‘Arrow’ delivered one of its biggest game-changing twists of all time this week in the US, when the latest episode of the DC superhero series aired on The CW and saw Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) take a step back from his crime-fighting role as the Green Arrow, passing the torch to his close friend John Diggle (David Ramsey).
Stephen Amell’s character Oliver Queen has fought crime as the Green Arrow
Having watched Queen for five seasons to-date under the hood, battling enemies in a variety of different outfits as his character evolved and developed, not many saw the change to the hero coming, but it’s one that could revitalise the series entirely.
How the characters and their relationships will be affected by the change remains to be seen, but Amell has been speaking out about the story shift since it was revealed.
The actor spoke to EW, and when asked if he was still active with Team Arrow “in certain ways”, he responded: “He’s out. He’s totally out. We have an instance where he has to hop back in, but it’s not in the capacity that people would expect him to. It’s in an episode called ‘Reversal’. He does have to hop back in, but other than the occasional visit, he’s out.”
He added that it had been a “very strange time” filming the sixth season, but he likes that Oliver has “given the mantle to Diggle”.
Viewers are now facing one of the biggest adjustments in the ‘Arrowverse’ they’ve ever seen, so it’s not only going to be interesting to see how the characters in Star City respond to it, but how viewers will take the news. Diggle has always been a fan-favourite character, so we imagine they’ll accept the news with open arms. This season’s going to be a very interesting one indeed…
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‘Arrow’ continues on Thursdays in the US on The CW, and Thursdays in the UK on Sky1.