Is Arrow's Pivotal Twist for Real? 'The Team Is Going to Have to Adjust'
The following contains major spoilers from this Thursday’s episode of The CW’s Arrow.
Toward the end of Arrow‘s second episode of Season 6, Oliver walked back one promise he made to William before assuring his son this: “I am going to do everything in my power, forever, to make sure that you never end up alone in this world. And I know that you think that that’s not up to me — and that’s a fair, smart point — [but] I think I’ve found a way so that maybe it can be.”
For a moment there, we were left to wonder: How could Oliver possibly take himself out of harm’s way and thus save William from the possibility of being orphaned, especially with frenemy Anatoly back in town and a new, mysterious adversary in the mix?
The answer, we would learn, is to ask Diggle to take over as the Green Arrow. And take over he will.
Hey @david_ramsey —
You’re up.
— Stephen Amell (@StephenAmell) October 20, 2017
“It’s definitely something that we’re going to have to entertain at least for a little while, until we can figure something else out for Oliver,” Juliana Harkavy, who plays Dinah/Black Canary, tells TVLine. “The team is going to have to try to adjust. They’re going to have to try to realign their positions on the team and refocus their strengths and just try to make it work.”
Series star Stephen Amell previously hinted at the switcheroo in his TVLine Q&A, saying, “There’s a really pivotal moment at the end of our second episode and when I saw it I thought to myself, ‘OK, this is interesting. Are we going to follow through with it?’ And we really do. We followed through with it. [In doing so] there’s a maturity there that I’m very proud of.”
But while Diggle will in fact assume the Green Arrow identity, no one should fret that Oliver’s days of thwip!-ing are completely over. Explaining his lighter workload at a recent fan event, Amell said, “In the early part of the season we undertake a storyline and we stick to it. [But] that’s all about to change” as he headed into production on Episode 7.
Another burning question arising from Oliver’s decision relates to Diggle’s reveal to Dinah that shrapnel from one of the Lian Yu blasts has left him with a degenerative neurological condition. Will switching from guns to arrows solve Diggle’s problem in the short-term, or compound it? “I think it could do both,” Harkavy ventures.
Elsewhere in Episode 2:
* Anatoly, as mentioned, resurfaced to kidnap a Markovian diplomat and hold him for $20 million ransom (aka the same as the insurance claim for the SCPD rebuild). In the course of doing so, he argued to Oliver, he demonstrated that he is “a good man,” seeing as he could have instead terrorized his frenemy’s son.
* After teaming up to analyze and debunk the photo that was leaked (by whom?!) to out Oliver as the Green Arrow, Felicity invited Curtis to give up his newly revealed “other job” and instead work with her, for a new company/name TBD.
What did you think of the episode “Tribute”?
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