'Arrow' Season 4 Spoilers: Showrunner Teases Damien Darhk Plot Twist; Does This Effect Who Is In The Grave?

With “Arrow” set to air the back half of Season 4 starting Jan. 20, many fans are baffled at how the hero plans to finally take down his new mystical enemy, Damien Darhk (Neal McDonough). With the hero utilizing magic against Team Arrow for the first time and his influence increasing with every new caper, one showrunner is teasing a major plot twist coming when the show returns.

Speaking to IGN, Marc Guggenheim revealed that Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) will double down on his efforts to take down Darhk. After the villain attacked several of the mayoral candidate’s events and almost killed the love of his life, Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards), it would seem the hero’s main goal is vengeance and justice. However, before people get too comfortable with the hero versus villain dichotomy, Guggenheim says that a big twist is coming.

“The back half of the season, we’re pretty much following the same structure that we have in seasons past where obviously the Big Bad gears up. That said, we’re going to throw a hard six in episode 15 that I think will surprise people,” he told the outlet. “We’re going to do something that’s never been done before on ‘Arrow’ with the Big Bad. Fifteen is a real game-changer episode for us.”

As ScreenRant notes, the showrunner acknowledged that some fans weren’t necessarily on board with some of the story decisions that were presented in "Arrow" Season 3, saying he and his writing team are trying to make things different this year. One of the ways they’ve done that is with the ultra charismatic, and borderline sociopathic, performance by McDonough as Dahrk. As previously reported, the actor didn’t acclimate himself with the previous seasons of “Arrow” in order to ensure that he was bringing something entirely new to the table. Unlike some of the archer’s other principal bad guys, Darhk doesn’t waste a lot of his time brooding or scheming. Thanks to his mystical powers, he’s able to charge headlong into battle and laugh off any attempts at his life, making him the scariest nemesis to Team Arrow yet.

News of some kind of impending plot twist is made all the sweeter by the fact that the audiences has been let in on the consequences of upcoming events. The first episode of Season 1 showed a flash forward in which Oliver Queen and Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) attend the funeral of a yet unknown character close to Oliver. The hero kneels down and vows that he’s going to kill the person responsible, which everyone assumed was Darhk. However, with a major plot twist on the way for episode 15, perhaps the audience will learn of a new threat that raises the Green Arrow’s ire.