Oliver Queen shocked the world when he admitted to Star City – and basically the entire world – that he was in fact the Green Arrow. Oliver found himself behind bars at a Supermax that houses the very villains he put away.
One of Arrow’s greatest strengths is the relationship between Oliver and Diggle. They’re brothers in every sense of the word, and when you don’t get that as often as you’d like, you feel its absence. But when season 7 picks up, it sounds like we’re getting back to that strong relationship between the two brothers.
“Diggle’s visiting Oliver in prison at the beginning. He’s giving him reports,” David Ramsey told us during a roundtable interview at San Diego Comic-Con. “You see a strong relationship that I think was beginning to reshape itself at the end of season 6, despite their differences.”
After Oliver outed himself as the Green Arrow to practically the entire world, his confession had consequences on the rest of the team as they were also compromised in the process. So there haven’t been any vigilantes in Star City for five months. And with Ricardo Diaz still on the loose, Team Arrow has to turn somewhere else for support.
“They can’t play dress-up anymore,” Ramsey said. “So ARGUS has really become the de facto headquarter type of long arm that they’re using to track down Diaz because they don’t have a lair. All of that provides a lot of stress for Oliver. Diggle is picking up some of the mantle in terms of leader.
But this isn’t your father’s structure of Team Arrow when Oliver disappears. Team Arrow will get more help from others, including Felicity and, apparently, ARGUS.
“They kind of looked to Diggle as the de facto leader every time Oliver disappeared,” Ramsey said. “But they really are taking advantage of what ARGUS has to offer New Team Arrow and Old Team Arrow.”
Now with ARGUS being a huge part of, at least, the beginning of season 7, that means that we’ll be getting plenty more of Lyla. Ramsey stressed the importance of what Lyla means as a character both to Diggle as a man and to Diggle as a part of Team Arrow.
“Part of it that we also start to explore is: Who does ARGUS answer to,” Ramsey said. “Kind of like what Marvel did with S.H.I.E.L.D. They do have bosses and thy can’t run willy nilly…You’ll see more of Lyla. He’s married to the head of ARGUS, she’s married to a vigilante. It’s a good story.”
Watch our interview with Ramsey below, where he talks about directing an episode of Arrow and more.
Arrow season 7 premieres Monday, Oct. 15 at 8/7c on The CW.