Photo: The CW
*Spoilers to follow if you haven’t already seen episode 7.07 of ARROW*
Oliver Queen has spent the first seven episodes of this season of ARROW in prison, but now the former vigilante is finally free. After Ricardo Diaz broke into the prison in an attempt to take out Oliver, he found the old Green Arrow was a man desperate to keep his family safe and reunite with them. When the two of them went head-to-head in a battle royale, Oliver emerged the victor. He left Diaz locked in a cell as the prison riot came to an end, while some legal manoeuvrings outside the prison finally secured him his freedom. Last we saw of Oliver, he and his wife were reuniting with a kiss outside the prison gates. During a recent visit to the set of ARROW, we spoke with star Stephen Amell about Oliver’s decision to let Diaz live instead of killing him and how he and Felicity move forward.
- Leaving Diaz Alive. Given how willing Felicity seemed to be to kill Diaz in order to save her husband, one has to wonder whether Oliver’s decision to leave his nemesis alive will anger Felicity or even come back to bite him. Amell hinted that “his decision to leave Diaz alive will not influence his relationship with Felicity, but I think it’s going to have an incredibly impactful moment on another person that he’s very close with. I don’t know if he’ll come to regret the decision, actually. Probably. Maybe that’s part of the new Oliver post-prison, is those are the decisions that he has to live with, even if ultimately the best thing to do would’ve been to not leave him alive. We shall see.”
- Oliver and Felicity Together Again. As for the reunion between the couple, Amell hinted that “we have some really fantastic scenes in [episode] 8. Obviously we see each other for the first time at the end of [episode] 7, but then pretty quickly I learn that a lot of the stuff that Diaz was saying about Felicity is true, and I thought the way that we worked it out – and we do work it out pretty quickly – [was pretty good]. We come to an understanding that nothing’s ever going to be perfect….nothing’s ever going to be perfect or normal about our relationship, and I think that the sooner that the two of them accept that, the sooner that they can move on with their lives.”
- Prison Fight. The action scenes this season — in both Oliver’s prison scenes and in this week’s episode in particular — have been extraordinary. When asked about them Amell said “It’s been great. The shower fight scene, that was obviously in the first episode of the season, and it’s not often that we get an opportunity to do something like that. This was obviously incredibly unique in so far as we’ve had a couple of fights in the history of the show that just we can’t double me. Not that we do it a ton, but we didn’t use a body double or anything like that. [And in episode] seven, they just turned the stunt department loose. It was the shortest script that I’ve ever read because it had such little stage direction in it. It was basically [Beth Schwartz, the executive producer] going to [director] James Bamford and saying, ‘This is through line of what happens to Oliver from start to finish. Do what you can in the time that you have. Go.’ There’s some specific stuff like Stanley gets Oliver with a needle and Oliver’s tied up or whatever, but all that choreography, that was something that the stunt department I think really excelled in. We’re not going to get nominated for a stunt Emmy, because we don’t get nominated for a stunt Emmy, but we should get nominated for a stunt Emmy.”
Don’t miss an all new episode of ARROW on December 3 at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
