The eighth and final season of Arrow will see the return of several exciting characters, including Colin Donnell’s Tommy Merlyn.
Tommy, Oliver Queen’s best friend, perished at the end of the show’s first season. However, he’s been seen several times since, most recently as a hallucination in the penultimate episode of Arrow’s seventh season.
Although Tommy will again appear in the season premiere of the show’s last season, an open question is exactly how he will return. Executive producer Marc Guggenheim previously teased that the character is not “coming back as the Tommy we knew.”
In an interview with TV Guide during the Television Critics Association summer press tour, Donnell himself commented on Tommy’s return.
Although he didn’t say anything about how Tommy will come back, he did comment, “I think Stephen [Amell] said it best at Comic-Con. I think fans are going to see Tommy in a way that they’ve maybe wanted for a while.”
Donnell also reflected on returning to Arrow several times over the course of the show and coming back for the final season. “It’s been a gift to be able to come back over the years and over the seasons and be a continued part of the family as it’s grown into what it is now,” he said.
“I’m really proud of it and happy to be back for this last season in a very different way. You know, to sort of cap off a whole eight years of our lives. It was cool.”
These quotes give fans a lot of food for thought about what we may be seeing from Tommy when the final season of Arrow finally starts. Maybe Tommy will somehow get the happy ending we’ve always wanted for him.
Arrow’s final season will premiere on Tuesday, October 15 at 9/8c on The CW.