ARROW Writers Talk Serums, Masks and The Flash
Who wasn’t absolutely blown away by Arrow‘s mid-season finale? Really, if you weren’t, you probably hate life. Fact.
But for those of us who are madly, head-over-heels in love with the direction Arrow is headed under the creative team of Andrew Kreisberg, Greg Berlanti and Geoff Johns, well that episode was just pure wow.
Of course, now we have to wait a month until the next episode of the CW’s super series hits the small screen. That isn’t stopping the team mentioned above from dropping a few hints at what we’ll see.
Over at Comic Book Resources, the trio was interviewed about all things Arrow (and The Flash). For starters, the let us know exactly how (SPOILER ALERT) Roy and Slade Wilson survived the Mirakuru serum injections:
What’s fun for us, as writers, is we see what Roy’s potential is to go down that dark path. One of the things you’ll find out as you go along is that it’s a deep-seated anger inside of you that lets you survive the Mirakuru transformation, which is something Slade had, which is why he lives, and it’s why Roy lived, too. One of the fun things that’ll be happening in the back half of the year is his relationship with the Arrow, and how that changes, and how the Arrow basically makes it his mission to not let Roy go down the Slade path. That’s going to take some interesting twists and turns that will hopefully surprise people.
Makes sense, and I’m sure someone more familiar with the minutia of the DC world than I will have something more to add (in the comments below, hopefully). But that serum and Slade’s reaction to it, according the Berlanti, will guide the rest of season two:
That’s very much the drive of the second half of the season. This year we’re doing something a bit different. We’ve got a two-pronged approach to the bad guy… Because Oliver knows about the presence of one of the bad guys, it helps us change the rhythms of the back half of the year from what we may have done last year. We don’t feel like we’re breaking the same story, and people are enjoying a different show with more evolved characters.
Part of that evolution, in a minor way, was the introduction of the mask, which happened at the end of Wednesday’s episode, thanks to Barry Allen:
We saw like 50 or 60 different designs. Some of the earlier ones were crazy. It worked out really well. When we had the pilot, we debated having a mask. We decided to punt for a variety of reasons — most importantly, it was that if you put a mask on him right away, it sort of says, “This is cartoony or superhero-y.” It also fit in with his character. He wasn’t someone who ever thought he would be interacting with people. He thought he’d be this dark sniper, firing arrows from the shadows. As the series has progressed, and he’s stepped more and more into the light — which is also what his overall arc is — he’s really needed that. It just seemed so perfect that in this season that he would need it, and also that Barry would be the one who ultimately makes it for him. It just makes the bond between those two characters.
But that bond doesn’t mean we’re in for the same show when The Flash arrives in the fall:
Kreisberg: We’ll want to keep “Arrow” as distinctive as possible, and “Flash” as distinctive as possible. Part of the fun will be how those two things play out in both shows, if we get that opportunity.
Johns: But there are story reasons that Flash feels different and that he’s taking on different things in his series.
Wow. That’s a lot to take in. But I know I’m already retiring my advent calendar for an Arrow calendar. Here’s to counting down the days until Arrow returns on Jan. 15, 2014.
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