Arrow: Stephen Amell Previews What’s Next After “The Slabside Redemption”

SPOILER WARNING: The conclusion of the Arrow episode “The Slabside Redemption” which just aired on the East Coast of the United States is being discussed within.

Oliver Queen is a free man.

After months behind bars and an action-packed, bloody, and fiery fight that went on for a majority of the November 26 episode, Oliver (Stephen Amell) has been reunited with his friends Felicity Smoak and John Diggle… and now we are left to wonder what’s next.

“We have some really fantastic scenes in [Episode] 8,” Stephen Amell told us about what fallout will be seen between Oliver and Felicity in the next episode of the series, airing on December 3. “Obviously we see each other for the first time at the end of [Episode] 7, but then pretty quickly, I learn that a lot of the stuff that Diaz was saying about Felicity is true,” he continued, assuring that they will work out the situation fairly swiftly. “We come to an understanding that nothing’s ever going to be perfect,” he said, also addressing the notion that he left Ricardo Diaz (Kirk Acevedo) alive at the end of “The Slabside Redemption.”

“His decision to leave Diaz alive will not influence his relationship with Felicity, but I think it’s going to have an incredibly impactful moment on another person that he’s very close with,” Stephen teased. “I don’t know if he’ll come to regret the decision, actually. Probably. Maybe that’s part of the new Oliver post-prison, is those are the decisions that he has to live with, even if ultimately the best thing to do would’ve been to not leave him alive. We shall see.” Amell is also sure that Oliver’s return to the world isn’t a simple one.

“I know they wanted Oliver back in the world, and he is and in a new and exciting way,” Stephen said. “Concurrently, it felt like we were treating my experience at Slabside like I spent a night in county jail. In actuality, even for Oliver, it was a pretty horrific experience. So I did want a change in him. I wanted a change in him in the way that he interacts with people, with the public, and even so far as his wardrobe.”

Finally, we will see Oliver meeting the new Green Arrow, and we wouldn’t be shocked if that happens in the very next episode, considering the story is called “Unmasked.”

“He runs into the new Green Arrow, or runs into the new Green Arrow’s exploits pretty quickly,” Stephen told us. “Coming out of prison, he gets asked that specific question very early on like, ‘What are you going to do?’ and he says, ‘I’m going to try and do what you guys did, which is just find a different way to help the city.’ We come up with an idea pretty quickly, but I think one of the fun things is it’s not Oliver who comes up with it,” Amell teased.

You can see video from our interview with Stephen Amell, conducted on the CCPD set of The Flash, below.