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Arrow Season 8 Premiere Title Is A Throwback To Earlier Seasons
The title of the Arrow season 8 premiere has been revealed, and harks back to its very beginning. The upcoming final outing for the show, Arrow season 8is set to premiere in October, and will see the long-awaited crossover event Crisis On Infinite Earths be played out across all of The CW’s superhero shows.
Right from the debut of its very first episode in 2012, the past has played a major role in the ongoing plot developments of Arrow. The regular flashbacks first charted Oliver’s growth from a philandering playboy to a stoic warrior determined to destroy the plague of greed and corruption festering at the heart of his home and the powerful people responsible, then when his origin was complete, periodically dealing with the personal histories of other characters and the events that shaped who they became.
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RELATED:Theory: Who Arrow’s New Season 8 Costume Is For
The Arrow season 8 premiere, as revealed on Twitter by showrunner and executive producer Beth Schwartz, is “Starling City,” referencing what the series’ setting was originally named. If you recall, the rename to Star City (which brings the metropolis in line with its name in the comics) came about in season 4 to commemorate Ray Palmer after he was apparently killed in a lab explosion prior to his joining the Legends of Tomorrow, who previously suggested the alteration to separate the city from the memory of the attack by Deathstroke’s mirakuru-enhanced soldiers.
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View image on Twitter
Beth Schwartz
✔@SchwartzApprovd
https://twitter.com/SchwartzApprovd/status/1149337657681408001
First day of shooting! #ArrowSeason8 #TheFinalSeason
3,360
11:20 AM - Jul 11, 2019
668 people are talking about this
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The reveal follows in the wake of news from TVLine that Katherine McNamara has been promoted to series regular, which is unsurprising given that Connor Hawke’s actor Joseph David Jones was similarly promoted last week. McNamara featured heavily in season 7 as Mia Smoak, the adult daughter of Oliver and Felicity, who grew from a selfish street fighter to a key player in the battle against the totalitarian corporation planning to attack Star City in the flash forward sequences set in 2040.
When any saga comes to a close, it’s a common decision to go back to the beginning to take stock of how the story has grown and developed from its simple beginnings, and Arrow looks to be no different. Like Oliver, the show has come a long way from its origins as a one-man mission of vengeance, and acknowledging this will be an important part of its swansong. Having McNamara and Jones (as well as a yet-to-be-cast actor portraying an adult John Diggle Jr.) being series regulars suggests the 2040 events will be just as significant as those of 2019, and its possible that instead of the events of the past and future being flashbacks and flash forwards per se, they will be featured as part of current events as Oliver travels through time with the Monitor as part of the deal he made to spare Earth-1 during the Elseworldscrossover. Whatever the case, one thing is clear: As Arrow comes to a final conclusion, it will be looking back as much as forward as it cements its legacy upon the ever-expanding world it created.
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NEXT: Arrow Has Already Set Up The Perfect Spin-Off Series: Star City 2040
Arrow season 8 premieres October 15 on The CW.
- BY ANDREW MARSHALL
- – ON JUL 12, 2019
- IN TV NEWS
The title of the Arrow season 8 premiere has been revealed, and harks back to its very beginning. The upcoming final outing for the show, Arrow season 8is set to premiere in October, and will see the long-awaited crossover event Crisis On Infinite Earths be played out across all of The CW’s superhero shows.
Right from the debut of its very first episode in 2012, the past has played a major role in the ongoing plot developments of Arrow. The regular flashbacks first charted Oliver’s growth from a philandering playboy to a stoic warrior determined to destroy the plague of greed and corruption festering at the heart of his home and the powerful people responsible, then when his origin was complete, periodically dealing with the personal histories of other characters and the events that shaped who they became.
Continue Scrolling To Keep ReadingClick the button below to start this article in quick view.
START NOW
ADVERTISING
RELATED:Theory: Who Arrow’s New Season 8 Costume Is For
The Arrow season 8 premiere, as revealed on Twitter by showrunner and executive producer Beth Schwartz, is “Starling City,” referencing what the series’ setting was originally named. If you recall, the rename to Star City (which brings the metropolis in line with its name in the comics) came about in season 4 to commemorate Ray Palmer after he was apparently killed in a lab explosion prior to his joining the Legends of Tomorrow, who previously suggested the alteration to separate the city from the memory of the attack by Deathstroke’s mirakuru-enhanced soldiers.
ADVERTISING
View image on Twitter
Beth Schwartz
✔@SchwartzApprovd
https://twitter.com/SchwartzApprovd/status/1149337657681408001
First day of shooting! #ArrowSeason8 #TheFinalSeason
3,360
11:20 AM - Jul 11, 2019
668 people are talking about this
Twitter Ads info and privacy
The reveal follows in the wake of news from TVLine that Katherine McNamara has been promoted to series regular, which is unsurprising given that Connor Hawke’s actor Joseph David Jones was similarly promoted last week. McNamara featured heavily in season 7 as Mia Smoak, the adult daughter of Oliver and Felicity, who grew from a selfish street fighter to a key player in the battle against the totalitarian corporation planning to attack Star City in the flash forward sequences set in 2040.
When any saga comes to a close, it’s a common decision to go back to the beginning to take stock of how the story has grown and developed from its simple beginnings, and Arrow looks to be no different. Like Oliver, the show has come a long way from its origins as a one-man mission of vengeance, and acknowledging this will be an important part of its swansong. Having McNamara and Jones (as well as a yet-to-be-cast actor portraying an adult John Diggle Jr.) being series regulars suggests the 2040 events will be just as significant as those of 2019, and its possible that instead of the events of the past and future being flashbacks and flash forwards per se, they will be featured as part of current events as Oliver travels through time with the Monitor as part of the deal he made to spare Earth-1 during the Elseworldscrossover. Whatever the case, one thing is clear: As Arrow comes to a final conclusion, it will be looking back as much as forward as it cements its legacy upon the ever-expanding world it created.
ADVERTISING
NEXT: Arrow Has Already Set Up The Perfect Spin-Off Series: Star City 2040
Arrow season 8 premieres October 15 on The CW.
https://ew.com/comic-con/2019/07/17/arrow-final-season-cover-story/
How Arrow saved the TV superhero — and why it had to end
As 'Arrow' prepares for the end, Stephen Amell and the producers reflect on its origin story and preview the 'Crisis'-bound eighth and final season
By Chancellor Agard
July 17, 2019 at 12:00 PM EDT
Stephen Amell is dreading the eighth and final season of Arrow, though you wouldn’t know it on this hot, sunny July day in Los Angeles. Wearing Green Arrow’s new suit, the CW star seems perfectly at ease as he strikes heroic pose after heroic pose on a dimly lit stage. But once he’s traded heavy verdant leather for a T-shirt, jeans, and baseball cap, his guard drops and the vulnerability starts to creep in as he contemplates Arrow’s last 10 episodes, which was set to begin production in Vancouver a week after the EW photoshoot took place and premieres Oct. 15.
