‘The Flash’ showrunner explains why Diggle’s Green Lantern arc went the way it did

The Season 8 finale of The CW’s The Flash is almost here, and while there are still a lot of questions we need answers to (what’s motivating the Negative Forces to do such sinister stuff, for example?), showrunner Eric Wallace recently explained one of the big ones: why John Diggle’s Green Lantern arc was brought to an abrupt close.  

It turns out that when Wallace was writing Season 8, he didn’t know that the show would be picked up for a ninth and most-likely final season. 

“We were thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, we have to do this because maybe no one will get a chance to!'” Wallace told TVLine. “I talked to [actor David Ramsey, who plays Diggle,] myself and told him, ‘I’d like to give this some closure,’ and he was all in favor of it. And when I told him what we had planned, he thought it sounded fantastic.”

In Season 8, Diggle refuses the invitation from the glowing green cube he came across in the series finale of Arrow and decides to remain with his family instead of becoming a Green Lantern. He did so by throwing the cube into the void, which Wallace said also helped tease The Blackest Night storyline from the comics, a crossover story by Geoff Johns and Ivan Reis where a force called Nekron reanimates dead superheroes. 

“I’m a comic book nerd and I wanted to plant some Blackest Night seeds, and that Diggle moment helped me do that,” he said. “But I don’t know if we’ll ever get to it.”

The Season 8 finale of The Flash premieres on The CW tomorrow, June 29. 

Looking for more sci-fi TV? Check out shows like Resident Alien, Brave New World, Project Blue Book, Eureka, Heroes, Intergalactic, and more streaming now on Peacock. Looking ahead, SYFY has new series The Ark in the works from original Stargate film writer/producer Dean Devlin, as well as Stargate SG-1 producer Jonathan Glassner.