Following Smallville’s 10-season run from 2001 to 2011, The CW kicked off a new DC Comics continuity with Arrow, starring Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen, who initially went by The Hood and The Arrow, but then later permanently adopted Green Arrow as his superhero moniker. By the middle of Arrow Season 2, Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen was introduced, and less than a year later, he was off on his own adventures in The Flash. The Scarlet Speedster’s series is now about to begin its ninth and final season, and word’s come in that Amell’s Oliver have an “epic-yet-emotional” reunion with Gustin’s Barry in this last stretch.
Fresh off yesterday’s news that David Ramsey’s John Diggle/Spartan, Keiynan Lonsdale’s Wally West/Kid Flash and Sendhil Ramamurthy’s Ramsey Rosso/Bloodwork will all appear in The Flash Season 9’s ninth episode, it’s been announced that Stephen Amell will guest star in that same episode. No details about Oliver Queen’s involvement have been disclosed, but The Flash showrunner Eric Wallace had the following to say about looping Amell in (via Deadline):
As soon as our final season was announced, we knew we wanted Stephen to come back and reprise his iconic role as Oliver Queen. After all, it was Oliver who originally launched Barry Allen (played by Grant Gustin) on his heroic path. That’s why everyone on Team Flash felt so strongly that it was important to create a full-circle moment with Oliver’s return in the final season of The Flash. The result is an epic-yet-emotional episode we hope Arrowverse fans will enjoy. It’s all to say ‘thank you’ to everyone for watching and supporting our show throughout nine wonderful years. We absolutely cannot wait for everyone to see Grant and Stephen saving the world together again. And yes, there will be thrills, chills and tears.
Stephen Amell has previously appeared in eight episodes of The Flash, including the pilot and each installment of the wider Arrowverse crossovers from years past. The last time Oliver Queen and Barry Allen saw each other was in Part 4 of the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” event, in which Oliver delivered some parting words to Barry and Caity Lotz’s Sara Lance before dying as a result of restoring the multiverse with his Spectre powers. Barry and Sara were then seen attending Oliver’s funeral in the Arrow series finale, and by the end of that episode, we got to see Oliver in the afterlife with Emily Bett Rickards’ Felicity Smoak. So this will be Amell’s first time playing Oliver since Arrow concluded in early 2020.
Now that we know Stephen Amell will reprise Oliver Queen in The Flash Season 9, question emerge. How will he fit into the episode? Are we simply getting a flashback of Oliver, or will he somehow come from the afterlife to aid Barry Allen and Team Flash? And on a slightly lesser note, will Amell also be reuniting with David Ramsey? After all, John Diggle was an important character on Arrow for the entirety of its run, so it’d be a shame if we couldn’t see these two together one final time.
Whatever the answers to these questions are, the announcement of Stephen Amell appearing in The Flash’s final season comes just a few days after the actor was heard on the Inside of You with Michael Rosenbaum podcast talking about what it would take for him to reprise Oliver Queen, saying:
Oh, it would all depend. The storyline. The money. Less so the money. This is a one-off, right? You're going back for an episode or two episodes. You're not going back to recreate the show. So you know the money everyone is going to haggle, but you're not gonna get an extra $4 million out of them. It would more come down to… I like going online and I like seeing reaction videos, right? When fans see something in a television show that they like. So I would think to myself, as a fan of whatever show, how pumped would I be if so-and-so character just appeared. From that angle I'd probably be like, ‘Yeah, let's do it.’ But again, it depends on the show
In addition to Stephen Amell’s Oliver Queen and the other characters mentioned earlier, The Flash Season 9 will see Batwoman’s Javicia Leslie reprising Ryan Wilder (though it hasn’t been officially clarified yet if we’ll be seeing the main Ryan or a doppelgänger), Supergirl’s Nicole Maines reprising Nia Nal/Dreamer, and Andy Mientus reprising Hartley Rathaway/Pied Piper, one of Flash’s enemies-turned-allies. Season 9 will also bring in Richard Harmon as Owen Mercer, the new Captain Boomerang. As far as the show’s leading lineup goes, Jon Cor’s Mark Blaine/Chillblaine has been upgraded to main cast member, while Jesse L. Martin will only recur as Joe West in the final season.
The Flash Season 9 premieres Wednesday, February 8 at 8 pm ET on The CW. Stay tuned to CinemaBlend for more updates on these final episodes, and don’t forget to read our 2023 TV schedule to see when your other favorite shows are airing.