“I’m very emotional and melancholy, but it’s time,” Amell — who is featured on the new cover of Entertainment Weekly — says as he takes a sip from a pint of Guinness. “I’m 38 years old, and I got this job when I was 30. I’d never had a job for more than a year. The fact that I’ve done this for the better part of a decade, and I’m not going to do it anymore, is a little frightening.”
Carlos Serrao for EW
Developed by Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, and Andrew Kreisberg, Arrow debuted in the fall of 2012. The DC Comics series follows billionaire playboy Oliver Queen (Amell), who, after years away, returned to now–Star City with one goal: to save his home-town as the hooded bow-and-arrow vigilante who would become known as Green Arrow (it would take him four seasons to assume the moniker). What began as a solo crusade eventually grew to include former soldier John Diggle (David Ramsey), quirky computer genius Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards), lawyer-turned-hero Laurel Lance/Black Canary (Katie Cassidy Rodgers), and the rest of Team Arrow. Together they’ve defended their city from a host of threats — dark archers, megalomaniacal magicians, and the occasional metahuman — while Lost-like flashbacks revealed what Oliver endured in the five years he was away, first shipwrecked and then honing his skills around the world to become someone else, something else.
The premiere gave The CW its most-watched series debut since 2009’s The Vampire Diaries. But before they launched Arrow, Berlanti and Guggenheim had to suffer through a failure: 2011’s Green Lantern, starring Ryan Reynolds. The duo co-wrote the script but lost creative control of the film, which flopped. So when Warner Bros. Television president Peter Roth approached them in late 2011 about developing a Green Arrow show, they were wary. After much deliberation, Berlanti and Guggenheim agreed, on the condition that they maintain control. Says Guggenheim, “As long as we succeed or fail on our own work, and not someone else’s work then maybe this is worth a shot.”
Their take on the Emerald Archer — who made his DC Comics debut in 1941 — was noteworthy from the beginning. Taking cues from films like The Dark Knight and The Bourne Identity and series like Homeland, the writers imagined a dark, gritty, and grounded show centered on a traumatized protagonist. “As we were breaking the story, we made very specific commitments to certain tonal things, such as ‘At the end of act 1, he has his hands around his mother’s throat.’ And, ‘At the end of act 2, he kills a man in cold blood to protect his secret,’ ” says Guggenheim.
A hero committing murder? That was practically unheard of then. Having Oliver suit up in a veritable superhero costume by the pilot’s climax was radical too. Sure, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was deep into Phase One when the producers were developing Arrow, but TV was traditionally more apprehensive about comic books. Smallvillefamously had a “no tights, no flights” rule and only introduced superhero costumes in the last years of its 10-season run, and there weren’t any masked avengers running around NBC’s Heroes or ABC’s No Ordinary Family, the latter produced by Berlanti (Let’s not even mention NBC’s The Cape, which was essentially dead on arrival and never did get its six seasons and a movie). But Arrow not only fully committed to the idea of someone dressing up like Robin Hood to fight crime with a bow and arrow, it introduced a second costumed rogue, the Huntress (Jessica De Gouw), in episode 7.
“It’s just comic book to the extreme and the fans seem to really love it,” says Batwomanshowrunner Caroline Dries, a former writer on Smallville. “They still maintain it very grounded, but it’s very different with everyone in costumes. The appetite for superheroes has changed in my mind in terms of like they just want the literal superhero [now].”
Not that the team wasn’t meticulous about creating Green Arrow’s cowl. “We had to have so many conversations to get it approved, but that’s why we got [Oscar winner] Colleen Atwood [Memoirs of a Geisha] at the time to [design] the suit,” says Berlanti. “We were determined to show we could do on TV what they were doing in the movies every six months.”
“It’s really easy to make a guy with a bow and arrow look silly. We sweated every detail,” says Guggenheim, who also recalls how much effort it took to perfect Oliver’s signature growl. “I actually flew up to Vancouver. On a rooftop during reshoots on [episode 4], Stephen and I went through a variety of different versions of, basically, ‘You have failed this city,’ with different amounts of how much growl he’s putting into his performance. [We] recorded all that, [I went] back to Los Angeles, and then sat with the post guys playing around with all the different amounts of modulation.”
That process took eons compared to the unbelievably easy time the team had casting Arrow’s title role. In fact, Amell was the first person to audition for the role. “It was Stephen’s intensity. He just made you believe he was that character,” says Guggenheim, recalling Amell’s audition. “We had crafted Oliver to be this mystery box character, and Stephen somehow managed to find this balance between being totally accessible in a way you would need a TV star to be, but he’s still an enigma.” After his first reading, Amell remembers being sent outside for a short time before being brought back into the room to read for a larger group: “I called [my manager], and I go, ‘I know this is not how it’s supposed to work, but I just got that job.’”
Carlos Serrao for EW
In the first season, the show’s chief concerns were maintaining both the “grounded and real” tone and the high quality of the stunts, and investing the audience in Oliver’s crusade. Beyond that, though, there wasn’t much of an over-arching plan, which allowed the show to naturally evolve — from introducing more DC characters, such as Deathstroke (Manu Bennett) and Roy Harper (Colton Haynes), sooner than they initially intended (the shot of Deathstroke’s mask in the pilot was meant as a harmless Easter egg), to promoting Emily Bett Rickards’ Felicity from a one-off character in the show’s third episode to a series regular in season 2 and eventually Oliver’s wife. Even the whole idea of a Team Arrow — which, over time, added Oliver’s sister Thea (Willa Holland), Rene Ramirez/Wild Dog (Rick Gonzalez) and Dinah Drake/Black Canary (Juliana Harkavy) — was the result of the writers allowing the best ideas to guide the story. “Greg used to say all the time, ‘You have a hit TV show until you don’t, so don’t save s—,’ ” says Amell.
Also not planned: Arrow spawning an entire shared universe. “We went on record a lot of times during the premiere of the pilot saying, ‘No superpowers, no time travel.’ But midway through season 1, Greg started to harbor a notion of doing the Flash,” says Guggenheim. “I’m a very big believer that it’s great to have a plan, but I think when it comes to creating a universe, the pitfall is that people try to run before they can walk. The key is, you build it show by show.” And so they did. First, they introduced The Flash star Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen in the two-part midseason finale of Arrow’s second season. From there, Supergirl took flight in 2015, then DC’s Legends of Tomorrow in 2016, and Batwoman is due this fall. “It’s like the hacking of the machete in the woods and then you look back and you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s a path,” says executive producer and Berlanti Productions president Sarah Schechter. But even though Arrowis the universe’s namesake, Amell doesn’t concern himself with the sibling series outside of the now-annual crossovers. “I never think about any of the other shows,” he says. “I want all of them to do great, but they’re not my responsibility. My responsibility is Arrow, and to make sure everyone from the cast to the crew are good.” His sentiments are seconded by Flash’s Gustin: “I don’t understand how he does it — his schedule that he maintains with working out, the conventions he goes to, the passion he has for it, and the love he shows towards fans. He’s always prepared. He cares more about that show being high quality than anybody else on the set.”
