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Dolph Lundgren Confirmed For ‘Arrow’ Season 5

By Stacey Cole
Published on: 05:23 PST, Sep 1, 2016

Dolph Lundgren has joined CW’s Arrow, according to Blastr. The 58-year-old Rocky IV star has agreed to star in the upcoming fifth season of the CW series.

Along with the announcement about signing Dolph Lundgren, the show’s creators said Stephen Amell’s lead character, Oliver, will finally catch up with the present in the new season. It’s unclear whether Lundgren will have anything to do with putting an end to the flashback saga on Arrow.

But it appears that Dolph Lundgren will play a villain in Season 5 and will be featured in flashbacks, in which Amell’s character is heading to Russia. Casting an actor so formidable and huge as Lundgren is a big move for the CW series, and fans of the show certainly can’t wait to see those fighting scenes.

Arrow’s producer Wendy Mericle said that if the show’s viewers have paid close attention to the plot, they’re already familiar with the character Dolph Lundgren will be playing. It’ll be the Russian villain named Kovar, who was first mentioned at the end of Season 4 by Taiana, who she said would be a “super big bada** guy who works for the Russian government.”

Dolph Lundgren is best known for his role of Ivan Drago in Rocky IV, in which he starred alongside Sylvester Stallone. And then the 58-year-old actor was invited to star in The Expendables in 2010.

But what many of his fans may not know is that the Swedish model and film star has a masters degree in chemical engineering, according to Nerdist.

In addition to that, Dolph Lundgren is also a karate champion, an Olympic pentathlon team leader, and even has musical talents. But that’s not the end of the list, as Lundgren also knows multiple languages and, of course, he is a ripped six-foot-five Swedish model.

Dolph Lundgren was born in 1957 in Stockholm, Sweden to the family of a language teacher and an electrical engineer/economist. Although Lundgren had a vast interest in chemical engineering, he still devoted some of his free time to martial arts and started lifting weights at an early age.

It’s because he wanted to walk away from the self-described “runt” status and it appears that hitting the gym didn’t prevent Dolph Lundgren from getting straight As in school. In fact, thanks to his great performance in school and his desire to travel abroad, the Rocky IV actor earned a scholarship to attend Washington State University.

Initially, Dolph Lundgren wanted to become a doctor but then he followed in his family’s footsteps and pursued engineering and even earned a degree in chemistry from Washington State University. Then Lundgren took a year off for mandatory service in the Swedish Marine Corps at the Amphibious Ranger School and it changed his whole life.

First, Dolph Lundgren enrolled in the Royal Institute of Technology based in Stockholm, where he earned a degree in chemical engineering. He then focused on honing his martial arts skills and started hitting the gym more seriously.

While studying at the University of Sydney, Dolph Lundgren worked as a bouncer to earn a living and despite his great achievements in engineering as well as earning a Fulbright Scholarship to attend M.I.T. in 1983, Lundgren decided to pursue acting.

In fact, in his interview with NPR, Dolph Lundgren revealed that in the 1980s he knew that he wanted to be an actor even though putting his scientific pursuits behind was hard. Fans of Rocky IV agree that the movie wouldn’t be as dynamite without Lundgren and his formidable Drago.

[Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP Images]

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