Arrow: Didn’t Lian Yu Blow Up?

Warning: Spoilers for the Season 7 premiere of Arrow, “Inmate 4587,” are being discussed in this post.

In the Arrow Season 7 premiere, we see a boat approaching the island of Lian Yu. Someone arrives there, who we later find out is William, son of Oliver Queen, 20 years in the future. And Roy Harper is there. So is Robert Queen’s grave.

But… didn’t Lian Yu go “boom” in the Season 5 finale?

Sydney Bucksbaum at THR got an answer to that question when interviewing Executive Producer Beth Schwartz.

“We definitely talked about that,” Schwartz confirmed to THR in an interview that was recently posted. “He blew up the island but he didn’t decimate it. We figured that 20 years in the future, life finds its way back on the island so that’s why we had some greenery having grown over the graves. And he just didn’t burn Robert Queen’s grave.”

We’ll be seeing more of Lian Yu and the flash-forward in the second episode of Arrow Season 7 which airs tonight (October 22) on The CW. (Photos from the episode can be found here). That also includes seeing more of the much older Roy Harper (Colton Haynes).

“You’ll see a lot more in episode 2 that he’s much darker. He’s definitely been burned. There will be a lot of mysteries to reveal throughout the season about what happened to him in that time span. We don’t like the happily-ever-afters, apparently,” she said. She also promised that we’ll learn more about the adult William as he and Roy develop a mentor/mentee relationship.

“Last year we spent a lot of time with Oliver as a father, and those stories were extremely dynamic,” Beth said. “Trying to figure out what it’s like for a child to have a father who is Oliver Queen has been endless with the amount of stories we can come up with. How that affects a small child with all the trauma he’s been through, it’s interesting to see how William turns out when he’s an adult.”

Arrow “The Longbow Hunters” airs tonight (October 22) at 8PM ET/PT on The CW.