That said, the universe’s expansion precipitated what is widely considered to be Arrow’s best season, the fifth one. After focusing on magic in season 4, the show returned to its street-crime roots as part of “a concerted effort to play not just to our strengths but what made the shows unique,” Guggenheim says of balancing their four super-series in 2016. “Because Arrow was the longest-running Arrowverse show, we were able to do something that none of the other shows could do, which is have a villain who was basically born out of the events of season 1,” he explains of introducing Adrian Chase/Prometheus (Josh Segarra), whose criminal father was killed by Oliver. “That gave the season a resonance.”
It was midway through season 6 when Amell realized he was ready to hang up Oliver Queen’s hood. “It was just time to move on,” the actor says of pitching that Oliver leave the series at the end of season 7. “My daughter is turning six in October, and she goes to school in L.A., and my wife and I want to raise her [there].” Berlanti persuaded him to return for one final season, which the producers collectively decided would be the end. “We all felt in our gut it was the right time,” says Berlanti. Adds Schechter, “It’s such a privilege to be able to say when something’s ending as opposed to having something just ripped away.”
But there’s one integral cast member who won’t be around to see Arrow through its final season. This spring, fans were devastated to learn Rickards had filmed her final episode—bringing an end to Olicity. “They’re such opposites. I think that’s what draws everyone in a little bit,” showrunner Beth Schwartz says of Oliver and Felicity’s relationship. “You don’t see the [love story of] super intelligent woman and the sort of hunky, athletic man very often. She’s obviously a gorgeous woman but what he really loves is her brain.” For his part, Amell believes the success of both Felicity and Olicity lies completely with Rickards’ performance. “She’s supremely talented and awesome and carved out a space that no one anticipated. I don’t know that show works if we don’t randomly find her,” says Amell, adding that continuing the series without Team Arrow’s heart is “not great. Arrow, as you know it, has effectively ended. It’s a different show in season 8.” And he’s not exaggerating.
The final season finds Oliver working for the all-seeing extra-terrestrial the Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) and trying to save the entire multiverse from a cataclysmic event. “[We’re] taking the show on the road, really getting away from Star City. Oliver is going to be traveling the world, and we’re going to go to a lot of different places,” says Guggenheim. “Every time I see Oliver and the Monitor, it’s like, ‘Okay, we are very far from where we started.’ But again, that means the show has grown and evolved.” Adds Schwartz, “This is sort of his final test because it’s greater than Star City.” Along the way, he will head down memory lane, with actor Colin Donnell, who played Oliver’s best friend Tommy Merlyn in season 1, and Segarra’s Adrian Chase making appearances. “Episode 1 is an ode to season 1, and episode 2 is an ode to season 3,” teases Amell. “We’re playing our greatest hits.”
But season 8 is not just about building toward a satisfying series finale. “Everything relates to what’s going to happen in our crossover episode, which we’ve never done before,” says Schwartz. Spanning five hours and airing this winter, “Crisis on Infinite Earths” will be the biggest crossover yet and may see Oliver perish trying to save the multiverse from destruction, if the Monitor’s prophecy is to be believed. “Oliver [is told] he’s going to die, so each episode in the run-up to ‘Crisis’ has Oliver dealing with the various stages of grief that come with that discovery,” says Guggenheim. “So the theme really is coming to terms, acceptance.”
If there’s one person who has made his peace with Oliver’s fate, it’s Amell. “Because he’s a superhero with no superpowers, I always felt he should die — but he may also not die,” says Amell, who actually found out what the show’s final scene would be at EW’s cover shoot. “I cried as [Marc Guggenheim] was telling me. There are a lot of hurdles to get over to make that final scene.” Get this man some more Guinness!
Arrow premieres Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 9 p.m. on The CW.
How Arrow saved the TV superhero — and why it had to end
As 'Arrow' prepares for the end, Stephen Amell and the producers reflect on its origin story and preview the 'Crisis'-bound eighth and final season
By Chancellor Agard
July 17, 2019 at 12:00 PM EDT
Stephen Amell is dreading the eighth and final season of Arrow, though you wouldn’t know it on this hot, sunny July day in Los Angeles. Wearing Green Arrow’s new suit, the CW star seems perfectly at ease as he strikes heroic pose after heroic pose on a dimly lit stage. But once he’s traded heavy verdant leather for a T-shirt, jeans, and baseball cap, his guard drops and the vulnerability starts to creep in as he contemplates Arrow’s last 10 episodes, which was set to begin production in Vancouver a week after the EW photoshoot took place and premieres Oct. 15.
“I’m very emotional and melancholy, but it’s time,” Amell — who is featured on the new cover of Entertainment Weekly — says as he takes a sip from a pint of Guinness. “I’m 38 years old, and I got this job when I was 30. I’d never had a job for more than a year. The fact that I’ve done this for the better part of a decade, and I’m not going to do it anymore, is a little frightening.”
Carlos Serrao for EW
Developed by Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, and Andrew Kreisberg, Arrow debuted in the fall of 2012. The DC Comics series follows billionaire playboy Oliver Queen (Amell), who, after years away, returned to now–Star City with one goal: to save his home-town as the hooded bow-and-arrow vigilante who would become known as Green Arrow (it would take him four seasons to assume the moniker). What began as a solo crusade eventually grew to include former soldier John Diggle (David Ramsey), quirky computer genius Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards), lawyer-turned-hero Laurel Lance/Black Canary (Katie Cassidy Rodgers), and the rest of Team Arrow. Together they’ve defended their city from a host of threats — dark archers, megalomaniacal magicians, and the occasional metahuman — while Lost-like flashbacks revealed what Oliver endured in the five years he was away, first shipwrecked and then honing his skills around the world to become someone else, something else.
The premiere gave The CW its most-watched series debut since 2009’s The Vampire Diaries. But before they launched Arrow, Berlanti and Guggenheim had to suffer through a failure: 2011’s Green Lantern, starring Ryan Reynolds. The duo co-wrote the script but lost creative control of the film, which flopped. So when Warner Bros. Television president Peter Roth approached them in late 2011 about developing a Green Arrow show, they were wary. After much deliberation, Berlanti and Guggenheim agreed, on the condition that they maintain control. Says Guggenheim, “As long as we succeed or fail on our own work, and not someone else’s work then maybe this is worth a shot.”
Their take on the Emerald Archer — who made his DC Comics debut in 1941 — was noteworthy from the beginning. Taking cues from films like The Dark Knight and The Bourne Identity and series like Homeland, the writers imagined a dark, gritty, and grounded show centered on a traumatized protagonist. “As we were breaking the story, we made very specific commitments to certain tonal things, such as ‘At the end of act 1, he has his hands around his mother’s throat.’ And, ‘At the end of act 2, he kills a man in cold blood to protect his secret,’ ” says Guggenheim.
