‘Arrow’: Brandon Routh Talks Ray Fighting Crime, When He’ll Get An Atom Suit

With Oliver Queen out of the Starling City picture on “Arrow,” others are going to have to step up to defend the city.

Brandon Routh’s Ray Palmer is ready to tackle crime in this week’s return of The CW show, as he teams up with Capt. Quentin Lance to tackle Brick, played by guest star Vinnie Jones.

“Ray kind of inserts himself into the city business a little bit… which I don’t think Detective Lance is too happy about,” Brandon told Access Hollywood when we sat down with the actor at the Television Critics Association Winter Tour in Pasadena, Calif.

“There’s not too much that goes on between us necessarily, but, with Oliver away seemingly, Brick has kind of been able to get a foothold in the city and so I’m doing my best to – before the suit’s ready – I’m trying to live up to my name, or what my name will become.”

That name, of course, is The Atom, and Brandon said more physical pieces of the suit will be unveiled on the show.

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“There are a couple of pieces that we see and talk about as he’s trying to get everything working together and [Ray is] trying to enlist Felicity’s help with this. Of course she has her own feelings about that as she’s already enlisted with somebody else doing [a] similar thing,” Brandon said. “Does she want to help Ray go off and endanger his life, as he’s on this – she thinks – foolhardy mission? So, yeah, there are a couple of steps to get to the full suit, but we will see the suit by the end of [the] season.”

Brandon said fittings for his Atom suit are “in the works,” and he told Access it is a very different suit to the one he wore on the big screen as Superman.

“[It] is cool to be in two very, very different types of suits,” he said.

The Atom suit, though, seems like it might be harder to move around in.

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“They’re all restrictive in their own way, but there’s something kind of like powerful about that form fitting aspect of it. It makes you feel a little bit invulnerable based off of that, so it’s actually more mobile than I would have imagined going in,” Brandon said.

“Arrow” returns Wednesday night at 8/7c on The CW.

— Jolie Lash