It’s a whole new world for Oliver on season 5 of ARROW. The former billionaire has a new team, a new job (as Mayor of Star City) and a new problem: someone might discover his past off the island.
During a visit to the set of ARROW in Vancouver, star Stephen Amell spoke to journalists about what’s to come next for Oliver, including a possible new romance, the discovery of his secrets and how we should look at Oliver in season 5.
Uncovering the Past. We’ve seen that reporter Susan Williams has an inkling that Oliver didn’t really spend those five years on a “hellish island”. Will she continue to dig into his past and reveal his secrets? “It hasn’t really happened yet, but where they go is interesting. Susan appears to be up to no good, but, you know, in reality she’s just following a very interesting story. The Mayor of the town where she is a news reporter was clearly not on island for five consecutive years, which — by the way, I feel like it’s about time we did that. I mean, I always think back to the first Nolan BERMAN where I think it’s Ra’s al Ghul that says ‘the world is too small a place for someone like Bruce Wayne to disappear’. Theoretically Oliver Queen was sort of…you know, even if he wasn’t as famous — and he wasn’t — he did perish in a very famous incident within our story. I always thought when he was in Hong Kong that someone would stop him and be like ‘you look like Oliver Queen’, but no. So I’m glad that it’s happening.”
Two New Faces. Two actresses are joining the show in season 5 in a recurring capacity. The first is Juliana Harkavy, who plays Tina Boland. Amell said that “Tina is a character that the team tracks down who is operating in another city.” We’ll first get a glimpse of her in 2017. Meanwhile, Lexa Doig is joining the cast as Talia al Ghul….Ra’s al Ghul’s other daughter (we’ve already met Nyssa). Amell hinted that “Talia is….we learn about her before we meet her. And she is, I think, our gateway to really accelerating the flashback storyline and buttoning up that list that I spoke about earlier.”
The End of Oliver and Felicity? The “Olicity” pair broke up last season and we’ve seen that Felicity scored herself a new beau in season 5. This was something she only recently told Oliver about, but Amell doesn’t think his character was particularly upset by the news. “I thought that Oliver was fine, if not slightly confused that Felicity didn’t tell him that she was dating someone. I wasn’t actually a huge fan of the idea that she wouldn’t say something because of all the reasons that their relationship fell apart last year, which was secrets being kept. So to me when I played those scenes tonight, it was just like, hey, we work together so if you’re keeping anything from me, anything, why? Is it because you don’t trust me? And if you don’t trust me, is that a problem? So to me, it was really about getting to the source of what her issue was. It was less about Oliver. It was more about, are we okay? Are we good?”
So does that signal the end for the couple? Well, for now at least. In fact, Oliver might get himself a new girlfriend. After all, Susan Williams seems particularly interested in the Mayor, and not just for news reasons. “I don’t know if he’s ready to move on, but it’s time for Oliver to have another relationship. We had a moment earlier this year and I was speaking with Wendy Mericle and I was like, ‘look, guys, there’s two things that we’re no longer allowed to write about Oliver: we’re no longer allowed to call him a billionaire because he’s been broke for three years. Not broke, but not a billionaire; he lost his family fortune. So not allowed to say billionaire anymore.’ I said, ‘currently, we’re not allowed to say playboy. He’s dated one woman since Season 2 and he had a fling with Isabel Rochev, that’s it.’ I’m like, ‘stop writing playboy. If you’d like him to be a playboy, then by all means, start writing him like one and then we can do it.’ I’ve had a couple of scenes with Carly [Pope] who’s doing a great job as Susan Williams and I do think that there will be some exploration of a certain element of romance between the two of them, and I hope that people enjoy it because I’ve found it to be really dynamic so far.”
Watch our interview with Amell below and don’t miss an all new episode of ARROW tonight (November 16) at 8:00 p.m. ET/PT on The CW (U.S.) and on CTV Two (Canada).
(Note about the video below: the interview took place on November 2, so any mention of “tonight’s episode” means the episode that aired that week)
