Stephen Amell Explains How Oliver’s Time In Prison Will Affect Arrow Season 7

Arrow‘s sixth season finale shook up the status quo in the biggest way possible, as Oliver Queen was finally outed as the Green Arrow, meaning the former mayor was carted off to jail to pay for his vigilantism. When season 7 begins, Ollie will be locked up in Slabside Maximum Security Prison with villains and crooks that he put in there in the first place. As the Comic-Con trailer for the new run confirmed, things won’t be easy for the Emerald Archer.

While speaking in an interview with the press at SDCC this past weekend, Stephen Amell was on hand to explain how Arrow season 7 will be affected by Oliver’s imprisonment. Among other things, he teased that being on the inside will force the hero to play dirty, which gave Amell a new side of the character to explore.

“It’s bad. Oliver’s in prison with a bunch of people that he put in prison. So it’s not great. We actually, you’ll see in the trailer, we got some people to come back to the show that we haven’t seen in quite some time. . . . The thing that I like about Oliver right now — and if I was a viewer and I was a fan of it, it would make me mad, which is good — in the [premiere], there’s nothing about him that is heroic. And that has been really, really fun for me to play. Because he’s always the “take charge, solve the problem, and save people” and that’s not what he’s doing in the premiere.”

Like the star says, Ollie’s stint in jail will allow Arrow to bring back a slew of familiar faces from the show’s past. Those we glimpsed in the trailer included Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White), Brick (Vinnie Jones) and Derek Sampson (Cody Rhodes). Not that this season will only feature returning villains, mind you, as the new run will also introduce the Longbow Hunters, Ricardo Diaz’s band of evil archers intent on razing Star City to the ground while it’s left helpless without its greatest hero.

This isn’t the first time that Amell’s hinted that Oliver will have to be something other than a hero while doing time in Slabside, either. He previously teased that the season opener will see him do something “reprehensible,” presumably as he has to make it clear to his enemies that he’s not going to let them threaten him. As Rorschach might say, “I’m not locked in here with you, you’re locked in here with me.”

Arrow season 7 is set to premiere on The CW on Monday, October 15th.