“So lucky to share it with Ben Lewis.”
The latest episode of Arrow featured one of the most emotional moments in the show’s eight-year history.
In Tuesday’s episode, Present Tense, lead character Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) finally got to meet his children William (Ben Lewis) and Mia (Katherine McNamara), after they were transported to the year 2019 by the Monitor.
Because Oliver is dead in the future, William seizes the opportunity to come out to his father, who tells him that he already knew. “We hoped you’d come out to us when you were comfortable,” Oliver tells him, in tears. “I clearly didn’t get that chance.”
Fans praised the scene on social media, calling it ‘wonderfully poignant and beautiful”.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lewis said he “specifically requested” for the scene to happen because he thought, “Holy s–t, William actually never had the chance to come out to Oliver before he died.”
“So, to have a second chance to go back in time and in your 30s after you’ve been living as a proud out gay man for at least 15 years was a really interesting, extremely unique thing to play,” he explained.
“There’s a regular coming out scene and then there’s this, which [has] the layers of time travel and grief over the loss of a parent, and then the mind-blowing experience of being reunited with that dead parent. It’s really wild.”
Lewis said he was “hungry” to film the scene because he’s a gay man, and he knew it “would mean a lot to the Arrow audience and fanbase generally who have watched William grow up on the show, but specifically the LGBTQ fanbase”.
Amell reportedly pulled Lewis aside and told him that it was one of “his favourite scenes that he’s ever done on the show”. He confirmed this by tweeting: “My favorite scene of this season. So lucky to share it with @benlewishere.”
Watch the beautiful moment between Oliver and William below.
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