A hero committing murder? That was practically unheard of then. Having Oliver suit up in a veritable superhero costume by the pilot’s climax was radical too. Sure, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was deep into Phase One when the producers were developing Arrow, but TV was traditionally more apprehensive about comic books. Smallvillefamously had a “no tights, no flights” rule and only introduced superhero costumes in the last years of its 10-season run, and there weren’t any masked avengers running around NBC’s Heroes or ABC’s No Ordinary Family, the latter produced by Berlanti (Let’s not even mention NBC’s The Cape, which was essentially dead on arrival and never did get its six seasons and a movie). But Arrow not only fully committed to the idea of someone dressing up like Robin Hood to fight crime with a bow and arrow, it introduced a second costumed rogue, the Huntress (Jessica De Gouw), in episode 7.
“It’s just comic book to the extreme and the fans seem to really love it,” says Batwomanshowrunner Caroline Dries, a former writer on Smallville. “They still maintain it very grounded, but it’s very different with everyone in costumes. The appetite for superheroes has changed in my mind in terms of like they just want the literal superhero [now].”
Not that the team wasn’t meticulous about creating Green Arrow’s cowl. “We had to have so many conversations to get it approved, but that’s why we got [Oscar winner] Colleen Atwood [Memoirs of a Geisha] at the time to [design] the suit,” says Berlanti. “We were determined to show we could do on TV what they were doing in the movies every six months.”
“It’s really easy to make a guy with a bow and arrow look silly. We sweated every detail,” says Guggenheim, who also recalls how much effort it took to perfect Oliver’s signature growl. “I actually flew up to Vancouver. On a rooftop during reshoots on [episode 4], Stephen and I went through a variety of different versions of, basically, ‘You have failed this city,’ with different amounts of how much growl he’s putting into his performance. [We] recorded all that, [I went] back to Los Angeles, and then sat with the post guys playing around with all the different amounts of modulation.”
That process took eons compared to the unbelievably easy time the team had casting Arrow’s title role. In fact, Amell was the first person to audition for the role. “It was Stephen’s intensity. He just made you believe he was that character,” says Guggenheim, recalling Amell’s audition. “We had crafted Oliver to be this mystery box character, and Stephen somehow managed to find this balance between being totally accessible in a way you would need a TV star to be, but he’s still an enigma.” After his first reading, Amell remembers being sent outside for a short time before being brought back into the room to read for a larger group: “I called [my manager], and I go, ‘I know this is not how it’s supposed to work, but I just got that job.’”
Carlos Serrao for EW
In the first season, the show’s chief concerns were maintaining both the “grounded and real” tone and the high quality of the stunts, and investing the audience in Oliver’s crusade. Beyond that, though, there wasn’t much of an over-arching plan, which allowed the show to naturally evolve — from introducing more DC characters, such as Deathstroke (Manu Bennett) and Roy Harper (Colton Haynes), sooner than they initially intended (the shot of Deathstroke’s mask in the pilot was meant as a harmless Easter egg), to promoting Emily Bett Rickards’ Felicity from a one-off character in the show’s third episode to a series regular in season 2 and eventually Oliver’s wife. Even the whole idea of a Team Arrow — which, over time, added Oliver’s sister Thea (Willa Holland), Rene Ramirez/Wild Dog (Rick Gonzalez) and Dinah Drake/Black Canary (Juliana Harkavy) — was the result of the writers allowing the best ideas to guide the story. “Greg used to say all the time, ‘You have a hit TV show until you don’t, so don’t save s—,’ ” says Amell.
Also not planned: Arrow spawning an entire shared universe. “We went on record a lot of times during the premiere of the pilot saying, ‘No superpowers, no time travel.’ But midway through season 1, Greg started to harbor a notion of doing the Flash,” says Guggenheim. “I’m a very big believer that it’s great to have a plan, but I think when it comes to creating a universe, the pitfall is that people try to run before they can walk. The key is, you build it show by show.” And so they did. First, they introduced The Flash star Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen in the two-part midseason finale of Arrow’s second season. From there, Supergirl took flight in 2015, then DC’s Legends of Tomorrow in 2016, and Batwoman is due this fall. “It’s like the hacking of the machete in the woods and then you look back and you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s a path,” says executive producer and Berlanti Productions president Sarah Schechter. But even though Arrowis the universe’s namesake, Amell doesn’t concern himself with the sibling series outside of the now-annual crossovers. “I never think about any of the other shows,” he says. “I want all of them to do great, but they’re not my responsibility. My responsibility is Arrow, and to make sure everyone from the cast to the crew are good.” His sentiments are seconded by Flash’s Gustin: “I don’t understand how he does it — his schedule that he maintains with working out, the conventions he goes to, the passion he has for it, and the love he shows towards fans. He’s always prepared. He cares more about that show being high quality than anybody else on the set.”
That said, the universe’s expansion precipitated what is widely considered to be Arrow’s best season, the fifth one. After focusing on magic in season 4, the show returned to its street-crime roots as part of “a concerted effort to play not just to our strengths but what made the shows unique,” Guggenheim says of balancing their four super-series in 2016. “Because Arrow was the longest-running Arrowverse show, we were able to do something that none of the other shows could do, which is have a villain who was basically born out of the events of season 1,” he explains of introducing Adrian Chase/Prometheus (Josh Segarra), whose criminal father was killed by Oliver. “That gave the season a resonance.”
It was midway through season 6 when Amell realized he was ready to hang up Oliver Queen’s hood. “It was just time to move on,” the actor says of pitching that Oliver leave the series at the end of season 7. “My daughter is turning six in October, and she goes to school in L.A., and my wife and I want to raise her [there].” Berlanti persuaded him to return for one final season, which the producers collectively decided would be the end. “We all felt in our gut it was the right time,” says Berlanti. Adds Schechter, “It’s such a privilege to be able to say when something’s ending as opposed to having something just ripped away.”
But there’s one integral cast member who won’t be around to see Arrow through its final season. This spring, fans were devastated to learn Rickards had filmed her final episode—bringing an end to Olicity. “They’re such opposites. I think that’s what draws everyone in a little bit,” showrunner Beth Schwartz says of Oliver and Felicity’s relationship. “You don’t see the [love story of] super intelligent woman and the sort of hunky, athletic man very often. She’s obviously a gorgeous woman but what he really loves is her brain.” For his part, Amell believes the success of both Felicity and Olicity lies completely with Rickards’ performance. “She’s supremely talented and awesome and carved out a space that no one anticipated. I don’t know that show works if we don’t randomly find her,” says Amell, adding that continuing the series without Team Arrow’s heart is “not great. Arrow, as you know it, has effectively ended. It’s a different show in season 8.” And he’s not exaggerating.
The final season finds Oliver working for the all-seeing extra-terrestrial the Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) and trying to save the entire multiverse from a cataclysmic event. “[We’re] taking the show on the road, really getting away from Star City. Oliver is going to be traveling the world, and we’re going to go to a lot of different places,” says Guggenheim. “Every time I see Oliver and the Monitor, it’s like, ‘Okay, we are very far from where we started.’ But again, that means the show has grown and evolved.” Adds Schwartz, “This is sort of his final test because it’s greater than Star City.” Along the way, he will head down memory lane, with actor Colin Donnell, who played Oliver’s best friend Tommy Merlyn in season 1, and Segarra’s Adrian Chase making appearances. “Episode 1 is an ode to season 1, and episode 2 is an ode to season 3,” teases Amell. “We’re playing our greatest hits.”
