With Arrow season 7 having aired its midseason finale going into the Elseworlds crossover event this week, many fans are wondering when the show will return in 2019 and what to expect from the rest of season 7 when it does.
So far, most of Arrow season 7 has been focused on Oliver Queen’s time in prison, and just how he would be released or escape from it. While Oliver Queen may have won his freedom and seen his nemesis Ricardo Diaz placed behind bars, his problems - and those of his allies on Team Arrow - are far from over.
Since the Elseworlds crossover event will have little to do with the overarching story of Arrow season 7, audiences will have to wait until Arrow returns in 2019 to find out what happens with the new Green Arrow - and, thankfully, it won’t be a long wait.
Last updated: January 10, 2019
When Arrow Season 7 Returns In 2019
Arrow season 7 is scheduled to return on Monday, January 21, 2019. The series will remain in its current time-slot on The CW at 8 PM EST, though it will now be followed by Black Lightning, which moves from Tuesdays to Mondays at 9 PM EST. It will be the last of the Arrowverse series to return in January 2019, with The Flash starting to air new episodes on January 15 and Supergirl starting up again on January 20. Legends of Tomorrow season 4 returns on April 1, 2019, in Arrow’s 8 pm timeslot. At that time, Arrow will take a two-week hiatus, and then return in Black Lightning’s 9 pm slot for the rest of its season.
What To Expect From Arrow Season 7 Part 2
Perhaps the biggest question heading into the second half of Arrow season 7 is how Oliver’s new position as a consulting vigilante with the Star City Police Department will affect the city. “Unmasked” saw Captain Dinah Drake finding a loophole in the city’s anti-vigilante laws that allowed her to employ Oliver Queen as an official police consultant to help her in dealing with those cases that required a lone agent with Green Arrow’s talents. But the current mayor, Emily Pollard, is out for Oliver - and this will have a major impact on the rest of season 7, especially now that Oliver isn’t the only Green Arrow in town.
“Unmasked” also revealed the identity of the new Green Arrow, which was one of the major mysteries of Arrow season 7’s first half. Though not identified by name, the new Green Arrow was revealed to be a woman and an illegitimate daughter of Oliver’s father, Robert Queen. It’s believed that she’s Emiko Queen - a character from the comics who was also Oliver Queen’s half-sister and determined to replace him as Green Arrow. It remains to be seen if she will ultimately ally herself with Oliver or work against him, though her final words in “Unmasked’ suggested that she views Oliver as an enemy to be overcome.
Ignoring the tensions with his new job and a half-sister with a grudge against him, there are still other problems awaiting Oliver when Arrow returns in 2019. His relationship with his wife, Felicity Smoak, is strained in the face of the changes she has undergone in spending seven months trying to bring down Ricardo Diaz. Oliver’s only ally while he was in prison - a serial killer named Stanely Dover - managed to escape from prison and will likely come looking for his “old friend” at some point in the future. Finally, Oliver’s best friend and brother in arms, John Diggle, is going behind his back to make a deal with Ricardo Diaz as he’s the only lead ARGUS has regarding a secretive financial organization run by a figure called Dante that provides banking services to terrorists.
Furthermore, the flash-forward storyline set in Star City 2038 also has a number of mysteries that need resolving. Chief among them are: who is responsible for the murder of Felicity Smoak and who else is involved in a plot to bomb Star City that Felicity was apparently part of? It also remains to be seen if Felicity was truly committed to the plot before her death or if she was killed because she was trying to thwart the plan and her true intentions were discovered. It also remains to be seen what become of most of the regular cast in the future of Arrow, particularly Oliver Queen himself, but at least some of this should be resolved when Arrow season 7 returns in 2019.
