‘Arrow’ season 3, episode 19 reaction: Boss on Roy Harper surprise, future possibilities

Tonight, “Arrow” made what ended up being a surprising move in allowing Colton Haynes to depart, but not exactly in the way that you would think. While the rumors going into “The Fallen” Wednesday night were that Roy Harper was going to die, it ended up being a pretty epic fake-out. Instead, he managed to live, but with that came a huge price: He had to leave Starling City in order to preserve the idea of the Arrow being dead.

So what does this mean for the future of Roy? First things first, executive producer Greg Berlanti tells Deadline that they knew his part had an expiration date from the moment he joined, and he was even informed that it would be a couple of years that he was around. This was always the plan for him to go around here, as his story really opens the door for some other possibilities and sets the stage for what should be a pretty insane end of the season.

But what about the future? Is it possible that we could see more of Roy on one of the other shows? Fellow exec Marc Guggenheim chimed in, and made it very much clear that they would be happy to see him at some point on “The Flash” or even the untitled spin-off show depending on what he is up to:

“The hope is that he’ll continue to be part of the universe we are building. We love working with [him] so much. We’ve talked to him about returning to one of the three shows, and if available, he has expressed interest. He is gone but definitely not forever.”

We do think that we’ll see Roy back at some point. After all, couldn’t there be a point where nobody in Starling City is really after the Arrow anymore? Time will tell.

If you want to get some more scoop on tonight’s episode, read our review over here. Also, sign up to target some other TV news on everything we cover via our CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: The CW.)