But season 8 is not just about building toward a satisfying series finale. “Everything relates to what’s going to happen in our crossover episode, which we’ve never done before,” says Schwartz. Spanning five hours and airing this winter, “Crisis on Infinite Earths” will be the biggest crossover yet and may see Oliver perish trying to save the multiverse from destruction, if the Monitor’s prophecy is to be believed. “Oliver [is told] he’s going to die, so each episode in the run-up to ‘Crisis’ has Oliver dealing with the various stages of grief that come with that discovery,” says Guggenheim. “So the theme really is coming to terms, acceptance.”
If there’s one person who has made his peace with Oliver’s fate, it’s Amell. “Because he’s a superhero with no superpowers, I always felt he should die — but he may also not die,” says Amell, who actually found out what the show’s final scene would be at EW’s cover shoot. “I cried as [Marc Guggenheim] was telling me. There are a lot of hurdles to get over to make that final scene.” Get this man some more Guinness!
Arrow premieres Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 9 p.m. on The CW.
https://ew.com/comic-con/2019/07/17/arrow-final-season-cover-story/
How Arrow saved the TV superhero — and why it had to end
As 'Arrow' prepares for the end, Stephen Amell and the producers reflect on its origin story and preview the 'Crisis'-bound eighth and final season
By Chancellor Agard
July 17, 2019 at 12:00 PM EDT
Stephen Amell is dreading the eighth and final season of Arrow, though you wouldn’t know it on this hot, sunny July day in Los Angeles. Wearing Green Arrow’s new suit, the CW star seems perfectly at ease as he strikes heroic pose after heroic pose on a dimly lit stage. But once he’s traded heavy verdant leather for a T-shirt, jeans, and baseball cap, his guard drops and the vulnerability starts to creep in as he contemplates Arrow’s last 10 episodes, which was set to begin production in Vancouver a week after the EW photoshoot took place and premieres Oct. 15.
“I’m very emotional and melancholy, but it’s time,” Amell — who is featured on the new cover of Entertainment Weekly — says as he takes a sip from a pint of Guinness. “I’m 38 years old, and I got this job when I was 30. I’d never had a job for more than a year. The fact that I’ve done this for the better part of a decade, and I’m not going to do it anymore, is a little frightening.”
Carlos Serrao for EW
Developed by Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim, and Andrew Kreisberg, Arrow debuted in the fall of 2012. The DC Comics series follows billionaire playboy Oliver Queen (Amell), who, after years away, returned to now–Star City with one goal: to save his home-town as the hooded bow-and-arrow vigilante who would become known as Green Arrow (it would take him four seasons to assume the moniker). What began as a solo crusade eventually grew to include former soldier John Diggle (David Ramsey), quirky computer genius Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards), lawyer-turned-hero Laurel Lance/Black Canary (Katie Cassidy Rodgers), and the rest of Team Arrow. Together they’ve defended their city from a host of threats — dark archers, megalomaniacal magicians, and the occasional metahuman — while Lost-like flashbacks revealed what Oliver endured in the five years he was away, first shipwrecked and then honing his skills around the world to become someone else, something else.
The premiere gave The CW its most-watched series debut since 2009’s The Vampire Diaries. But before they launched Arrow, Berlanti and Guggenheim had to suffer through a failure: 2011’s Green Lantern, starring Ryan Reynolds. The duo co-wrote the script but lost creative control of the film, which flopped. So when Warner Bros. Television president Peter Roth approached them in late 2011 about developing a Green Arrow show, they were wary. After much deliberation, Berlanti and Guggenheim agreed, on the condition that they maintain control. Says Guggenheim, “As long as we succeed or fail on our own work, and not someone else’s work then maybe this is worth a shot.”
Their take on the Emerald Archer — who made his DC Comics debut in 1941 — was noteworthy from the beginning. Taking cues from films like The Dark Knight and The Bourne Identity and series like Homeland, the writers imagined a dark, gritty, and grounded show centered on a traumatized protagonist. “As we were breaking the story, we made very specific commitments to certain tonal things, such as ‘At the end of act 1, he has his hands around his mother’s throat.’ And, ‘At the end of act 2, he kills a man in cold blood to protect his secret,’ ” says Guggenheim.
A hero committing murder? That was practically unheard of then. Having Oliver suit up in a veritable superhero costume by the pilot’s climax was radical too. Sure, the Marvel Cinematic Universe was deep into Phase One when the producers were developing Arrow, but TV was traditionally more apprehensive about comic books. Smallvillefamously had a “no tights, no flights” rule and only introduced superhero costumes in the last years of its 10-season run, and there weren’t any masked avengers running around NBC’s Heroes or ABC’s No Ordinary Family, the latter produced by Berlanti (Let’s not even mention NBC’s The Cape, which was essentially dead on arrival and never did get its six seasons and a movie). But Arrow not only fully committed to the idea of someone dressing up like Robin Hood to fight crime with a bow and arrow, it introduced a second costumed rogue, the Huntress (Jessica De Gouw), in episode 7.
“It’s just comic book to the extreme and the fans seem to really love it,” says Batwomanshowrunner Caroline Dries, a former writer on Smallville. “They still maintain it very grounded, but it’s very different with everyone in costumes. The appetite for superheroes has changed in my mind in terms of like they just want the literal superhero [now].”
Not that the team wasn’t meticulous about creating Green Arrow’s cowl. “We had to have so many conversations to get it approved, but that’s why we got [Oscar winner] Colleen Atwood [Memoirs of a Geisha] at the time to [design] the suit,” says Berlanti. “We were determined to show we could do on TV what they were doing in the movies every six months.”
“It’s really easy to make a guy with a bow and arrow look silly. We sweated every detail,” says Guggenheim, who also recalls how much effort it took to perfect Oliver’s signature growl. “I actually flew up to Vancouver. On a rooftop during reshoots on [episode 4], Stephen and I went through a variety of different versions of, basically, ‘You have failed this city,’ with different amounts of how much growl he’s putting into his performance. [We] recorded all that, [I went] back to Los Angeles, and then sat with the post guys playing around with all the different amounts of modulation.”
That process took eons compared to the unbelievably easy time the team had casting Arrow’s title role. In fact, Amell was the first person to audition for the role. “It was Stephen’s intensity. He just made you believe he was that character,” says Guggenheim, recalling Amell’s audition. “We had crafted Oliver to be this mystery box character, and Stephen somehow managed to find this balance between being totally accessible in a way you would need a TV star to be, but he’s still an enigma.” After his first reading, Amell remembers being sent outside for a short time before being brought back into the room to read for a larger group: “I called [my manager], and I go, ‘I know this is not how it’s supposed to work, but I just got that job.’”
