Stephen Amell Discusses Tonight’s Cliffhanger Twist

WARNING: Spoilers for tonight’s Arrow episode “What We Left Behind” are being discussed within.

Stephen Amell has been singing the praises of Arrow Episode #5.9 for weeks, and now that we’ve seen it, we know why. After the East Coast airing of the show, Stephen participated in a live Facebook chat which you can find below, and talked a bit about the episode that had just ended.

“This was the first script in a long time — and that says a lot, because the previous scripts had aliens in it — this was the first script in a long time where I read what happened in Act 5, and I went ‘gahh!’ Like that. It legitimately freaked me out, and then the fallout of it of how certain characters were going to react to it, whether that was going to bring back familiar positions for characters, that worried me a little bit, but ultimately, knowing where we go, I’m very excited,” he enthused, when asked about the development for what happened with Billy Malone. “It’s a very cool development, and it certainly raises the stakes for Mr. Prometheus.”

And then there’s that cliffhanger: Katie Cassidy (Laurel) is in the Arrow lair! What’s going on?

“Obviously people don’t just come back from the dead, so there has to be some sort of vetting process to make sure that it is Laurel because the group has seen some peculiar things,” Amell said. “We delve into that when we come back in the New Year.”

Amell also stressed that the Black Canary is an important part of the Green Arrow mythos, and agreed with a fan who said they’d like to see her back. “[There’s] lots of consternation in the fan base about what’s important — the Black Canary in the Green Arrow-verse, and I will say that — forgetting about the show for a second — if you just look at the canon of Green Arrow, John Diggle wasn’t actually a character and he’s indispensable; Felicity Smoak wasn’t really a character and she’s indispensable. So we picked and plucked from various parts of the DC Universe, but if you’re just getting into the canon of Green Arrow – the comic book character, not necessarily the show, but the comic book character, the Black Canary is easily the most important feature next to the Green Arrow, period, full-stop, forever. So it would be very nice to have the Black Canary back,” he said.

Arrow returns January 25 on The CW. You can watch Stephen’s Facebook Live video below.