Arrow was initially envisaged as a 5-season series. Now, with Season 6 renewal very much on the agenda, the show’s endgame has changed, EP Marc Guggenheim tells TVLine:
“It was really just a hope at that point [in 2012] that the show would run five years,” Guggenheim says of the aforementioned original plan [which has Arrow end as it began], “and we always thought that we would intercut the final moment of the series with the first moment of the series, that it would form one big Moebius strip.
He continues:
“There’s still a part of me that wishes we could do that. But I wouldn’t want to artificially extend the flashbacks [beyond five seasons], and I also wouldn’t want to artificially cut the show short. It would’ve been a beautifully elegant thing, and Five Years Ago Me would’ve loved it. But things change, and I do think it’ll make the Season 5 finale pretty awesome.”
As for how Season 5 will end, and therefore set up the coveted sixth season, Guggenheim claims total clarity while leaving some room for improvisation:
“Look, we have some incredibly clear plans for what we want to do in the Season 5 finale. At the same time, we always leave ourselves room to be like, ‘…and throw this cliffhanger in, throw that twist in.’ Usually the craziest ideas on this show tend to be the ones that the ideas sort of linger, and we never really quite set on them. Like, ‘Oh, maybe we’ll kill off Tommy?’ We don’t fully commit until we’re pretty much breaking the episode.”
Stay tuned as we continue to monitor the renew/cancel status of Arrow Season 6…
Kay B. says
This is one show that I wish they could continue for several more seasons. Maybe ask viewers for storyline ideas? Or enlist the help of other writers for fresh ideas? They need to try to extend it out for awhile.