Will John Diggle Become a Green Lantern?
In the final minutes of Arrow’s series finale, the show finally paid off a fan theory that has been years in the making. As John Diggle (David Ramsey) prepared to pack up his life in Star City and move his family to Metropolis following Oliver Queen’s funeral, he had a close encounter with some burning space debris, discovering a mysterious box in the wreckage that, when opened, emitted a bright green light…We didn’t get to see exactly what was in the box, but DC fans probably have their suspicions, especially since Arrow has been teasing a connection between Diggle and the Green Lantern mythology for multiple seasons now.
Talking to reporters following a screening of the Arrow finale, Ramsey was coy about what the moment might mean for Diggle moving forward.
“So he did get a green box and it was very exciting. I don't know what that means, but he does go to Metropolis and he got a green box, and we'll see… we’ll find out [what that means].”
Arrow co-creator and executive producer Marc Guggenheim said they had to be purposefully vague about a potential Green Lantern connection because of an agreement the Arrow producers made with DC: “This was something that was worked out over a year ahead with DC Entertainment. We very specifically negotiated and discussed the parameters and I feel like to say anything beyond what we have shown you would violate our agreement with DC.”
Ramsey admitted that it felt very exciting to be able to pay off the long-held fan theory that John Diggle is connected to Green Lantern John Stewart in some small way: “I think there's been a bit of a payoff, but we'll see what all that means. But I'm with Marc; anything [we say] beyond that I think is kind of violating these parameters that we've been given by DC that we have to honor. But I think we've done some justice to the six-year tease that we've had so far.”"David and I have actually talked a lot about Diggle's and David's post-Arrow future," Guggenheim teased. "We've got some really good ideas and I'm going to stand pat on that. I will also say David has become a remarkable director. So we're as interested in him behind the cameras we are in front."
Fans will remember that back in April 2019, Arrow introduced Diggle’s estranged stepfather, General Stewart, while 2018’s Elseworlds crossover saw The Flash from Earth-90 (played by John Wesley Shipp) pointing out that it was odd that “John” wasn’t wearing his ring when he met Diggle, implying that the Diggle of Earth-90 was indeed a Green Lantern.
For now, all we know is that Diggle and his family are headed to Metropolis, where The CW’s upcoming Superman and Lois spinoff will be set - so chances are good we might get a hint about Diggle’s destiny when the new Arrowverse series hits our screens next season.
And don’t forget that HBO Max has greenlit (no pun intended) a new Green Lantern series that is also being produced by Arrow executive producer Greg Berlanti. In the meantime, Diggle will also appear in the February 4 episode of The Flash, although Ramsey told reporters that his presence in Central City won't be tied to that mysterious scene at the end of Arrow.
"There's a whole cast over there on the Flash that they're still recovering from Oliver's death. And part of the connection to Oliver is Diggle, obviously. And so Diggle's presence there serves as kind of that conduit, a way to grieve," Ramsey said. "But there's also a case, there's something to solve that's going on over there in Flash's world that Diggle's a part of. But in terms of what happened at the end of Arrow, following that over there on Flash, no, that doesn't happen. It is John Diggle over there as John Diggle and we're working on a case."
Oliver and Felicity's Happy Ending (and Why Felicity Wasn't in the Flashback Storyline)
The Arrow Season 7 finale set up a long-awaited reunion between Oliver and Felicity, although at the time we didn't know the context for why they had been separated.Schwartz revealed that they had known the vague plan for Oliver and Felicity's reunion since Season 7, but had figured out the exact beats of that emotional final scene between them in June 2019, when Guggenheim wrote it after meditating.
"I meditate every morning and this one morning I came out - this has never happened to me before or since - I came out of the meditation with the entire scene in my head. Literally, word for word," Guggenheim said. "It just felt so right. And I very excitedly texted Beth, I'm like, 'I wrote the final scene, I've got to send it to you,' and of course, the big question was 'is Emily [Bett Rickards] coming back to be in it?' I'm like, 'well now she really has to because I really love this scene.'"
"We didn't even think of another ending," Schwartz admitted. "We didn't have a backup plan at all. We were just like, 'Emily needs to do this.' And luckily she did."Guggenheim did reveal that they had initially hoped that Rickards might be able to return for long enough to take part in the finale's flashback storyline, but the scheduling didn't work out.
"The original plan was for it to be something with Oliver, Felicity, and Diggle, probably circa... right after episode 114 when Felicity was brought into the circle of trust. The problem was that Emily was only available to us for two days. And that meant basically if we had a third day with her we would have been able to tell that story," Guggenheim said. "Once that didn't materialize, we were like, 'okay, well our backup plan is do something post-105 after Oliver and Diggle have started working together, and just tell a piece of the story you didn't see, which is really the start of their relationship.' And I think ... as partners and, as Diggle says later, as brothers you see, as Oliver says, the proof of concept of what that relationship could be. And I think what was very nice and rewarding for us to see was how that and the eulogy speak to each other. And you really do see how much things have changed [between them]."
Why did Earth-2 Laurel Survive the Crisis Instead of Earth-1 Laurel?
Another emotional moment in "Fadeout" came from Earth-2 Laurel's reunion with a resurrected Quentin Lance, with the former Black Siren wondering why she still existed when the aftermath of the Crisis had brought back many of the people who were most important to Oliver, but not his version of Laurel."We went back and forth on that a great deal. Truth be told, that was really driven by the spinoff. I think if we weren't doing a spinoff we probably would've gone a different way," Guggenheim said. "We had a lot of conversations ... basically which version of Laurel did we want on the spinoff? We've really fallen in love over the years with the Earth-2 version of Laurel. We love Katie's take on that character. We love writing for that character. We love the complexities of that character's moral seesaw. She's just always been a more interesting character to us.
"In Seasons 7 and 8, she was really able to redeem herself," Schwartz added. "And we felt that that was such an important story for her character. She's come such a long way from murdering people all the time to becoming the hero she was at the end of Season 8 and will continue to be in the spinoff hopefully. So it just felt like we would shortchange her if we didn't really honor the growth that her character went through."But, Schwartz added, just because they established the rules of the resurrections, in that it's "the people who were important to Oliver that have come back, that doesn't mean we won't surprise you, if the spinoff goes, or on the other shows, if there's another character that might come back."
Will Stephen Amell Return to the Arrowverse as the Spectre?
Although Oliver sacrificed himself during Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, that doesn't rule out a return at some point - as he says in the finale's opening voiceover, he's become something else. "The whole point of making him the Spectre was just to give us story opportunities because who knows what's going to happen in the future?" Guggenheim said. "And the one thing I always say, every time a character dies on any of these shows, it's like, we've got alternate realities; we've got time travel; we've got flashbacks, you name it. We have all these different devices - no one's ever really gone ... So, while I would always love to see Stephen back ... I think it would be how we brought him back and when? If we brought him back in the seventh season premiere of Flash, it would probably diminish this a bit. Fortunately we have some sway with those folks.""There's always an opportunity to cut to him and Felicity in the afterlife," Schwartz quipped. "Just hanging out."
Read Marc Guggenheim's picks for the most pivotal Arrow episodes of all time:
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