Why Stephen Amell Wants The ‘Arrow’ Writers To Live Like There’s No Tomorrow In Season 7

When The Music makes contact with Stephen Amell ahead of his appearance at Sydney’s Supanova Comic-Con & Gaming expo, the Arrow star is in the middle of enjoying some hard-earned family time on holiday in Istanbul.

He’s audibly tired – an avid basketball fan, he stayed up late the night before watching in disappointment as the Cleveland Cavaliers fell to the Golden State Warriors in the second game of this year’s NBA finals – but, as one might expect from someone whose job includes more physical activity every single day than this writer has endured in his entire life, he rallies in full charming, enthusiastic form for our chat, despite a lingering sense of guilt on this end of the line for interrupting his downtime like this.

Well-earned downtime it is too, especially given Arrow’s demands on Amell’s schedule these past several years. With six seasons and 138 episodes (plus crossovers) behind him of embodying billionaire-turned-vigilante Oliver Queen – aka Green Arrow, the beloved former serial killer/now hero of Star(ling) City – and a seventh season on the way, the man honestly deserves as much rest as he can get. Over the years, Ollie has taken Amell to hell and back, through shipwrecks, zealots, ninjas, the Russian mafia, warlocks, aliens, Vinnie Jones and just an unreasonable number of salmon ladders (you’re welcome for that link, by the way). And then, at the end of season five, the show literally blew it all up and essentially started afresh.

In Amell’s view, the cleaning of Arrow’s slate on the way into season six was a necessary step to move forward, and not only because the fifth season – with its cyclical conclusion of the flashback storylines that had shared time with the present-day narrative since the show’s first episode – symbolised the conclusion of the first ‘volume’ of the Arrow mythos, but because being freed from that initial framework’s grasp allowed the creative team the room to stop looking backwards and begin laying the seeds for adventures still to come.

“I think that, in a lot of ways, it was a transitionary year,” he muses of Arrow’s sixth year. “There was such a finality to season five, for a variety of reasons, that I don’t know that we could have just pivoted and done some of the things in season six that we’re going to do this coming year.

“Overall, I’m very proud of the year, I’m very proud of the show, I’m very proud of the cast. I thought we did a great job of introducing a couple of new characters – or not introducing, per se, but really weaving a few characters into the fabric of the show. I thought that was great. I’m excited – very, very, very excited – for season seven.”

The changes to Arrow’s make-up aren’t merely cosmetic; behind the scenes, the series saw the departure of co-creator and co-showrunner Andrew Kreisberg in November 2017 following allegations of sexual harassment, just over a month after it had returned from hiatus. The creative team pushed through the controversy admirably enough but, understandably, the sixth season was consequently a little rocky in terms of consistency. On balance, though, it was still a decently strong run, especially for a show with as much under its belt as Arrow.

The show’s seventh season poses a different challenge for the creative team; while there is no reason to suspect that it will be its last – nor any desire here for that to be the case – there are also no guarantees of renewal for an eighth turn at bat. Cast changes are becoming more regular as mainstays move on to other projects (although the departures of long-time members such as John Barrowman, Willa Holland and, most recently, Paul Blackthorne have been somewhat mitigated by the returns of Katie Cassidy and, next season, Colton Haynes) and, as sad as it would be to see Arrow go, the multiverse it spawned is in good hands with The Flash, Legends Of Tomorrow and Supergirl. So, if the show were to ride off into the sunset after the next year, Amell is determined to make sure that, at the very least, season seven is remembered as its bravest, boldest effort.

“We have a new showrunner this year, Beth Schwartz, who’s been with the show since season one,” he explains. “[The writers] have a very clear vision of what they want season seven to be, and what I asked them to do – and it’s not up to me – but what I asked of them is to not just assume that we have an eighth season. I wanted them to write like, ‘If you have a good idea, and you have something you’ve always wanted to do or see on the show, then just do it! Do it right now!’

