SPOILERS ALERT! This post provides details on this week’s episode of The CW’s The Lightning.
Barry enlisted the help of an old friend to save the day in Wednesday’s episode The Lightning.
The episode starts on a positive note as Team Flash throws a surprise birthday party for Barry, but things go horribly wrong when Ramsey Rosso crashes the celebrations. After Ramsey incapacitates the rest of Team Flash, Barry believes he is alone in the fight.
But instead he gets a visit from Oliver Queen aka Green Arrow (Stephen Amell), who has been keeping tabs on the group since becoming Specter. He returns to Earth once more to help Barry stop Ramsey (wearing the legendary Green Arrow suit, of course).
Below, Amell chats to Deadline about returning to the Arrowverse for her swan song.
DEADLINE: How were you approached about the return of Oliver/Green Arrow for this episode of ? The Lightning?
STEPHEN AMELL: Well, Greg Berlanti called me and he and I had more of a general chat. He basically said, “It’s the last season of The Lightning, and you’re one of the people responsible for getting the show there in the first place. So do you want to come back?’ And I said, ‘Greg, I can’t believe I’m actually going to say that because it sounds so cliche, but it really depends on what the story is.’ Greg said, ‘Okay, well, in that case, let’s get you on the phone with Eric Wallace.’ He’s the showrunner on The Lightning, and I really liked what he had to offer. I just thought it would be a little cliche for Oliver to be back for the actual series finale just because I wanted to make sure the focus of that episode wasn’t on the character’s return and more on the ending of the series… I thought the fact it was a non-quote normal episode as part of the show was really exciting.
DEADLINE: Did you work with Eric at all to figure out how Oliver’s return felt unforced, or was the storyline already fully set?
Amell: I wanted to make sure we alluded to the fact that Oliver walked away, but then we have this kind of mythical version of him as the ghost that I think we all sort of understood was just up there somewhere in the Multiverse exists, basically. But what I liked about Eric was that I let him figure out the logistics of how it all worked with the multiverse and the Specter and returning from the dead — because, believe it or not, the people, the shows write in the Arrowverse, do it have some experience with people coming back from the dead. So we wanted to come up with a cool idea that honors history and makes us appreciate everything we’ve made Arrow. If I was going to come back, I wanted to come back and I wanted to be the Green Arrow.
DEADLINE: Let’s talk about the story then. Why do you think Oliver was the right person to help Barry at that moment?
Amell: I mean, it hit him at a really interesting point. He met him at the beginning of his journey. So I think whenever the two of them talk, there’s always something Barry will expect from Oliver and there’s always something Oliver will expect from Barry. I think in Oliver’s case he enjoys the ease of Barry and I would think that in Barry’s case he just enjoys Oliver’s mentorship. So it’s nice. I was always interested in the scenes between Grant and me, there was always this beautiful lightness. I don’t know if as Barry he could always do something unique with Oliver, but I thought Oliver always had to do something unique with Barry.
DEADLINE: How did you feel walking back on set as Green Arrow?
Amell: It all felt very, very oddly familiar. I know a lot of people worked on it The Lightning, but more on the crew side who were really looking forward to me coming back because a lot of them were there Arrow. Danielle Panabaker directed the episode and was really excited. She and I met over the Christmas break while she was preparing and talked about the scripts and things like that. So overall the experience was easy, it was really nice. I couldn’t have asked for more.
DEADLINE: I’m sure some fans were hoping for an Olicity reunion. Do you think Oliver’s explanation for not seeing Felicity while he was back means that, at least in this timeline, the story of him and Felicity ended?
Amell: I didn’t actually see it that way. I took it more like he said wherever they are, they’re good – which I took as an honor, which we did on the last episode of Arrow.
DEADLINE: You said goodbye to the Arrowverse on a day-to-day basis a while ago, but does it feel different now that the franchise is ending in full?
Amell: I think I pulled away from that at the right time to clear the stage and let everyone else get ready, but I think it ends at a good time. I think things are unraveling due to the pandemic and changing filming [schedule] and it’s all a bit frustrating, but it’s been like that for everyone. It’s been an absolutely amazing run in terms of an interconnected universe of superheroes on television. Hopefully when they go back and write the book about it they’ll say we got stuck the landing.