Carlos Serrao for EW
In the first season, the show’s chief concerns were maintaining both the “grounded and real” tone and the high quality of the stunts, and investing the audience in Oliver’s crusade. Beyond that, though, there wasn’t much of an over-arching plan, which allowed the show to naturally evolve — from introducing more DC characters, such as Deathstroke (Manu Bennett) and Roy Harper (Colton Haynes), sooner than they initially intended (the shot of Deathstroke’s mask in the pilot was meant as a harmless Easter egg), to promoting Emily Bett Rickards’ Felicity from a one-off character in the show’s third episode to a series regular in season 2 and eventually Oliver’s wife. Even the whole idea of a Team Arrow — which, over time, added Oliver’s sister Thea (Willa Holland), Rene Ramirez/Wild Dog (Rick Gonzalez) and Dinah Drake/Black Canary (Juliana Harkavy) — was the result of the writers allowing the best ideas to guide the story. “Greg used to say all the time, ‘You have a hit TV show until you don’t, so don’t save s—,’ ” says Amell.
Also not planned: Arrow spawning an entire shared universe. “We went on record a lot of times during the premiere of the pilot saying, ‘No superpowers, no time travel.’ But midway through season 1, Greg started to harbor a notion of doing the Flash,” says Guggenheim. “I’m a very big believer that it’s great to have a plan, but I think when it comes to creating a universe, the pitfall is that people try to run before they can walk. The key is, you build it show by show.” And so they did. First, they introduced The Flash star Grant Gustin’s Barry Allen in the two-part midseason finale of Arrow’s second season. From there, Supergirl took flight in 2015, then DC’s Legends of Tomorrow in 2016, and Batwoman is due this fall. “It’s like the hacking of the machete in the woods and then you look back and you’re like, ‘Oh, there’s a path,” says executive producer and Berlanti Productions president Sarah Schechter. But even though Arrowis the universe’s namesake, Amell doesn’t concern himself with the sibling series outside of the now-annual crossovers. “I never think about any of the other shows,” he says. “I want all of them to do great, but they’re not my responsibility. My responsibility is Arrow, and to make sure everyone from the cast to the crew are good.” His sentiments are seconded by Flash’s Gustin: “I don’t understand how he does it — his schedule that he maintains with working out, the conventions he goes to, the passion he has for it, and the love he shows towards fans. He’s always prepared. He cares more about that show being high quality than anybody else on the set.”
That said, the universe’s expansion precipitated what is widely considered to be Arrow’s best season, the fifth one. After focusing on magic in season 4, the show returned to its street-crime roots as part of “a concerted effort to play not just to our strengths but what made the shows unique,” Guggenheim says of balancing their four super-series in 2016. “Because Arrow was the longest-running Arrowverse show, we were able to do something that none of the other shows could do, which is have a villain who was basically born out of the events of season 1,” he explains of introducing Adrian Chase/Prometheus (Josh Segarra), whose criminal father was killed by Oliver. “That gave the season a resonance.”
It was midway through season 6 when Amell realized he was ready to hang up Oliver Queen’s hood. “It was just time to move on,” the actor says of pitching that Oliver leave the series at the end of season 7. “My daughter is turning six in October, and she goes to school in L.A., and my wife and I want to raise her [there].” Berlanti persuaded him to return for one final season, which the producers collectively decided would be the end. “We all felt in our gut it was the right time,” says Berlanti. Adds Schechter, “It’s such a privilege to be able to say when something’s ending as opposed to having something just ripped away.”
But there’s one integral cast member who won’t be around to see Arrow through its final season. This spring, fans were devastated to learn Rickards had filmed her final episode—bringing an end to Olicity. “They’re such opposites. I think that’s what draws everyone in a little bit,” showrunner Beth Schwartz says of Oliver and Felicity’s relationship. “You don’t see the [love story of] super intelligent woman and the sort of hunky, athletic man very often. She’s obviously a gorgeous woman but what he really loves is her brain.” For his part, Amell believes the success of both Felicity and Olicity lies completely with Rickards’ performance. “She’s supremely talented and awesome and carved out a space that no one anticipated. I don’t know that show works if we don’t randomly find her,” says Amell, adding that continuing the series without Team Arrow’s heart is “not great. Arrow, as you know it, has effectively ended. It’s a different show in season 8.” And he’s not exaggerating.
The final season finds Oliver working for the all-seeing extra-terrestrial the Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) and trying to save the entire multiverse from a cataclysmic event. “[We’re] taking the show on the road, really getting away from Star City. Oliver is going to be traveling the world, and we’re going to go to a lot of different places,” says Guggenheim. “Every time I see Oliver and the Monitor, it’s like, ‘Okay, we are very far from where we started.’ But again, that means the show has grown and evolved.” Adds Schwartz, “This is sort of his final test because it’s greater than Star City.” Along the way, he will head down memory lane, with actor Colin Donnell, who played Oliver’s best friend Tommy Merlyn in season 1, and Segarra’s Adrian Chase making appearances. “Episode 1 is an ode to season 1, and episode 2 is an ode to season 3,” teases Amell. “We’re playing our greatest hits.”
But season 8 is not just about building toward a satisfying series finale. “Everything relates to what’s going to happen in our crossover episode, which we’ve never done before,” says Schwartz. Spanning five hours and airing this winter, “Crisis on Infinite Earths” will be the biggest crossover yet and may see Oliver perish trying to save the multiverse from destruction, if the Monitor’s prophecy is to be believed. “Oliver [is told] he’s going to die, so each episode in the run-up to ‘Crisis’ has Oliver dealing with the various stages of grief that come with that discovery,” says Guggenheim. “So the theme really is coming to terms, acceptance.”
If there’s one person who has made his peace with Oliver’s fate, it’s Amell. “Because he’s a superhero with no superpowers, I always felt he should die — but he may also not die,” says Amell, who actually found out what the show’s final scene would be at EW’s cover shoot. “I cried as [Marc Guggenheim] was telling me. There are a lot of hurdles to get over to make that final scene.” Get this man some more Guinness!
Arrow premieres Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 9 p.m. on The CW.
@fonz
This doesn't look good...
On the real... I think it might work better if she didn't have the red wig.
Wonder if they'll make up some villains for her to fight since they cant touch Batman's rogues gallery(especially Joker and HQ)
They can they just gotta go deep in the bench and that bench is DEEP.
I'm gonna be positive cause RARELY does the first episode of ANY of these shows wind up good.
HOPEFULLY much like Arrow they can improve on the run
Might just use the lesser-known villains..
Theyll probably do a version of Joker's Daughter for the show and make her the main villain,but since they cant say the Joker's name everyone will refer to her as "J.D" or something
Might just use the lesser-known villains..
Theyll probably do a version of Joker's Daughter for the show and make her the main villain,but since they cant say the Joker's name everyone will refer to her as "J.D" or something
probably
‘Arrow’: Ben Lewis Upped To Series Regular For Final Season
July 17, 2019 11:00am
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CW
Ben Lewis, who portrays William “Will” Clayton on Arrow, has been upped to a series regular for the eighth and final season of the CW’s linchpin superhero franchise.
