‘Member when it was quite unexpectedly announced that Colton Haynes, who had rejoined Arrow for Season 7, would not stick around as a series regular for the final season?
Well, now we may a bit more insight into that abrupt exit.
Ahead of the CW series’ 10-episode farewell run, then-showrunner Beth Schwartz said that Haynes would not be continuing as a series regular, the status he enjoyed in Season 7 when he reprised his role as Roy Harper aka Arsenal. But “we hope to have him back,” Schwartz told Green Arrow TV in August 2019.
Haynes’ status change came as a bit of a surprise, seeing as Season 7 and its flash-forward storyline left some holes to fill — namely, as to why Roy had exiled himself to Lian Yu, decades after a falling out with Thea. (Then again, Haynes’ “series regular” status in Season 7 was ultimately a bit misleading, seeing as he appeared in fewer than half of the 22 episodes.)
At the time that the above news broke, Haynes aimed to clarify on Twitter, “I didn’t exit the last season of Arrow. I was not asked to come back for the final season as a series regular.”
But now, in his new memoir Miss Memory Lane (via an E Online excerpt), he has shed a bit more light on the circumstances leading to his full-time exit.
“I had walked away from my full-time job on Arrow at the beginning of the year, supposedly because my contract had ended,” Haynes shares, “but it was really because I was too depressed and I couldn’t stand working with one of my cast mates.”
Haynes ultimately made a couple of appearances during Arrow‘s eighth and final season, including at the series-ending funeral for Oliver Queen. (Oops, spoiler alert.)
Haynes will next be seen reprising the role of occasional troublemaker Jackson Whittemore in Teen Wolf: The Movie, a direct continuation of the MTV series, which debuts on Paramount+ later this year.