How will The Flash‘s Flashpoint storyline affect Arrow season five? During the 2016 San Diego Comic Con, Arrow writer/executive producer Wendy Mericle discussed what’s in store for the upcoming season, providing some tantalizing teasers without giving away any spoilers. Answering questions during our roundtable interview, Mericle said we’ll learn the answers as to what Laurel (Katie Cassidy) whispered to Oliver (Stephen Amell) before she died, how Oliver will balance being a mayor and the Green Arrow, and whether Olicity will be a thing in the upcoming season. She also confirmed the fifth season will have more of a first season feel to it, with more “crime of the week” storylines.
Wendy Mericle Interview:
What’s going happen now? Where do we find Oliver when we start?
Wendy Mericle: “As you know when we left last season the team was split up. He had killed Damian Darhk and so he was off the board. He was stepping into becoming the mayor. He is still going to be in the mayor’s office but the city is going to be in a slightly different state. It’s not going to be…we’re not going to have any sort of terrorist attacks or anything happening this season, but as a result of what happened with Damian Darhk and the general decline of Star City, we’re going to have criminals. There’s going to be a huge mob element. And this is all part of the spirit of going back to the basics of season one, so it will be more villains of the week, more hand-to-hand. A little bit going back to that gritty, kind of crime of the week-type of things. Oliver will be a big part of that.
We’re also going to have a lot of vigilantes who are inexperienced and inspired by the Green Arrow killing Damien Dahrk. They’re going to be popping up all over the city and that’s actually going to become more of a problem than a help.”
Will some of the episodes be more stand-alone this season?
Wendy Mericle: “There will be more standalone episodes this season. I think that we are looking to kind of go deeper into the bench of villains from the DC universe. Again, make it go back to our roots in the way that we had, like more season one.”
How is Arrow going to be affected by The Flash‘s Flashpoint?
Wendy Mericle: “That’s a good question. We had that question when we found out about Flashpoint. We were like, ‘Oh hey, how’s that going to work, guys? Fascinating.’ Obviously we live in this universe now where we have things like that happening. We have super powers, we have metas. It will have an affect on the show. That’s about as much as I can say. I can’t comment too much on what it will be or how it will be affected. The characters that are affected will feel it.”
How do you deal with Olicity in season five?
Wendy Mericle: “What’s interesting about Olicity is it’s become, as everyone knows, this huge thing online and everyone has taken sides. But for us, it was really a byproduct of you cast someone like Emily Bett Rickards and there is obviously chemistry and you start to write to that. It really felt in season three and four that if we didn’t go in that direction, it was going to do a disservice to the show and to the characters, so we leaned into it. We went that way. We saw what it can do and I think in season five, we’re going to do the same thing which is we left them ambiguous at the end of the season and I will say you will get some clarity in episode five of season five. But even then we are going to be exploring it in real time to see where we feel like the characters are taking us and where we feel like the best stories are going to be told.”
Before Laurel died she whispered something to Oliver. Will that be revisited this season?
Wendy Mericle: “I can only tell you that you’ll find out about it in 501 – in the premiere.”
How will Oliver balance his role as the Star City Mayor with being the Green Arrow?
Wendy Mericle: “One of the things that I’m most excited about is that element which is in the past we’ve had him be the CEO, we’ve seen him have somewhat of a public face, but this is a public face that he, for lack of a better term, he can’t B.S. this. He’s the mayor. He has to show up. When he’s not there, people know he’s not there. So we’re going to drive story both in the mayor’s office and in the bunker. It’s actually a real challenge from a storytelling perspective because you have to figure out where is his real emotional drive coming from. It’ll be fun. We’ll have a lot of fun with the sort of Superman element of him having a dual identity, one that’s very, very public.”
Watch the full Wendy Mericle interview:
(Interview by Fred Topel. Article by Rebecca Murray.)
