Arrow departs for good, but David Ramsey still has a few items on his wish list

By Allison Shoemaker | January 28, 2020 | 6:00am

TV Lists What's On Tonight

Arrow departs for good, but David Ramsey still has a few items on his wish list

Juliana Harkavy, David Ramsey, Rick Gonzalez Photo: Bettina Strauss

Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Tuesday, January 28. All times are Eastern.

Top pick

Arrow (The CW, 8 p.m., farewell special, and 9 p.m., series finale): Cue the Boyz II Men and get the tissues ready, for one of TV’s longest-tenured superheroes is finally making his exit.

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To be fair, Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) has already exited—twice—in the Crisis On Infinite Earths crossover, and the other Arrowverse shows have been mourning his loss ever since. Last week’s episode of Arrow, “Green Arrow & The Canaries,” was about the future, both in a storytelling sense (it took place in 2040) and in a more practical sense (it’s a backdoor pilot for a potential spin-off). This week seems to be all about the past—all two hours of it. The farewell special, “Hitting The Bullseye,” airs first at 8 p.m.; afterward, the last-ever Arrow, “Fadeout,” will bid a fond farewell to Oliver, John Diggle (the terrific David Ramsey), Dinah Drake (Juliana Harkavy), Rene Ramirez (Rick Gonzalez), and what’s sure to be a whole bunch of returning actors, including Emily Bett Rickards, who played Felicity on every season of the show until this one. Rickards, Amell, Ramsey, and Katie Cassidy (various versions of Laurel Lance) are Arrow’s stalwarts; plan on seeing them all tonight.

At the Television Critics Association last August, The A.V. Club asked Ramsey what hopes he had for John Diggle in this final season, and if there’s any chance of Digg showing up on another show, perhaps another vaguely green one.

The A.V. Club: What’s left on your wish list for John Diggle? Anything you want to see him do before the show ends?

David Ramsey: Yeah, I think we have to settle what happens with his kids, with J.J. and Connor, the son he adopts. I think we have to see what happens with his marriage to Lyla Michaels, who’s now the leader of A.R.G.U.S.—the new Amanda Waller, for all intents and purposes. And I think we have to find out what’s going on with Lantern. Those are all questions that will be answered, by the way.

AVC: Would you do a Green Lantern show, if asked?

DR: The right one, absolutely. I think that’s a great character. But it’s an expensive show, a pricey show. It’s like, “Anything I can think of? Great!” And boom, that’s $5 million, right there.

AVC: Has the way you play this character changed over the years? Do you approach him any differently?

DR: There’s a sound, a kind of voice that came out of Diggle that I didn’t know existed until we were on season two. Other than that, I don’t think there’s a different way I played him. I was always dialed into him being Oliver Queen’s Lifer, the one that continues to remind him of his humanity. I was really dialed into that. But yeah, there was a voice that came out of Diggle that I kind of found after season two.

AVC: Do you think Digg will ever get used to super-speed?

DR: No.

AVC: It’s just puking, right until the end?

DR: That’s the great thing, when Flash first showed up [and I saw that was his response], it was like, “How big do you want it? Because I’ve done a lot of comedy.” So we just kept going with this crazy reaction. But I think that’s the charming thing about Diggle. “There’s a woman flying in a skirt. Does anyone else see this? There’s a man that moves faster than anything else on earth. Is anyone comprehending this?” He says the things people are thinking. I think the puking is just a reaction that someone would really have. That’s the appeal of John.

Regular coverage

This Is Us (NBC, 9 p.m.)

Wild cards

Miracle Workers: Dark Ages (TBS, 10:30 p.m., second-season premiere): This Simon Rich-created anthology series returns for a deeply weird second go-round tonight, and we are very excited.

Here’s Danette Chavez on the second season, from her warm pre-air review:

Miracle Workers: Dark Ages, the second installment of Simon Rich’s comedic anthology series, is neither a faithful recreation of the Middle Ages, nor a full-on anachronistic skewering of previous generations. Based on Rich’s short story “Revolution,” Dark Ages rolls out the usual jokes about medieval barber-slash-doctors, superstition masquerading as science, and living in a pre-plumbing society. But just as frequently, the series finds bright spots during a period that has been written off as one of the worst in human history—namely, the people who bucked convention or showed compassion or just figured out how to make disposing of waste a slightly less arduous task. The philosophical comedy may seem slight compared to The Good Place, but Miracle Workers reckons with many of the same questions about goodness and free will.

It’s worth your time.