a city of heroes

Marc Guggenheim: Oliver/Felicity-Centric Episode Will Offer 'Full-On Exploration' of Why Season 4 Breakup Happened

Marc Guggenheim on plans for Katie Cassidy’s return

Marc Guggenheim on the Laurel reveal from the promo

Marc Guggenheim discusses the future of flashbacks on Arrow

Can you give Arrow fans any hint on who “the people a bit tied to Felicity’s past” are?  I know many of you were speculating that Felicity’s sketchy father, The Calculator, might be an ally in her own anti-Prometheus agenda, but co-showrunner Marc Guggenheim nixed that notion. “I would definitely love to bring him back, and I would love to bring Charlotte Ross back as Donna, but [we were like], ‘Let’s tell a new story, something we haven’t done before.'” Beyond that, he would not elaborate, except to say, “As with all things related to Arrow, it’s not what you initially think it is, and it will ultimately relate to the season’s overall theme of ‘legacy.’ But it will be very specific to Felicity.” As for those who are concerned that Felicity’s “darker” direction was triggered by a guy she could barely call her boyfriend, Guggenheim affirms it was in fact born of “a bunch of stuff” — including the Havenrock tragedy, which will be addressed directly in Episode 11 — “and Billy was the final straw. It’s also the sum of the fact that Felicity has been living in this darker world for the last four-plus years now…. How has that affected her way of thinking about things?” 

Marc Guggenheim discusses Felicity’s dark turn

@mguggenheim: Arrow Ep. 514 is in production.

Could you provide any info on the 100th episode of Arrow? — Kylie The 100th episode is truly a love letter to the fans. “It feels like the 100th issue of a comic book, perhaps even more so than the 100th episode of a television show,” EP Marc Guggenheim says. Just to note, Glenn died in the 100th issue of The Walking Dead, so that comment has me a little worried. “You know me, I always want everyone worried,” Guggenheim adds coyly.

For five seasons, The CW’s Arrow has tracked Oliver Queen’s turbulent morph from playboy wastrel to nihilstic vigilante to the principled superhero known as Green Arrow. Along the way, the show launched an interconnected world of superhero shows known as the “Arrowverse” – The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, and Supergirl – and helped bridge two different cultural moments and modes of superhero pop: the heightened reality crime noir of Christopher Nolan’s Batman films and the brighter, lighter aesthetic with a more unabashed embrace of comic book tropes best typified by the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Arrow has also chewed through a lot of plot, played with a lot of risky tones (Antihero pulp! Magical fantasy! Apocalyptic sci-fi!), and experienced a lot of creative ups and downs. All of which begs a few questions: When should Arrow come to an end? How should it end? And should the quagmire protagonist played by Stephen Amell pay the price for his immoral brand of justice?

Marc Guggenheim about Prometheus x

Marc Guggenheim talks about Oliver Queen and the moral conflict on Arrow x

What’s the deal with Felicity’s new boyfriend on Arrow?  We will soon find out how Oliver feels about Felicity’s new boyfriend, especially as he’s unwittingly working with him at the moment. “Eventually, yes,” EP Marc Guggenheim says. “I don’t think I’m spoiling anything to say that pretty much every secret on this show eventually [comes out]. Felicity’s boyfriend is certainly no exception — not that she’s keeping it a secret from Oliver, but at the start of season 5, Oliver doesn’t know.”  x

“Obviously Arrow is always a show that’s evolving, it’s always a show where every character, arguably – except for The Arrow – is fair game,” Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim told reporters on Monday. “We make the creative choices that we feel benefit the show as a whole, and the story that we’re telling overall.”

The foreshadowed death will finally play out in Wednesday’s episode, titled “Eleven-Fifty-Nine,” which the producers describe as a “game-changing” hour that will irrevocably alter the course of the series and deeply affect all who are left behind.

"It’s easy to forget that our characters are vigilantes,” EP Wendy Mericle explained of the “shocking” episode. “They’re out on the street, doing really dangerous things. What this does is it brings that reality back, in a kind of rude and brutal way. I think that’s good for the audience to be reminded of that, and our characters as well.”

"Every time we’ve killed off a character on the show, it’s really been for the effect it has on all the characters left behind,” Guggenheim added.

At the time the original flash forward was filmed, the Arrow bosses by some accounts weren’t 100-percent sure who would eventually be killed off. But over time, the path to take made itself clear. “We started off this year with the promise of a death,” says Guggenheim, “and when we worked our way through our various creative choices, we realized that the thing that will give us the most pop going into the end of the season, into next season, unfortunately would be”… the character they wound up choosing, to be revealed in Wednesday’s episode.

Though that difficult decision is sure to sock with sorrow as many fans as it shocks, Arrow is not a show to take death lightly, nor has it ever. “Arrow, much more so than Flash or Legends [of Tomorrow], traffics in death,” Guggenheim notes. “We started off the series with the apparent death of Sara Lance and the actual death of Robert Queen, and a hero who murdered people. For better or for worse, death is part of the show. And what we’re now finding is that the concept of death — as it should, by the way, when you are pushing into Season 5 – has to evolve, it has to change.”

And though some viewers have spoiled themselves by seeking out long-lens paparazzi photos of the fateful funeral scene, Guggenheim assures that there still are surprises to be had. “There are a couple [other] revelations in this episode,” he says, as well as “a pretty seismic change for the Diggle/Andy relationship.”

And throughout the last few weeks, there have been a number of leaks -- the cost of shooting outdoors on a practical location, Guggenheim explained -- including photos of the actual grave taken by paparazzi weeks ago and then again last week. Most news outlets haven't picked up the images, but hardcore fans know where to look -- and many of them have been expressing their dissatisfaction -- loudly and often -- on Guggenheim's social media feeds.

"We've always you know, made know bones about the fact that we are telling our own version of the Green Arrow mythos," Guggenheim said. "Green Arrow has had so many different interpretations over the years that we never felt you know beholden to one particular interpretation, and this is our interpretation, like it or not, and I recognize that there are plenty of people up and down my Twitter feed who do not like it. Totally respect that."

While acknowledging that in a character-driven show, whatever character they chose to kill would have his or her own fan loyal fan base upset about the decision, Guggenheim said that "It's never been just about one or two different particular fan bases. We make the creative choices we feel benefit the show as a whole, and the story that we're telling overall."

The leak was a disheartening turn of events for the brain trust behind Arrow. “Look, it’s not cool,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim tells EW. “Straight up … I’ll just say it: Shame on those people.”

But the photos aren’t just damaging to the fans. “Honestly, all I can say is that we’ve had the paparazzi on Legends and Arrow, so you’re talking about two shows’ worth of crews, people who work really, really hard to do the jobs that they do, who care a lot about the shows, who care a lot about the stories that we’re telling,” Guggenheim says. “I just look at these paparazzi people like they’re just spoiling it for everybody. They’re kind of taking a big steaming dump on the work that all these people do. They work in Vancouver [for] unbelievable hours — [often] in the rain, terrible conditions — and they do it all to produce shows that everyone can be entertained by and part of being entertained is being surprised.”