Katie Yu/The CW
Lewis made his first appearance on Arrow last October in the Season 7 premiere, which introduced him as a future adult version of the title hero’s son. (The present-day, child version of Will has been portrayed by Canadian youngster Jack Moore). Will is the child of the late Samantha Clayton and Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell), the former billionaire playboy and one-time mayor of Star City who battles crime as a vigilante archer.
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Lewis recently wrapped on the feature film Covers, the Working Title/Focus Features comedy directed by Nisha Ganatra (Late Night) and starring Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades series) and Tracee Ellis Ross (Blackish). Lewis’s credits also include roles in Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and The Handmaid’s Tale as well as recurring roles on Suits, Chasing Life, and Degrassi.
The graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada also has directing and writing credits on the short films Zero Recognition (which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival) and Apart From Everything.
Arrow returns to The CW with “Starling City,” the Season 8 premiere, on Oct. 15 at 9 p.m. The new season began shooting earlier this month but this Saturday an envoy representing the show’s cast and creative team will be at Comic-Con International in San Diego for a farewell panel appearance (3:30 pm, Ballroom 20).
Lewis is represented by Thruline Entertainment and Edna Talent Management.
July 17, 2019 11:00am
CW
Ben Lewis, who portrays William “Will” Clayton on Arrow, has been upped to a series regular for the eighth and final season of the CW’s linchpin superhero franchise.
Katie Yu/The CW
Lewis made his first appearance on Arrow last October in the Season 7 premiere, which introduced him as a future adult version of the title hero’s son. (The present-day, child version of Will has been portrayed by Canadian youngster Jack Moore). Will is the child of the late Samantha Clayton and Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell), the former billionaire playboy and one-time mayor of Star City who battles crime as a vigilante archer.
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Lewis recently wrapped on the feature film Covers, the Working Title/Focus Features comedy directed by Nisha Ganatra (Late Night) and starring Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades series) and Tracee Ellis Ross (Blackish). Lewis’s credits also include roles in Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and The Handmaid’s Tale as well as recurring roles on Suits, Chasing Life, and Degrassi.
The graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada also has directing and writing credits on the short films Zero Recognition (which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival) and Apart From Everything.
Arrow returns to The CW with “Starling City,” the Season 8 premiere, on Oct. 15 at 9 p.m. The new season began shooting earlier this month but this Saturday an envoy representing the show’s cast and creative team will be at Comic-Con International in San Diego for a farewell panel appearance (3:30 pm, Ballroom 20).
Lewis is represented by Thruline Entertainment and Edna Talent Management.
Katie Cassidy Rodgers to make her directorial debut in Arrow’s final season
The cast of the superhero drama stopped by EW's Comic-Con suite and teased their upcoming eighth season.
By Mary Sollosi
July 20, 2019 at 01:37 PM EDT
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'WYNONNA EARP' CAST ON WHAT THEY WANT TO DO IN SEASON 4
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The end of the CW’s Arrow will also mark a new beginning: star Katie Cassidy Rodgers, who plays Laurel (in multiple incarnations) on the series, will make her directorial debut with an episode of the show’s eighth and final season.
Star Stephen Amell let the news slip to EW’s Chancellor Agard when he, Rodgers, and more members of the cast visited the EW video studio at San Diego Comic-Con Saturday morning. The new role has been long in the works for the actress: “Throughout the years I always have wanted to, and I just started shadowing more and shadowing more, and I recently did the Warner Bros. directors’ program, which was incredible,” Rodgers said. “It’s going to be fun. I can’t wait to direct all you!”
Rodgers isn’t the only CW actor to take her first turn helming an episode this year; Supergirl star Melissa Benoist will also make her directorial debut on her show’s upcoming fifth season, and Caity Lotz will do the same on Legends of Tomorrow’s fifth.
The stars of Arrow will take the stage at Comic-Con for the last time Saturday afternoon, and are savoring the superhero drama’s final run. “I just hope people enjoy the ride on the last season,” Amell said. “The first seven episodes leading into the crossover feel like we’re playing our greatest hits, so to speak, and alluding to memorable moments in the series.”
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“It feels like almost a tribute, in a way, the entire season,” Rodgers echoed him. “And each episode I think is going to feel like a miniature movie.”
For more from the cast of Arrow, check out the video above. And keep checking back for more coverage of San Diego Comic-Con!
https://ew.com/comic-con/2019/07/20/katie-cassidy-rodgers-direct-arrow-comic-con/
The cast of the superhero drama stopped by EW's Comic-Con suite and teased their upcoming eighth season.
By Mary Sollosi
July 20, 2019 at 01:37 PM EDT
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Loaded: 12.80%
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'WYNONNA EARP' CAST ON WHAT THEY WANT TO DO IN SEASON 4
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The end of the CW’s Arrow will also mark a new beginning: star Katie Cassidy Rodgers, who plays Laurel (in multiple incarnations) on the series, will make her directorial debut with an episode of the show’s eighth and final season.
Star Stephen Amell let the news slip to EW’s Chancellor Agard when he, Rodgers, and more members of the cast visited the EW video studio at San Diego Comic-Con Saturday morning. The new role has been long in the works for the actress: “Throughout the years I always have wanted to, and I just started shadowing more and shadowing more, and I recently did the Warner Bros. directors’ program, which was incredible,” Rodgers said. “It’s going to be fun. I can’t wait to direct all you!”
Rodgers isn’t the only CW actor to take her first turn helming an episode this year; Supergirl star Melissa Benoist will also make her directorial debut on her show’s upcoming fifth season, and Caity Lotz will do the same on Legends of Tomorrow’s fifth.
The stars of Arrow will take the stage at Comic-Con for the last time Saturday afternoon, and are savoring the superhero drama’s final run. “I just hope people enjoy the ride on the last season,” Amell said. “The first seven episodes leading into the crossover feel like we’re playing our greatest hits, so to speak, and alluding to memorable moments in the series.”
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inRead invented by Teads
“It feels like almost a tribute, in a way, the entire season,” Rodgers echoed him. “And each episode I think is going to feel like a miniature movie.”
For more from the cast of Arrow, check out the video above. And keep checking back for more coverage of San Diego Comic-Con!
https://ew.com/comic-con/2019/07/20/katie-cassidy-rodgers-direct-arrow-comic-con/
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Wow.... maybe he will he just a guest star. I mean it’s hard to see Arrow come to an end without him or Thea.
I really hope we get to see the Huntress..
Wait the what now?
Why do this?
This is more confusing than felicity leaving...
And Cisco "leaving".
He wasn't even in all the episodes LAST SEASON.
I don't get this announcements
Is this all more for contract agent money reasons?
@ansatsusha_gouki @fonzerrillii
Arrow brings back Katana for season 8's second episode
By Chancellor Agard
August 08, 2019 at 03:55 PM EDT
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Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) will encounter yet another familiar face in Arrow‘s eighth and final season.
