John Barrowman has confirmed that he’s returning to Arrow later on in season 7. The former Doctor Who and Torchwood star is currently attending Supanova in Brisbane, Australia and according to Spoiler TV, he told the crowd during a panel that we can expect to see him back as Malcolm Merlyn on The CW DC show in the near future. Apparently, he might even make the news public tonight on his Instagram feed.
Here’s what STV’s source says:
“John Barrowman just revealed during a Torchwood panel that he is returning to Arrow later this season. He says that he might post a reveal on Instagram later tonight.”
Barrowman began his journey on the show’s first season as Oliver Queen’s original nemesis, Dark Archer. He then stuck around for subsequent seasons in more of an anti-hero or supporting villain role, increasingly in the capacity as the biological father of Oliver’s sister, Thea. He was also one of the Legion of Doom on Legends of Tomorrow‘s second season. However, his story apparently came to an end in the season 5 finale when Malcolm was blown up by a landmine on Lian Yu in a moment of self-sacrifice to save his daughter.
It’s a bit of surprise that Barrowman will be returning to Arrow this year, then. However, this being the DC universe, there could be numerous explanations for it, even if Arrow is usually the most grounded of these shows.
For one, he could be playing Malcolm’s doppelgänger from another Earth. Or time travel could be involved? And though the series has mostly moved away from flashbacks, he could turn up that way as well.
I wonder if his return will be part of the flashforwards, though, as those have already thrown a lot of curveballs our way and have left fans scrabbling to make sense of them. For instance, the reveal that the future Green Arrow is Ollie’s son William and that Felicity’s apparently dead. Why not drop Malcolm in there then and leave us theorizing about how he could be back?
We’ll have to see what’s going on by watching Arrow season 7 unfold on Mondays on The CW, but you can certainly color us intrigued for now.
