【Jelena Jensen Archives】

Prison can Jelena Jensen Archivesreally change a person. Going to prison twicefor a crime you didn't commit? Now that's grounds for a complete personality change. Thankfully, Diggle (David Ramsey) was released from his incarceration before any permanent damage could be done to his psyche on Arrow, but he didn't escape completely unscathed.

Team Arrow's favorite bodyguard-turned-crime-fighting-partner can put all his legal woes behind him now that, with the help of Felicity's (Emily Bett Rickards) new hacker fan/friend, he's been cleared of all charges from his corrupt CO in the army.

SEE ALSO: Will that 'Arrow' death bring Oliver and Felicity closer together?

After spending most of Season 5 behind bars, Diggle's ready to rejoin Team Arrow just in the nick of time, as Oliver's (Stephen Amell) hunt for Prometheus takes him and the team to Russia on the hunt for crucial information. But is Diggle still the same man that he was before he was framed?

Mashablespoke with Ramsey ahead of this week's episode of Arrow, "Bratva," to get the scoop on how Diggle has changed, Team Arrow's Russian mission and new team member Dinah Drake (Juliana Harkavy).

This isn't the first time that Team Arrow has headed to Russia on a mission, but what brings them all there this time?

The Bratva! How do we use the old allies of Oliver's to find our big bad? We're fighting the dark with a little bit of the dark ourselves. We're fighting fire with fire. That's a running theme this season.

Oliver and the team are going to try to find out what they can from the Bratva, and figuring out if they can trust what they learn from criminals. It's going to be a big one for us. There's a lot of moving parts, as there always is on Arrow. But we have new team members, a new Canary, Dig's out of jail -- a lot of things make up this episode.

Is Dig officially a free man now, or does he still need to lay low when it comes to going out in the field?

Yes, he is legitimately free, finally. No more Diggle in jail, so that means no more Diggle on the outskirts. Hopefully that means we'll see more of Diggle in the field because I always love that. I love it most when I'm playing Spartan and seeing his relationships with the new team members out in the field. But mostly I'm excited for what that means personally, with his wife and his new son. I love seeing Diggle's personal life and family life.

We haven't seen Lyla (Audrey Marie Anderson) and John Jr. since before Diggle was locked up. Are we going to see more of that family dynamic moving forward?

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I would like to see that. I think that's something we're going to explore in the latter part of the season as well as seeing him get acclimated to being back out in the field and being on this new team. That was kind of put on hold when Prometheus pulled the rug out from everyone and laid this trap, putting Dig in prison.

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But now that he's out, I would really like to get back to that. I mean, his relationship with Lyla, that's almost like a whole five-episode arc itself. This Mr. and Mrs. Smith, leader of ARGUS and second-in-command of Team Arrow... I want to see what goes on at that dinner table.

Did Diggle's time behind bars change him at all?

I think so. Diggle wore his emotions on his sleeve last season with his brother coming back to life, betraying him, causing Laurel's (Katie Cassidy) death and then Dig killing him. There's been enough baggage for Diggle that's very internal and introspective, so that's what you've been seeing this season. That's why he chose to stay in jail as his own penance.

But now that he's out, some of that has been rectified. He's a man on a mission to help the team find Prometheus. There are some things going on with Felicity that he's going to be very helpful with.

Speaking of Felicity, we've been severely lacking some "OTA" scenes this season. With Dig back on the team, will there be more Original Team Arrow moments coming?

Thank god, right? Yeah. The team has been broken a little bit because of Diggle's absence and now we have new team members, and one of the team members betrayed the team, so there's been a lot of story to tell. But the original team is the backbone of this show and the writers are definitely getting back to it.

Ever since Evelyn (Madison McLaughlin) revealed her double-cross to the rest of Team Arrow, she's been conspicuously absent from the story. When is she going to return?

That's a great question, and honestly it's one I have for the producers as well. They haven't told us that. Usually I can get little hints about stories, but we don't know. How she plays into this whole big picture, I don't know. Prometheus all by himself is such a badass and is so formidable in terms of what he's been doing to the team and Oliver particularly, so Evelyn teaming up with him is just really bad. The next few episodes are all about Prometheus and what he wants to do to Oliver.

Before Dig got locked up, he was building a pretty special bond with new team member Rene (Rick Gonzalez). Are they going to continue to train now that Dig's a free man?

Yes, you'll see more of that, but you're going to see that more with Dinah moving forward. Dinah is the newest outsider joining, so you'll see Diggle welcoming her as he did with Rene, but he's not just training her to be a part of the team. He's also going to help her with being a meta and what that does to her psyche.

He's there for her to help her make an adjustment to try and live a normal life. I think that's Diggle's biggest strength: he's the most well-adjusted person on the team. He's had catharsis through tours of war. He's had people die on his command. He's been through two marriages to the same woman. He's had children. He's a soldier with a family. He's probably the most emotionally evolved, so he's he one who is best suited to help Dinah adjust to her new life.

Arrowairs Wednesdays at 8 p.m. on The CW.

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