Is ‘Arrow’ season 4, episode 19 new tonight? More on Diggle’s future

DiggleWith “The Flash” returning to The CW with new episodes on Tuesday, it would be fair to assume that “Arrow” would be joining it. After all, every week this season with a new “Flash” episode has also brought us a new “Arrow” episode … right? Well, the following may come as a surprise.

There is still no new episode airing on the network tonight; instead, the show will return next week with the aftermath of Laurel Lance’s death. The reason for that is fairly simple in that “Arrow” aired an episode recently without “The Flash” accompanying it the night before, and this week off more or less reestablishes the equilibrium. We don’t have any huge particular reason for the wonky schedule other than “story reasons.” For “Arrow” in particular, it made sense to leave off before hiatus with this cliffhanger, that way there was something big to come back to.

While of course Oliver Queen is going to be feeling the pain of losing his friend and one-time girlfriend when the show returns April 27, Diggle may be the one handling it the worst. After all, it was his inability to believe that his brother could be a traitor that landed Laurel in such a precarious position and he will feel a mixture of pain and guilt moving forward this season. Not only that, but David Ramsey tells “Access Hollywood” that it will heavily influence his decisions:

“Post-traumatic stress syndrome has happened to the whole team after Laurel’s death. He’s no exception, and so we’re seeing a Diggle that we’ve never seen before. What has happened to his brother – the betrayal, the not-death, the H.I.V.E., the not quite H.I.V.E. – he is on an emotional tailspin, his wife now a part of this organization, ARGUS, which clearly has its own agenda that he’s never really fully agreed with, so I think we’re looking at a Diggle who… this is a nuts and bolts kind of guy. And there was a great line that Lyla had during the Suicide Squad episode of Season 2. … She [said] very clearly, ‘You see the world in black and white, and the world is much more complicated,’ and I think that’s always been his Achilles heel … The same thing that makes Diggle strong in that he sees it black and white and therefore he’s honorable and super loyal and he will take the grenade, is the same thing that is his Achilles heel. He can’t really wrap his head around the gray areas. … You’re going to see a Diggle who has to deal with the gray and because of that, he is fractured and he is willing to do things that you never would have thought him to do.”

We’re super-worried about Diggle; while we would be stunned to see the show kill him off, there are also other terrible things that could happen to the character … including him becoming a person we no longer recognize. Stay tuned, as we’ll have some other “Arrow” scoop as it starts to come out.

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