Stephen Amell Returning As Oliver Queen In The Flash, Our Scoop Confirmed
The CW confirms Stephen Amell is returning to the role of Oliver Queen in The Flash, a story which we scooped the day before.
When we’re right, we’re right, and you could say that yesterday we hit a bullseye. The CW has confirmed that Stephen Amell will be returning to the role of Oliver Queen for the final season of The Flash, as we exclusively reported yesterday. Along with giving Green Arrow one more team-up with Grant Gustin’s The Flash, Amell’s return will also reunite the character with John Diggle (David Ramsey).
As Deadline and others reported, Stephen Amell’s return to the Arrowverse will arrive in the ninth episode of The Flash‘s ninth and final season. Unfortunately for anyone hoping Oliver Queen would be around for the remainder of the series, there’s some bad news: executive producer Eric Wallace says Amell’s return will be a one-off; but one that’s “epic-yet-emotional.”
“As soon as our final season was announced, we knew we wanted Stephen to come back… After all, it was Oliver who originally launched Barry Allen on his heroic path. That’s why everyone on Team Flash felt so strongly that it was important to create a full-circle moment… The result is an epic-yet-emotional episode we hope Arrowverse fans will enjoy.”
–The Flash executive producer Eric Wallace on Stephen Amell’s return.
Wallace went on to say fans can expect “thrills, chills and tears” in Stephen Amell’s return in The Flash.
As the EP notes, it was back in 2013 that Grant Gustin first played Barry Allen in Season 2 of Arrow. It wouldn’t be until the following year that Gustin would appear without Stephen Amell in his own series, The Flash. The two heroes have teamed up numerous times since then, including with the heroes from the Arrowverse’s (now mostly concluded or canceled) other CW series, including in the massive 2019-20 crossover Crisis on Infinite Earths.
As predicted by many fans, Crisis served as Stephen Amell’s farewell to the Flash, Team Arrow, the Legends, and just about everyone in the Arrowverse. Oliver Queen was forced to sacrifice himself to save the Multiverse from the machinations of the Anti-Monitor, and Arrow received a final abbreviated season to wrap things up.
We don’t know exactly how this final team-up between Stephen Amell’s Green Arrow and Grant Gustin’s the Flash will be achieved narratively speaking, considering Oliver Queen’s fate. But in the world of superheroes, there really aren’t any insurmountable obstacles to returning from the dead. The Arrowverse often uses time travel — perhaps not as much as when DC’s Legends of Tomorrow was on the air, of course — so that’s certainly a possibility.
However Stephen Amell’s signature role lands in The Flash, fans will have to wait a bit before it happens. The Season 9 premiere airs February 8, and it will be eight more episodes before Oliver Queen makes his return.
