How ‘The Flash’ Got Stephen Amell to Return as Oliver Queen

Stephen Amell requested just one “extra” storyline add-on before agreeing to reprise his role of Arrow‘s Oliver Queen during The Flash‘s final season.

It was announced in early January that the ninth episode of The Flash‘s ninth and final season (which premieres this Wednesday, Feb. 8 at 8/7c) will bring back Amell as well as David Ramsey and Keiyan Lonsdale (as John Diggle/Spartan and Wally West/Kid Flash), while Sendhil Ramamurthy in the same episode reprises his role as Flash foe Ramsey Rosso/Bloodwork.

How was Amell’s encore facilitated? Does The Flash showrunner Eric Wallace make that phone call, or does it come from longtime Arrowverse architect Greg Berlanti?

“It’s a two-pronged answer,” Wallace shared with TVLine on Friday. “I called up Greg and said, ‘I have a crazy idea. What if Oliver Queen came back….,’ and I pitched the story. He was like, ‘I love it, let me call Stephen.’ So he called Stephen, then called me back: ‘Stephen loves it! Talk to him, pitch him the idea.’

“So I got on the phone with Stephen — and this is all happening within a span of 18 hours, mind you — and I walked him through it,” Wallace continued. “He said, ‘I love it. But can we do this extra thing…?’”

Amell proceeded to pitch a storyline add-on, to which Wallace said, “‘Let’s do that! That’s fantastic.’ And the call ended with [Amell saying], ‘I’m in. Let’s make this happen.’ It happened that fast.”

As for how the very dead Oliver Queen manages to come back for the episode, Wallace was mum on specifics, though he did maintain, “We don’t change what has happened in the eight seasons of Arrow.” Rather, “we honor all of that.”

And the end result of this unexpected yet super-apropos reunion between Barry Allen (played by Grant Gustin) and Oliver?

“There won’t be a dry eye in the house at the end of that episode,” Wallace avowed. “It’s extremely emotional.”

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