-American, Marine Corps veteran who in the comics is a member of the Green Lantern Corps. Over the years, Ramsey himself has said that he would like the idea, which would team Green Arrow (Stephen Amell) with a Green Lantern, bringing one of comics’ most inconic and enduring friendships and team-ups into live action. With a passing reference during the “Elseworlds” crossover last year to Earth-90’s John Stewart having a ring, those conversations — which had settled into a kind of low murmur in the background of the Arrow fandom — were already front-and-center again before the revelation that Diggle has ties to a General played by Ernie Hudson whose name is Stewart.
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“I think John Diggle has always been a nuts and bolts guy,” Ramsey told ComicBook.com in an interview today. “His world of being a military guy — a grunt, really — has just expanded more and more and more and more and more. And now he is a part of this huge fraternity of otherworldly characters that’s really out of his wheelhouse. I think that has always been fun for me to play. I think that John Diggle has become more and more at ease with working with the more otherworldly aspects of crime fighting, but I think as time goes on, you have more and more opportunities that you can deal with it. It’s like “okay, now you’re dealing with people who can fly, or can move faster than time, who can go back in time.” For someone like John Diggle, it expands his world bigger and bigger and bigger. That’s why I think, we don’t know what’s going to happen with Green Lantern. It’s always fun to sort of tease that, but it’s also a fun idea, that someone as normal as him — the idea that he could be part of this huge tapestry of galactic characters is interesting. Again, that’s something that we don’t know is ever going to happen, but the teasing of that is what I think makes that so special. This guy is not part of that at all, but to make him part of that is a really interesting idea.”
There is a lot more to break down from tonight’s episode of Arrow, titled “Spartan,” and Ramsey had something to say about a lot of it. So check back throughout the night for more details. Arrow airs on Monday nights at 9 p.m. ET/PT, following episodes of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow on The CW.
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