This week on The Flash, fans learned that John Diggle, friend and former bodyguard to Oliver Queen, has a son — and that was a surprise.
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Not surprising in the Oliver Queen “I slept with somebody eleven years ago and now they have a ten-year-old” kind of way, but in the “hey, wasn’t that kid a daughter not that long ago?” kind of way.
That’s right: Barry Allen’s excellent adventure through time created the unintended consequence of giving John Diggle a son — John Diggle, Jr. — rather than the daughter — Sara Diggle — fans got to know after she was born in season 3 of the hit CW drama.
The change could tie into the events of a fan-favorite episode of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow (titled “Star City 2046”) from last season. When Connor Hawke — the Green Arrow who succeeded Oliver Queen in the comics — was introduced on Legends, there was a pretty big difference between his comic book version and his TV take: rather than being Oliver’s illegitimate child, Connor’s given name was John Diggle, Jr.
That story took place thirty years in the future, and it seemed like, timeline-wise, it might be a tight fit since John hadn’t yet had a son, but it was an alternate timeline that the Legends were actively working to make sure never came to pass, who whatever, right?
Does the existence of John Diggle, Jr. mean that the dangerous, miserable future of that Legends episode could come to pass? Or will it play into future seasons of Arrow? Only time — heh — will tell.
After his appearance on Arrow last year, Divergent actor Joseph David-Jones said that while they hadn’t talked specific plans, there was some chatter about bringing Connor back, in spite of his reality seemingly being altered by the events of “Star City 2046.”
“I know that a couple of the writers are trying to push to get me back in there, because they really do like what happened with the episode,” David-Jones said. “I know that they’re trying to put me back in there but I don’t know what they’re going to come up with or what even is going to happen with Connor Hawke, but I know they’ve been talking about potential different outcomes of it because they are plan on cycling out some of the cast from the ship. So I don’t know what’s going to happen, or if that timeline is still set until they actually do go back to the past.”
The biggest possibility, though, isn’t so much whether we might see a recognizable Connor Hawke on board the Waverider on Legends, but how this change might impact John Diggle and, by extension, Arrow.
There are a few possibilities, of course: Diggle’s life is hanging in the balance right now, so the first and far-and-away least likely scenario would be that John Diggle, Jr. might somehow enter the Team Arrow picture to replace Dig, who might find himself out of the picture when he’s court martialed and thrown into a deep, dark hole. Besides the obvious problems of a small child somehow being involved in his father’s court martial, thuogh, it seems pretty obvious that freeing Dig will not be back-burnered and will instead be the op undertaken by Lyla Michaels and Oliver Queen (and objected to by Felicity) in an upcoming episode of Arrow.
Another possibility could be that John Diggle, Jr. could become Green Arrow — in the future.
That could impact the show in the sense that, following this year, the flashback device that Arrow has leaned on since the premiere will end, with Oliver’s time on Lian Yu wrapping up in the Season 5 flashbacks. Ever since the first introduction of William — Oliver’s illegitimate son on Arrow — there have been some fans who have speculated about the possibility of flash-forwards giving audiences a taste of the future of Star City and the Green Arrow legacy, with Connor Hawke as the hero.
A third, and probably the most likely, impact on Arrow will be cultivating a distrust of the superhuman community when Diggle and Lyla learn that their child’s life has been forever altered by the poor decisions of Barry Allen. This could play heavy into the crossover, where we already know that Wild Dog doesn’t like superheroes.
The Flash airs on Tuesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW. Arrow airs on Wednesday nights, same time and place. DC’s Legends of Tomorrow, Thursdays at 8.
