Arrow To Bring Back Colin Donnell in Season Three Episode Flashback

Colin Donnell, who played Tommy Merlyn in the first season of The CW's Arrow (and one key episode of Season Two), will return for the second episode of Season Three.

While his character died at the end of Season One and will not be brought back from the dead, the series' flashback storytelling device allows for previously-killed characters to periodically pop up again, and showrunner Andrew Kreisberg told TV Guide that's just what will happen.

Ironically, it isn't a Malcolm Merlyn flashback where he will appear, even though Malcolm is on board as a series regular and may have some flashbacks of his own this year. Rather, it will be part of Oliver's Hong Kong storyline.

"Colin Donnell is coming back in Episode 302. Tommy will be in the flashback story," Kreisberg said. "We'll be telling the story about how Tommy and Oliver just missed each other in Hong Kong. It's a really amazing story and we're so excited to have Colin Donnell back. It's one of the advantages of the storytelling that we do that even when you die in the present day, you can still be alive in the flashbacks. It was something that we had talked about last year and then when we committed to doing the Hong Kong story, we knew we could really make it work."

Of course, when a spectral Tommy showed up in the midseason finale last year, it was a surprise for the audience and a gut-punch for Oliver. It's difficult to picture how they would have pulled that off again, without feeling gimmicky, so perhaps announcing the fan-favorite Donnell's reappearance is a strategic move.