Two different methods of time-travel between The Flash and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow were bound to leave history a little screwy, something Arrow fans found out the hard way with a bizarre “Flashpoint” change. Granted, said timeline-tweak could have connected Arrow to the “Star City 2046” of Legends’ first season, producers now admit to some uncertainty with their take on John Diggle Jr. and Connor Hawke.

Forgive the lack of chalkboard as we attempt to narrow down the lunacy of this timeline, but it was the first Legends of Tomorrow season that crash-landed in “Star City 2046,” a future world in which said Legends had never stopped Vandal Savage, and a one-armed Oliver Queen and John Diggle Jr. took up separate mantles as Green Arrow. The latter first introduced himself under the name “Connor Hawke” (a reference to Oliver’s child in the comics), with no mention made of Sara Diggle; the only child Arrow fans knew Diggle to have in the present day.

Doofus that he is, Barry’s later creation of the “Flashpoint” timeline had the unintended consequence of replacing baby Sara with a “John Jr.,” seemingly setting Arrow in line with the “Star City 2046” future, with the exception of Vandal Savage. Still, Entertainment Weekly at least attempted to clarify the matter with EP Marc Guggenheim, who admitted some indecision with confirming the two young Johns as one character:

We go back and forth on that. That was certainly a notion of ours. It’s hard for me to honestly answer the question without committing to a version of time travel, because in order for that to be the case, then Flashpoint would’ve had to have happened. You start to get into the very, very complicated time travel rules that, quite frankly, I as a writer don’t have an appetite to answer unless we tell a story one day that deals with John Jr., and even then, I don’t know if we would directly address that issue head on. Anyone who watches Legends knows that, by design, we don’t spend a lot of time discussing temporal mechanics — some people like that and it annoys the hell out of other people.

Guggenheim has a point – like with Sara Diggle, Arrow rarely dwell on John’s children as any significant portion of the story. Even as the change from Sara to John seemed oddly specific for Flashpoint to highlight, there’s no immediate reason Arrow would need to spell out its connection to “Star City 2046,” especially given the temporal headaches it might induce.

Either way, Arrow seems very much to enjoy its “back to basics” approach in Season 5, so is the mystery of John Jr. best left 30 years in the future?

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