#ep 8x02

[oliverdant]

"She [Felicity] is ever-present in Oliver's mind... We found Oliver can't wear his wedding ring in the premiere for a very specific reason, but he can wear it in the second episode. And it wasn't built into the script, but I spoke to our director, Antonio Negret, and we built a moment of Oliver putting his ring back on and thinking about it. So Emily's gone, off the show, but Felicity and William and Mia are ever-present in Oliver's mind."

- Stephen Amell | comicbook.com

[oliverdant]

"I love writing her character [Felicity Smoak] and always miss writing for her. We just had to creatively come up with a way of keeping her still there without seeing her, and that's sort of what we've done all season."

Beth Schwartz | TVGuide

- Im sure she’ll be back for a cameo

[oliverdant]

“Two things [are driving Oliver in S8]: One, he believes the Monitor, because Kara and Barry were going to die and the Monitor gave him [an alternative]. And secondarily, he believes Felicity when she says, “Whatever happens, I’ll find you.” He believes her. There’s a great exchange in [this season’s] Episode 2, between me and Rila Fukushima, who plays Tatsu, where she says, “You’re being driven by anger,” and he goes, “I’m not angry.” Because he’s not. He’s simply doing what has to be done. In a lot of ways, he was driven by anger in those earlier seasons; not so much this year. He’s just making good on the deal he made. He made a deal. He saved Barry, saved Kara…. [Sheepishly] I’m bummed out that he lied to Barry about making a deal.”

Stephen Amell | TVLINE

[oliverdant]

“If I’m wrong, then all of this is for nothing... I left Felicity, I left my children... So, if The Monitor can’t fix this and he is not here to help, then all the things that I sacrificed and all the things so many other people have sacrificed will have been for nothing! I need my family to live, which it means that I need this to work”

Oliver to Tatsu | Arrow 8x02

[oliverdant]

“When I was in Afghanistan, my unit got sent out on patrol on a day I pulled base duty.There was an IED in the road. None of them made it back. I used to lie in bed at night asking myself, 'Why them? Why not me?' And I made every deal I could think of with any god I thought listened."

Lyla “Harbinger” Michaels to Laurel | Arrow 8x02

[oliverdant]

“We [#Arrow] visit places that we’ve gone to in our previous seasons… different locations, I think we only have, like, two episodes actually in Star City” — though, barring the “Crisis” crossover, the premiere is the only episode to have scenes on an alternate Earth”

Beth Schwartz | TVLINE.com

[oliverdant]

“I think Tatsu being in [#Arrow] Episode Two was awesome”

Stephen Amell | TCA 2019

[oliverdant]

After sojourning in season 1-land in the season 8 premiere, Arrow is heading to another familiar location from its past. In…

“Episode 2 is really hard,” Amell tells EW. “[There’s an] elevator fight. It was on a hot soundstage.” Time was another factor. “This happens every year where there’s an episode built in the first three or four episodes that will be really heavy on night exteriors. [In Vancouver, Canada], the sun goes down at like 10 at night, and it starts to get light at 4 in the morning, and so it makes it very challenging.”

Having Laurel on along for the ride also gives Oliver a chance to put his belief that people — both himself and others — can change into practice. “If Oliver doesn’t believe in people’s capacity for change, then he’d be a super-big hypocrite because you look at the type of person he was in Russia, for sake of argument — which is also something we touch on this season — and the type of person he is now. If people just judged him on his actions back then, nobody would go near him. He’d be a pariah,” says Amell. “Laurel has proven herself and so Oliver is not going to sit in judgement of her.”