Graphic by Alice Mongkongllite for BuzzFeed / Warner Bros.

Television / The CW
On the Vancouver set of Arrow, during an uncharacteristically sweltering August
day in the usually cool city, Stephen Amell was bewigged. The star of Arrow was
shooting a scene set in Hong Kong, where Oliver landed in the Season 2 finale,
finally sprung from the island where he had been captive in flashbacks during the
shows first two seasons. As a present-day billionaire superhero, Oliver veers
between his (green) Arrow costume and designer suits, with a cropped haircut
that matches his grown-up rich-kid station (despite some current financial
problems). In flashbacks, however, Ollie is often dirty, bedraggled, and shaggy.
Amell apologized for his appearance, and told a story about going home in the
middle of a workday while still in flashback costume to say hello to his wife
and baby daughter, and how he ended up terrifying his child. In a flattened tone,
Amell said, I hate it.
Too bad. Because the nature of Arrow is that Amell, 33, plays multitudes. He is the
Oliver Queen who is a Starling City socialite returned from the dead two years
before; he is the Arrow, who was fueled by rage upon his return to the world, but
now seeks justice and aspires to heroism; he is the Oliver of the flashbacks, who
has had to transform from a hapless prisoner to a shrewd, hardened ass-kicker;
and in wayback flashbacks, hes Ollie the playboy douche. And within all of those
personas, Oliver is keeping secrets, calculating his future moves, and trying to
remain a human being.
Andrew Kreisberg, who developed Arrow with Greg Berlanti and Marc
Guggenheim, said to BuzzFeed News: We always say, every week were trying to
make a movie. And that wouldnt work if we didnt have a movie star in the lead.
Season 3 of Arrow begins Oct. 8 on The CW. For its first two seasons, it has been
the networks most-watched show, averaging 3.8 million viewers in Nielsens
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Live + 7 ratings. On Tuesday night, relying on Arrows strength and presumed
audience desire, The CW launched a spinoff, The Flash, also based on a DC Comics
property. The Flash, starring Grant Gustin as Barry Allen, was born out of an
Arrow Season 2 arc; the two shows are set in different cities, but exist in the same
universe, and will cross over. The premiere did incredibly well, drawing 4.5
million viewers. Even at this early stage, executives at DC, The CW, and Warner
Bros. (the studio that produces the show), are eyeing a third character who could
possibly lead another show. There are discussions going on, said Mark
Pedowitz, the president of The CW, in a recent telephone interview, but I cant
tell you what they are.
In addition to Arrow and The Flash, television currently has a number of comic-
book-based shows AMCs The Walking Dead, Foxs Gotham, ABCs Marvels
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and NBCs soon-to-premiere Constantine but lets face it:
Its a hard row to hoe. Especially when the genre gets further whittled to
superhero TV. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. struggled to find itself creatively in its first
season, and Gotham, three episodes in, is making those attempts now. The fanboy
community, once won over, is among the most loyal pop culture consumers
but first you have to drag them, screaming, from throwing the project off a
precipice of knee-jerk hate.
When the project got announced, there was a lot of cynicism we were met with
online which, by the way, I totally get, Guggenheim said. Green Arrow is a
character that hasnt always had the most success in comic book form. So the idea
of bringing him to a TV show is really hard.
Arrow, as first imagined by Berlanti the television writer/producer behind
Everwood and Brothers & Sisters, among many others when he got an overall
deal with Warner Bros. three years ago and they asked him whether he was
interested in developing any DC properties, is an origins story. The show is set to
run for five seasons, each flashing back to a year of Olivers captivity. By the end
of the show, Oliver will have evolved from the Hood to the Vigilante to the Arrow
to Green Arrow.
Stephen Amell in the Season 3 premiere. Cate Cameron/The CW
Like Oliver Queen, Arrow has its own origins story. Berlanti said that when asked
about doing a superhero show, I was a little bit hesitant. But when he thought
about the heros journey of Green Arrow, and thought about making it real, and
grounded in reality, he got excited. Berlanti enlisted Guggenheim, a frequent
collaborator, and then Kreisberg, who had worked with both of them on the
short-lived Eli Stone and had genre credits ranging from Vampire Diaries to
Fringe. (It has likely helped that all three of them are comic book devotees
Guggenheim is writing the female-centric X-Men title, and co-writes the Arrow
tie-ins. The fans can smell a fraud, said Guggenheim.)
None of this would matter, though, if they didnt find the right Oliver Queen. The
pilots casting director told the producers that Stephen Amell, a Toronto-born
actor who had done arcs on The Vampire Diaries, HBOs Hung, and ABCs Private
Practice, was coming in and they had to decide on him right away.
