The Behind-the-Scenes Decision That Kept John Diggle From Becoming Green Lantern

If you spent years waiting for Arrow to turn John Diggle into Green Lantern, you were not imagining it. David Ramsey finally explained why the Arrowverse never pulled the trigger, and yes, it came down to the kind of behind-the-scenes rights wrangling that can stall even the most obvious storyline.

What Ramsey actually said

Speaking on ScreenRant's Arrowverse Heroes panel, Ramsey said he and executive producer Marc Guggenheim pushed to make Diggle a Lantern for a long time. The problem? Green Lantern is a gigantic DC property, and there were restrictions they could not work around.

"Marc and I tried for six seasons. There is a lot of politics around a property as big as Lantern... it wasn't for a lack of trying, but the right decision was made."

The road that led nowhere (but on purpose)

• The shows did tease it. Ramsey pointed to deliberate winks like John Wesley Shipp's Flash nodding to a ring during the Elseworlds crossover.
• Behind the curtain, Ramsey and Guggenheim kept pushing, but Green Lantern was tied up in studio politics and permissions.
• As the Arrowverse was winding down, DC's larger plans were shifting. Ramsey said there was so much happening with the property that it is now in the hands it should be in, a not-so-subtle reference to James Gunn's new DC Universe developing its own Green Lantern series for HBO.
• On screen, The Flash season 8 had Diggle ultimately refuse the ring. Ramsey thinks that choice lines up with who Diggle is, even if it dashed the long-running tease.

So was Diggle ever going to wear the ring?

It sure looked that way for years, and the creatives were clearly trying. But between rights limitations and DC reshuffling its master plan, the Arrowverse version of Green Lantern never got cleared. Ramsey's take is that the call made sense both for the character's journey and the larger franchise chessboard.