“I think that’s one of the things I’m getting out of what they’ve planned for season seven – we’re not writing like we’re guaranteed something beyond this, because we’re not; nobody is. I want them to really push forward and take the fact we have a certain license and a certain respect from the fans to take some chances.”

Another upside of season seven’s take-no-prisoners potential is – much like CW stablemate Supernatural, which underwent a similar transition after its fifth season, powering through a post-Apocalypse lull in its sixth to unexpectedly enjoy an extended, prosperous second era – Arrow feels increasingly as though it’s a show that is being made to engage its existing fans, with less and less concern for attracting new viewers. While streaming services certainly make a show as long-running as Arrow more accessible to new audiences (and that’s definitely a good thing), those who are tuning in on a regular basis during regular-season screenings are unquestionably its raison d'être. So, it makes sense that – again, much like Supernatural – the show will be looking to find new and unexpected ways to repay that loyalty in its next batch of episodes. Although, uh, probably not by crossing over with Scooby-Doo.

“Obviously, you want to lean into things that you think fans would want, right?” Amell reflects. “Concurrently, I’m all for things that make fans mad, because mad is no different than happy. The only thing that I don’t want is indifference.

“I always joke with fans about my alter-ego, Evil Story Steve. If you were to tell me, you know, that four people died in the season premiere of Arrow in season seven, I’d be very sad … but my alter-ego, Evil Story Steve, would be like, ‘Oh – that’s very exciting; why’d that happen?’

“So, I think that making fans happy, clearly, is what you wanna do when you’re on a show in general because you want people to keep watching, as long as you’re not afraid to lean into things that may make them go, ‘But why would you do that? I hate that. That’s awful,’ because that’s not actually what they mean. If someone screams out on Twitter, ‘I’m gonna stop watching the show!’ they’re probably not gonna stop watching the show, you know what I mean?”

Well, especially not now; not when, after hints and teases and name-drops over the past few seasons, Arrow will finally, actually, welcome the nigh-mythological setting of Gotham City to its fold during next season’s Arrowverse crossover event. And, even better, it will also see the introduction of Kate Kane, aka Batwoman, Batman’s more-interesting cousin (and, in this writer’s opinion, a super-worthy possible successor for solo-show status whenever Arrow does ultimately wrap, especially given Gotham’s impending finish after its next season).

As intriguing as that prospect is, it’s hard not to wonder about some other identities from the DC canon and whether they’ll be making long-overdue Arrowverse appearances of their own – namely Ted Kord (aka Blue Beetle), whose Kord Industries buildings and shipping containers have been a persistent presence in the show for years, and Hal Jordan, the pilot-turned-space cop known as Green Lantern, whose flight jacket was briefly seen on-screen at a bar back in season four and has kept fans waiting in hope ever since. Despite some good-natured goading, Amell is well-trained in the art of keeping mum. He does concede there will be new faces both known and unknown to comic book fans but, unless someone can get the exact details out of him at Supanova, it looks like we’ll just have to wait a little longer to find out what’s in store when Arrow returns for its next leather-clad run through the streets.

“I think that you will see some very, very new and exciting characters in season seven; characters that have a canon in DC,” he allows. “And I think that we will continue to do what we’ve always done on this show, which I’m very, very proud of, which is create some new characters. Hopefully, long after I’m done playing Arrow – whenever that may be – hopefully we’ll carry on in the DC universe.

“One of the things that I’m most proud about is that, 25 years from now, if they made a Green Arrow film, they would have to make it with John Diggle and Felicity Smoak and Thea Queen and Sara Lance and a lot of the characters that we’ve brought in and have created as we’ve gone along. I hope that not only do those characters start to exist in the comic books if they haven’t already – and some of them have – but I would hope that if you were looking at the blueprint of how to do a successful Arrow show, people would be like, ‘Yeah, you have to have those characters – those characters are a part of it now.’ And the fact that we created a bunch of them, or at least reconstituted some of them in some instances, that’s the most impactful thing that we’ve done.”

Stephen Amell is appearing at Supanova Comic-Con & Gaming expo, Sydney, from June 15-17. See the event’s website for more information.