Stephen was the very first person to come in and audition for any role, said
Guggenheim. Our casting director David Rapaport said, He will be off the
market on Friday. We were, like, Youve got to be kidding me, the very first
person coming in?
It ended up not being a problem. Guggenheim said, I saved the audition on my
computer, thinking, well, even if we dont get to cast him, I want to have this guys
audition. Because hes going to be a big star one day.
Pedowitz was already a fan from his previous job running ABC Studios, the
producers of Private Practice. Hes a man! Hes a man. He was not a, um
Pedowitz paused to try to describe what he meant. He was the opposite in what
we were seeing in a lot of superheroes at that point. Or heroes in that time. He
played a man. He acted like a man.
Shirtless in the pilot.
Jack Rowand/The CW Jack Rowand/The CW
Arrow has done well since its series premiere. But it still had to get its sea legs.
The show began with lots of action, of course, but it also featured some
unwelcome soapy elements, as Oliver landed back in Starling City in the middle
of a love triangle with his ex-girlfriend Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) and best
friend Tommy Merlyn (Colin Donnell). And critics werent sure yet what Amell
was doing. I remember reading a lot of reviews, some of which were saying, The
actor playing Oliver Queen is stiff, Amell said. And in my head, I was, like, Im
not stiff! Hes stiff!
What was working better than Oliver trying to find his way back into his
emotional life with his mother, Moira (Susanna Thompson), and sister, Thea
(Willa Holland), as well was Oliver the dark purveyor of justice, as Kreisberg
put it. He literally had a list and was taking names, exacting revenge on villain
after villain (some of whom were familiar from the comics) and killing a lot of
people. As Season 1 began, with critics and fans weighing in, the writers realized
the shows strengths. As a result, Berlanti said, We got to pull back on some of
the relationship drama.
Yet no matter how brooding a superhero is, he does need friends. John Diggle
(David Ramsey), Olivers bodyguard, soon realized his charges secret, and began
to help. But more important, the writers created completely by accident the
character of Felicity Smoak for Arrows third episode, and cast Emily Bett
Rickards to play her. It was just a brief role for an IT person, stemming from story
necessity. But it ended up changing the show.
Andrew Kreisberg, Greg Berlanti, and I, we all come from the same school of
writing, which is very quippy and bantery and funny, said Guggenheim.
Basically, we designed a show we couldnt write. The voice of the characters is
completely opposite to our voices as writers. Oliver doesnt talk that much! Dig is
a man of few words. Its a very dark show. Exhausted from work, Kreisberg and
Guggenheim, who were writing the episode, used their own voice to create an
ancillary character. That turned out to be Felicity, Guggenheim said.
Rickards Felicity was a scene-stealer from the jump and shes that exact
nerdy, smart, appealing person a portion of the audience wants to imagine as its
stand-in. Her chemistry with Amell was obvious as well (Google Olicity
fanfiction if you dare). We discovered that the show needed an element that we
didnt realize it needed, and that was this levity this other point of view for
Oliver, Guggenheim said. And it really opened the show up.
They began immediately writing her into future episodes, and she became a
series regular. With Colton Haynes joining the show later in Season 1 as Roy
Harper, Arrow had found its crew, and was on a roll. Guggenheim remembers
when he realized the show had won over the once-reluctant fanbase. It was
March of our first season, he said. We brought some of the cast down for
WonderCon in Anaheim. We did a panel, and we were walking around the floor,
and we were like Sally Field: They like us! They really like us!
Emily Bett Rickards with Amell in the upcoming episode Sara. Cate Cameron/The CW
The Arrow pilot, directed by David Nutter, set a high bar for its future visuals and
action the world was lush and rich-looking, and the fight scenes were no joke.
Warner Bros., Guggenheim said, was initially concerned that the show could even
be produced each week, much less live up to the expectations it had set. Weve
had to develop a whole new way of producing a television show on our budget
and on our schedule, said Guggenheim.
In addition to the usual storyboards for action scenes, he said, the stunt team pre-
tapes the set pieces. That means the director and producers have already seen a
version of what the actors (and stunt actors) will eventually enact for the show.
In the same vein, the costume designer and prop master camera test everything
in order to avoid cheesy disasters. Guggenheim said: Its hard to get these comic
book costumes right. Maya Mani, our costume designer, and Ken Hawryliw, our
prop master, theyve basically had to figure out a way to design and produce
these comic book costumes that in feature films take years, or at least a year, to
develop. They have to do it on an episodic basis.
The show also squeezes its dollars. The amount of time we spend sometimes
trying to save $2,000 or $1,000 its very unconventional for a show,
Guggenheim said. But for us, we always say $1,000 is real money.