EW has confirmed that Rila Fukushima, who played Tatsu Yamashiro/Katana, will make an appearance in the season’s second episode, which is titled “Welcome to Hong Kong.” GreenArrowTV.com was the first to report Fukushima’s return.
Oliver first crossed paths with Tatsu when he was working for A.R.G.U.S. in Hong Kong, as depicted in season 3’s flashback story line. The last time we saw the deadly swords-woman was in season 4’s “Unchained.” While the show still hasn’t released any more details about Fukushima’s return, it does make sense that she’d pop up in “Welcome to Hong Kong,” which Amell described as “an ode to season 3” in EW’s August cover story.
CATE CAMERON/THE CW
Of course, Fukushima isn’t the only alum returning to help the show play its greatest hits in the final season. Former stars Colin Donnell and Josh Segarra are also slated to make appearances.
Picking up a short while after the season 7 finale, season 8 finds Oliver traveling the world and working for the Monitor (LaMonica Garrett), who has him on a mission to save the multiverse.
Arrow returns Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 9 p.m. on The CW.
Arrow brings back Katana for season 8's second episode
By Chancellor Agard
August 08, 2019 at 03:55 PM EDT
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SHANNON BEADOR REVEALS SHE DIDN'T END THIS 'RHOC' SEASON IN A GOOD PLACE WITH KELLY DODD
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Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) will encounter yet another familiar face in Arrow‘s eighth and final season.
EW has confirmed that Rila Fukushima, who played Tatsu Yamashiro/Katana, will make an appearance in the season’s second episode, which is titled “Welcome to Hong Kong.” GreenArrowTV.com was the first to report Fukushima’s return.
Oliver first crossed paths with Tatsu when he was working for A.R.G.U.S. in Hong Kong, as depicted in season 3’s flashback story line. The last time we saw the deadly swords-woman was in season 4’s “Unchained.” While the show still hasn’t released any more details about Fukushima’s return, it does make sense that she’d pop up in “Welcome to Hong Kong,” which Amell described as “an ode to season 3” in EW’s August cover story.
CATE CAMERON/THE CW
Of course, Fukushima isn’t the only alum returning to help the show play its greatest hits in the final season. Former stars Colin Donnell and Josh Segarra are also slated to make appearances.
Picking up a short while after the season 7 finale, season 8 finds Oliver traveling the world and working for the Monitor (LaMonica Garrett), who has him on a mission to save the multiverse.
Arrow returns Tuesday, Oct. 15 at 9 p.m. on The CW.
Arrow's New, Very Final Scene Will Present 'A Lot of Logistical Hurdles'
By Matt Webb Mitovich / August 11 2019, 12:00 PM PDT
Courtesy of The CW
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As recently as July, Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim changed up the plan for the series’ very final scene. Now it’s just a matter of somehow pulling it off.
During an Aug. 4 sit-down with TVLine at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, Guggenheim revealed that a month prior, a new way to end the Arrowverse flagship series’ eight-year run dawned on him.
“I came out of meditation one morning and I had the whole last scene — and it’s a brand-new scene,” he said.
The eighth episode of Arrow‘s 10-episode farewell run, airing Jan. 14, 2020, will serve as Part 4 of this season’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover event. The episode that follows is “not related to the crossover” and “very specific; we know exactly what happens in it,” Guggenheim told reporters after the show’s farewell panel. Episode 10 then will deliver “a proper series finale.”
If the show sticks with the newly conceived way to close said finale, it will take some doing to make it happen.
“There are a lot of logistical hurdles that have to be crossed in order to shoot that scene. It’s not like we can just film it tomorrow,” Guggenheim teased for TVLine.
The EP said he was not necessarily looking to change up the very final scene — but neither was he averse to the prospect.
“The thing that I’ve sort of always told myself about the finale was that I wouldn’t be so rigid about my plan that I wouldn’t leave myself open to other ideas,” he said. “Had I not left myself open, I wouldn’t have written the scene I wrote, which I really, really like.”
@fonzerrillii @ansatsusha_gouki
By Matt Webb Mitovich / August 11 2019, 12:00 PM PDT
Courtesy of The CW
RELATED STORIES
- Colton Haynes Exits Arrow Ahead of Final Season — Is Roy's Story Over?
- Arrowverse's 'Crisis on Infinite Earths' Crossover: Everything We Know So Far
As recently as July, Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim changed up the plan for the series’ very final scene. Now it’s just a matter of somehow pulling it off.
During an Aug. 4 sit-down with TVLine at the Television Critics Association summer press tour, Guggenheim revealed that a month prior, a new way to end the Arrowverse flagship series’ eight-year run dawned on him.
“I came out of meditation one morning and I had the whole last scene — and it’s a brand-new scene,” he said.
The eighth episode of Arrow‘s 10-episode farewell run, airing Jan. 14, 2020, will serve as Part 4 of this season’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover event. The episode that follows is “not related to the crossover” and “very specific; we know exactly what happens in it,” Guggenheim told reporters after the show’s farewell panel. Episode 10 then will deliver “a proper series finale.”
If the show sticks with the newly conceived way to close said finale, it will take some doing to make it happen.
“There are a lot of logistical hurdles that have to be crossed in order to shoot that scene. It’s not like we can just film it tomorrow,” Guggenheim teased for TVLine.
The EP said he was not necessarily looking to change up the very final scene — but neither was he averse to the prospect.
“The thing that I’ve sort of always told myself about the finale was that I wouldn’t be so rigid about my plan that I wouldn’t leave myself open to other ideas,” he said. “Had I not left myself open, I wouldn’t have written the scene I wrote, which I really, really like.”
@fonzerrillii @ansatsusha_gouki
He's going to be on the show but wont be a season regular.
Also, dont expect Deathstroke to show up...
Thanks for clearing that up...
but DAMN..
THAT news deserved n OFFICIAL announcement?
I like Roy as much as anyone but damn, It REALLY would NOT have effected my viewing experience if he was not there.
But Thea NEEDS to be there
I had posted awhile back that there is some bad blood between the Arrow show and the actor that plays Deathstroke.
Sad as hell...
he needed to be there for the close out too...
Why is there bad blood between the show and Manu Bennett? Manu does an excellent job playing Deathstroke and never heard any of the cast say anything about him...
Youre right about Thea needed to show up though..
Why is there bad blood between the show and Manu Bennett? Manu does an excellent job playing Deathstroke and never heard any of the cast say anything about him...
Youre right about Thea needed to show up though..
I have no idea I posted the tweets from people involved
and they were deleted I never got to save them
but apparently they didnt call him back or something to be involved in certain stories or something.
Thea needs to EVOLVE though...
I would NEED to see her as a fully formed character.
I BELIEVE Thea is based on
https://dc.fandom.com/wiki/Mia_Dearden_(New_Earth)
So they can do WHATEVER they want with the character
they should NOT squander the opportunity.
^^^^^