John Diggle stood at the foreground of Arrow season 7, episode 19, “Spartan.” The episode revealed a never-before explored aspect of Diggle’s background and family life and how he came to choose the codename Spartan when he officially became a superhero who operated in the field on a regular basis, and not just when Oliver Queen needed the assistance of “the black driver.”
The action of “Spartan” centered on Team Arrow’s continuing efforts to expose the Ninth Circle and Oliver’s quest to free his half-sister Emiko from the sinister society’s control. Discovering that the Ninth Circle was trying to get their hands on classified military documents, Diggle reluctantly approached a general he thought might be able to assist them in understanding why. His contact was later revealed to be General Roy Stewart - John’s stepfather, whom he had never gotten along with. It was General Stewart who had been responsible for leading the mission in which Diggle’s father had died and he would later put Diggle and his brother through brutal Spartan-style military training to toughen them up, thus inspiring John’s codename.
A different Diggle took the lead in the flash-forward storyline set in Star City 2040, with Connor Hawke taking steps to acquire what Felicity Smoak needed to analyze a high-tech helmet being used by the corrupt corporation Galaxy One. The helmet, which looked oddly similar to the one John Diggle wore as Spartan, was revealed to be linked to the Archer surveillance program. This new helmet would give anyone who wore it an AI-empowered sixth-sense and an entire army of soldiers wearing them could easily make short work of Star City’s vigilantes. While this explained something of Galaxy One’s ultimate goals, there were still many questions left unanswered at the end of “Spartan.”
5. Who Is Dr. Will Magnus?
As “Spartan” opens, Felicity Smoak is focused on the task of rebooting her Archer program so she can use it to track down Emiko Queen. While she is doing this, her friend and CTO of Smoak Technologies, Alena Whitlock, tells Felicity that she may have found a new investor for their company - Dr. Will Magnus. The news excites Felicity, who identifies Will Magnus as “the world’s foremost authority on robotics engineering.” According to Alena, the artificial-intelligence behind Archer is similar to something Magnus has been working on for years and he thinks that their work could help him complete his own design.
The name of Dr. Will Magnus will be instantly familiar to many comics fans. First appearing in Showcase #37 in March 1962, Dr. Will Magnus is widely regarded as one of the most brilliant geniuses in the DC Universe, holding doctorates in mechanical engineering, theoretical mathematics and particle physics. He is most famous, however, for his creation of the Metal Men - six sentient, shape-shifting robots who draw their powers from the base metals they were made of. While it seems unlikely we’ll see the Metal Men in the Arrowverse anytime soon, the mention of Dr. Magnus is still an interesting, if obscure, shout-out.
4. Was Cygnus X-1 Taken From The Comics?
With General Stewart’s assistance, Team Arrow discovers that the Ninth Circle is after a biological weapon dubbed Cygnus X-1 - a genetically engineered bacteria that was intended to eat nuclear waste but instead devours nearly anything it is exposed to. This sounds remarkably similar to a biological weapon from the Green Arrow comics called Mutajek 9-9 - a Russian-made bacteria that destroys manufactured plastics, that is capable of destroying a city in minutes.
What makes this similarity significant is that Oliver Queen died while saving the city of Metropolis from a plane carrying a Mutajek 9-9 bomb in the comics, triggering an explosion that destroyed the weapon at the cost of his own life. With Arrow ending later this year, could this be a sign of just how Green Arrow will meet his maker?
Page 2 of 2: Even More Questions From Arrow Episode “Spartan”
3. Will Alena Betray Felicity And Rebuild Archer?
After the Ninth Circle steal the Archer program and nearly defeat Team Arrow using it, Felicity has a change of heart about her pet program and deletes it. Near the end of the episode, Alena reveals that she was able to save a back-up of Archer’s root code and that she figures they can rebuild it, safer and more secure, and still get Dr. Magnus to invest in their company. Felicity dismisses the idea, saying she doesn’t want Archer to become her legacy, leaving the room as Alena stares thoughtfully at the flash drive holding the root code. We know from the flash-forwards to 2040 that Archer is eventually rebuilt by someone, but does it come back into existence because Alena sells-out? Or did the Ninth Circle make their own copy of the code while it was in their possession?
2. Will Emiko Leave The Ninth Circle?
The past few episodes of Arrow have seen Oliver Queen focused on winning his half-sister Emiko Queen free from the influence of the Ninth Circle. This has been Oliver’s chief goal ever since he learned that Emiko was a Ninth Circle agent and had been raised by the organization since his father cast Emiko and her mom out into the street. Having found proof that former Ninth Circle leader Dante was responsible for hiring the assassin who killed Emiko’s mother in “Lost Canary,“Oliver devoted most of “Spartan” toward fighting his way to Emiko and delivering the evidence of this to her.
While Oliver’s pleas seemingly fell on deaf ears, Emiko turned on Dante in the final scene of “Spartan,” apparently having investigated and confirmed Oliver’s claims on her own. The episode ended with Dante shot full of arrows and stabbed through the heart, even as he insisted that what he did was meant to make Emiko stronger by destroying the one thing that remained of her old life. It remains to be seen, however, if this discovery will push Emiko to abandon the Ninth Circle in favor of Team Arrow or if she will use her position within the Ninth Circle to try and destroy it from within. Either one seems equally likely, for while Oliver has tried to approach Emiko with nothing but respect, she has resented his past attempts at trying to take control of her life and may just elect to burn everything around her in her grief.
1. Is Diggle Being Set Up To Become Green Lantern?
With the revelation that John Diggle’s stepfather is a man with the surname Stewart, an old fan-theory regarding Digg being destined to become the Green Lantern of the Arrowverse seems poised to make a comeback. The theory already resurfaced once in the past year, when the Flash of Earth-90 seemed to recognize John Diggle among all the unfamiliar heroes of Earth-1 during Elseworlds and asked why he wasn’t wearing his ring.
Many fans feel that with Crisis on Infinite Earths set as the 2019 Arrowverse crossover event this fall and rumors of big changes coming for the entire line of superhero shows on The CW once it is over, the time is ripe for Green Lantern to make his small-screen debut and join the battle to save all of reality, now that Superman and Batman have been confirmed to exist in the Arrowverse. Time will tell if this means that we will finally see John Diggle - or a version of him from another Earth - wearing a Green Lantern’s power ring sometime on Arrow before the series’ final episode.
More: Arrow: How Crisis On Infinite Earths Can Make John Diggle The Green Lantern