Its a get-it-done mentality. Paul Blackthorne, who plays Quentin Lance, the
police detective/officer/captain (its been a sliding scale for Lance), described the
attitude on set. Lets just get the TV show made, all right? No drama, anybody,
he said. Lets just get shit done.
The rewards are obvious. The show has, if anything, elevated its production; The
Flash, which Kreisberg is running, now exists; and in April, Time called Arrow the
the best, most fully-realized superhero franchise out there. (Yes, including
movies.)
Grant Gustin as Barry Allen, aka The Flash.
Jack Rowand/The CW Jack Rowand/The CW
Each season, Arrow plans out what Olivers emotional journey will be, and this
year we will see, Guggenheim said, Am I a hero, or am I a human? Am I Oliver
Queen, or am I the Arrow? Having defeated Slade Wilson (Manu Bennett)
Deathstroke in the Season 2 finale, and not killing him, Oliver will begin this
season feeling pretty good about himself. Its a very different character, said
Amell. He smiles, he laughs, hes relaxed. Its a much closer proximity to me as a
person. So its been a lot of fun to play.
According to Amell, Oliver has also been, at least as of the first several episodes,
less shirtless than usual. Arrows popularity is based on many, many things and
one of those things is Amells body, which the show uses to great effect. Sitting in
his decked out trailer on the shows set, wearing a hat to cover up his wig, Amell
talked frankly about how that feels. Listen, Im not gonna complain about it, he
said. I will say that every once in a while I get my back up when the first
question is about my abdomen and not about the fact that Time magazine wrote
that we might be the best superhero TV show ever. If the show was about my abs,
then people would have watched the pilot, created a GIF on the internet, and not
watched the second episode. So part of me wants to be, like, Fuck off.
This more fully realized Oliver has a lot to contend with in Season 3. Thea will be
dealing with the revelation that her father, the one-time (and future?) villain
Malcolm Merlyn (played by John Barrowman) wants her in his life; Dig is going to
be a father, which complicates the groups tenuous, risk-taking existence; and
Felicity and Oliver will take tiny steps in trying to deal with their feelings for each
other. There will be interactions with The Flash that are both on a smaller scale
(character exchanges) and a full-blown crossover in both shows eighth episodes
even as the two dramas seek to maintain their very different tones. If youre
looking for superpowers, youre more likely to find them on Flash than on
Arrow, Guggenheim said. Then he thought for a moment, and added that the
crossover will have the most superpowers weve had on the show.
As far as DC canon goes, Laurels trajectory now that she knows who Oliver is
will also be key. Without using the words Black Canary, Katie Cassidy spoke
obliquely about whats to come for Laurel. If you follow me on Instagram, if you
follow me on Twitter people are, like, Have you been working out? Yes! Its a
relief; the show hasnt served Laurel well yet. Laurels always been sort of a
tricky character for us, Guggenheim said. Especially with female characters, you
dont want to define them by their love affairs. The remedy for that begins
immediately, he added (also without saying Black Canary). This is a big year of
evolution for Laurel. And that starts in the very first episode.
Its Ras al Ghul, the mythical supervillain, though, that has excited fans the most.
Describing the Hall H reaction to Ras at Comic-Con, Amell said: When we said
Ras al Ghuls name, and we revealed him, that was an incredible sound. It wasnt
a cheer, it was more like an, OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. Like someone got dunked
on in a basketball game or something. He will be the Big Bad of Season 3.
Played by Liam Neeson in Christopher Nolans Dark Knight films, the Arrow
braintrust was thrilled to read that Neeson said hed consider reprising the role.
We never thought he would, said The CWs Pedowitz. We quickly went to him,
just on the off-chance that he had the time to do it. (He did not; Matt Nable, an
Australian actor and former rugby player, got the part.)
Guggenheim said they approach huge comic moments with a great degree of
trepidation, I would say. But also excitement. Kreisberg said theyve veered from
Neesons interpretation of the character. What were trying to do is something a
bit more elemental, he said. Presenting a Ras al Ghul whos a bit more primal.
More of a legend and a whisper and something to be feared.
What you can be sure of is that the show wont tiptoe around the character, and
his interactions with the Arrow world. That is not the shows way. Greg Berlanti
always says, You have a hit TV show until you dont. Thats his thing, Amell said.
So why are we saving something? We just press on. Press on, press on, press on,
press on.
Arrows Season 3 premiere is on Wednesday, Oct. 8,
at 8 p.m. on The CW.
UPDATE
This story has been updated with the ratings for The Flash premiere. Oct. 8, 2014, at 2:29 p.m.
Tagged: arrow, dc comics, emily bett rickards, grant gustin, stephen amell, the cw, the flash