Paul Blackthorne Is Arrow‘s Latest Final-Season Encore — But How?
You may now add Paul Blackthorne to the list of Arrow‘s narratively tricky final-season encores.
TVLine has learned that Blackthorne, an original cast member who wrapped his original run at the end of Season 6, will appear in multiple episodes of the Arrowverse flagship series’ farewell run.
Blackthorne’s Quentin Lance died a hero in the superhero drama’s Season 6 finale, when he took a bullet from Ricardo Diaz meant for his daughter Laurel’s Earth-Two doppelgänger.
“While we could have maimed Lance and sent him off to live with Donna — and that was discussed — I don’t think it would have been true to the spirit of the show, which has never really done that as a general rule,” then-showrunner Marc Guggenheim told TVLine at the time. “But [the decision] was hard.”
Blackthorne himself described his send-off to us as “a beautiful exit, actually… A very nice exit, as exits go!”
“He’s terrific… a total class act,” Guggenheim said. “When [we] sat down with him to give him the news, he couldn’t have been more gracious about it. I think his performance in the [Season 6] finale is among the best he’s ever given on the show. It is a very beautiful, poignant exit for this character.”
All of which raises the question: What is the nature of Blackthorne’s encore, if Quentin is truly and sincerely dead? Arrow answered a similar question with regards to Colin Donnell’s return in the Season 8 premiere, by having him play the Earth-Two version of dearly departed Tommy Merlyn. Showrunner Beth Schwartz has since said that “besides the [five-part ‘Crisis on Infinite Earths’] crossover,” the season opener marked “the only episode of Arrow that is on a different Earth.”
Blackthorne’s only previous “post mortem” Arrow appearance was in Season 7’s documentary-style episode, which featured (new) archival footage of the SCPD vet.
Since wrapping his original Arrow run, Blackthorne also co-starred in NBC’s The InBetween, which just last week was cancelled after a one-season run.
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If the Monitor can bring people from the future to the present I am sure he could bring people from the past to the present. Another possibility is the Earth X Quinton comes to Earth 1 . I don’t think he was killed off.
So glad to see him come back before the end. Quentin was, in many ways, the conscience of Star City, and I’m happy to see him get the respect he’s due.
Yes! So glad to finally hear he’s returning! Him and Manu Bennett are the two characters I’ve been waiting to hear about, but I don’t think Bennett will be back, unfortunately.
I remember being upset he died because everyone in that family has died so it was a little predictable. But I’m happy he’s coming back for one last time!
Well, last week we saw 2040 characters transport back to 2019. A past version could come to 2019 or more likely a doppelganger from different part of the muliverse.
Happy he will be in the final season of Arrow! Paul is great on the show.
Likely if Oliver is still resistant, the Monitor decides to bring a version of the best moral compass Oliver had to help him along. Either than or, and I presume the Flash provides a bit of the answers for a lot of these, is Breacher, Gypsy and other versions of Vibe (like the one they found in Elseworlds) start trying to get ahead of the AntiMatter and start evacuations to our Earth.
I don’t remember seeing a doppelganger of Vibe in Elseworlds. The only doppelgangers we saw were the Earth-1 versions of Alex and James from Supergirl
Quentin Lance was always one of my favorite characters on Arrow. Happy to see him back for the final season!
The answer is so simple if you know the comics. Quentin shows up AFTER Crisis. Crisis in the comics not only merged the earths but also altered history and rebooted some aspects of the DCU main earth.
So obviously Quentin being resurrected will be a result from Crisis. Case closed.
Did you even read the article? He’s appearing in MULTIPLE episodes. There’s more to it then just being “resurrected as a result of Crisis.”
episode 9 and 10 = multiple episodes.
His resurrection will 100 % be tied to Crisis.
Really don’t care HOW — just THRILLED