Season 4 of Arrow hit everyone in Oliver Queen's life pretty hard. However, the person affected most by Damien Darhk's reign of terror had to be John Diggle a.k.a Spartan (David Ramsey). Over the course of a single season, the ex-soldier had to watch a friend die, murder his own brother, and narrowly evade death more times than we could count. However, Season 5 will have him face off against his biggest challenge yet, and it sounds more treacherous than anything related to guns, bombs, or evil schemes.
During the Arrow panel at this weekend's San Diego Comic-Con, David Ramsey opened up about the current mental state of John Diggle, and where the character finds himself at the opening of Season 5. He said:
He's in Chechnya. He's with Special Forces handling some business over there. He's still a man of two minds to a great degree he misses the team but he's still dealing with the death of Black Canary, he blames himself for that. And why pulled the trigger on killing his brother, he's still dealing with that and we deal with that in a very visceral away. There's a great scene we just shot with Diggle and how he deals with the death of his brother.
Those of you who watched the Arrow Season 4 finale will remember that John Diggle needed to take some serious personal time after dealing with Neal McDonough's Damien Darhk. The act of killing his own brother, coupled with the guilt he feels over the death of Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) has weighed heavily on his conscience, and compelled him to re-enlist in the Special Forces -- a duty which sent him to a combat zone in Chechnya. However, it sounds like the act of rejoining the military hasn't quite leveled him out in the way that he had hoped. The cumulative guilt of Arrow's last season continues to eat away at him, and David Ramsey teases one particular, "visceral" scene that will really hammer home how lost John Diggle has become.
This sounds like we're in for a version of John Diggle that we really have not seen before. Outside of Oliver Queen, he's the earliest member of Team Arrow, and he has often acted as the moral rock of the ensemble. His military training and stern sensibilities allow him to focus and get the rest of the team through their interpersonal dilemmas, but now he has a demon of his own to contend with. Now Diggle will go darker than ever, and we can't wait to see how David Ramsey plays it.
We're keeping our fingers crossed that John Diggle manages to climb himself out of this emotional hole throughout the course of the coming season. Compared to other members of Team Arrow, he has a considerable amount to lose, between his wife and his baby daughter. We will have to wait and see if he manages to find his way home.
We will bring you all of the latest and greatest details related to Arrow as more information becomes available to us. The Emerald Archer's solo series will return to The CW on Wednesday, October 5 at 8 p.m. ET. Make sure to check out Cinema Blend's The CW premiere schedule for more information related to all of this fall's Flarrow-verse debuts.
