Interview: Colton Haynes On What’s Coming For Roy In Arrow Season 3

Here at GreenArrowTV, we’ve been fans of Colton Haynes, but the question has lingered on whether or not his character, Roy Harper, will be lightening up a bit in the future. We don’t want him to get to the level of kicking cats, after all.

We caught up with Colton last week at the CW Summer 2014 TCA Party, and of course, our first question is if Roy is going to chill.

“He’s lightening up,” Colton promises us, teasing a specific story that is coming. “There’s a really fun storyline with Roy and Felicity this season, that they think that each other is smarter than the other person, and they like to give each other sh!t. They like to tell each other why they think that they’re right,” he says.

Could this mean an attraction between Roy and Felicity, who already has two possible suitors in Oliver and Roy Harper?

“Maybe. Possibly. Not yet, but maybe. Who knows,” he teases.

As for the other lady in Roy Harper’s life, Colton says that Roy doesn’t know yet that Thea has gone off with her father. Ultimately, what Roy wants is for Thea to be happy. “I think Roy understands – he knows that he’s lied to her. He knows that her family’s lied to her,” Colton says. “So, I think he wants for her to be happy. I think he’s worried about her and cares for her, but I think that’s his #1 goal.”

Elsewhere in Roy’s life, it sounds like there will be consequences for Roy’s killing of a cop in “Seeing Red” last season. “In the beginning, Roy’s story is the fact that he doesn’t know. No one’s told him. So, eventually he’s probably going to find out that he is a cop-killer,” Colton says. In the meantime, though, don’t expect some master archery to be coming from Roy just yet — at least not with Colton behind the bow. “No. You can’t teach someone like me to be good at stuff like that,” he says humbly. “I hopefully can do justice to the character in the acting part, and trust the professionals in the stunt department to help me out on that side.”

And then there’s that magic word – “justice” – which makes us go to the topic of Young Justice, a series that had a Roy Harper that, despite coming before Arrow, had a Roy that looked a whole lot like the actor Colton Haynes – a notion that Colton himself had noticed.

“We look identical! That actually freaked me out, because when Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg called me in to have a meeting about the character, I didn’t know anything about it. When they showed me a picture, I was like ‘Wow! We look a lot alike.’ And then I ended up doing it, so yeah, it’s cool,” Colton told us about that backstory.

Colton promises good things for all viewers as Arrow goes into Season 3. “I think we’re really going to delve into a lot of the backstories of the main characters this year, and it’s going to be a lot more of an emotional season. Just like how it was when we lost Moira, it’s going to be emotional. Not just bad-ass, but it’s going to be a season that the guys are gonna stay for the action, the girls are gonna stay for the emotion,” he promises.

Arrow Season 3 begins October 8 on The CW.