Arrow Season 2 Episode 3
The Arrow TV series continues to be a show that hits just all of my fanboy buttons in a proper way as it’s giving me a very engaging, accessible but easter egg filled series that takes the Green Arrow character and sets him on a large path, albeit on that’s riffing on Batman Begins a whole lot while finding its own way. The recent episodes have expanded the cast more and more and now, according to the executive producers on the series, we’re getting closer to bringing their version of Birds of Prey and Suicide Squad to the screen. And if based on experience with the two seasons so far, it should be pretty slick while working within the TV space.
“We’ve announced that we’re doing a ‘Birds of Prey’ episode with the return of Helena Bertinelli,” according to executive producer Andrew Kreisberg. ”It’s more the ‘Arrow’ version of Birds of Prey than it is a direct adaptation.”
“We gave ourselves room to grow and evolve that. The whole show is about evolutions,” fellow EP Marc Guggenheim says. “It’s about the evolution of the Arrow to the Green Arrow, we talked about it in terms of Black Canary, Death Stroke, and Birds of Prey is very much the same thing. You’re not going to end up with the holy trinity of Oracle, Black Canary and Huntress right out of the gate. But the hope is we’re doing a multi-year, multi-season epic, and we’ll get there.”
We’ve got two weeks until Arrow returns due to the Winter Olympics taking up a lot of attention and then another month until this Birds of Prey episode hits on March 26th.,
“Helena comes back to town and Helena is gone. All that’s left is the Huntress,” Kreisberg revealed. “She’s become consumed by this vengeance she has for her father and when we see her she’s in a very haggard and worn out state. It’s this big final confrontation with her father and Laurel gets caught in the crossfire, and the Canary has to go in to the rescue. It’s this fun episode because you get a lot of Laurel with the Canary, not realizing that it’s Sara. You get a great sister episode in that sense. The Canary is all too eager to kill the Huntress to protect Laurel.”
The series is going through a lot of changes this season as the core group that knows about Oliver is expanded and that’s providing for some real shakeups in how the core group is handling it, including Oliver. “[Episodes] 14, 17 and 18 deal a lot with different ramifications of not just Roy but Team Arrow,” Guggenheim says. “14 really deals with what is Felicity’s reaction to Sara, the new member of Team Arrow now that Sara’s back in town. What does that mean for Team Arrow and what does that mean for Felicity? What does it mean for Oliver and Felicity? It’s a very Felicity-centric episode.”
And in case anyone has forgotten her since she hasn’t been around, Isobel Rochev (Summer Glau) is set to return as well. “Isobel will return in episode 18 and we’ll find out what she’s been up to.” For those curious of potential spoilers, check out the comics history of the character here and you can see the path she’s likely on.
One of the coolest things that “Arrow” does as a series is drop easter egg hints to huge DC comics lore, like when Amanda Waller approached the Bronze Tiger in prison to tell him she’s forming a “squad,” and Kreisberg reveals that wasn’t just a throwaway line.
“Episode 16 is called ‘Suicide Squad.’ And it’s about the Suicide Squad,” Kreisberg says. “Dig was our way into Amanda Waller and in this episode Amanda comes to Dig and Lyla and she basically recruits Dig for a mission and tells him he’s going to need a team. She saddles him with the Suicide Squad including Floyd Lawton.”
The episode is going to be Diggle-centric, right down to the flashbacks. “In episode 16, the flashbacks will be told from Diggle’s perspective in Afghanistan,” says Guggenheim, adding that we will see him save the life of a warlord named Golam Kadir, the story he referenced last season. “I was completely bowled over by how excited people were [by the Suicide Squad mention].”
And as for Oliver’s home life, things took a turn for the downright icy when Oliver told his mother that besides keeping up appearances for Thea’s sake, he no longer had a mother. “The cold war between Oliver and Moira is not going to go unnoticed by anyone,” Kreisberg says.
Does that mean Thea will come to know the truth — i.e. that her father is actually Malcolm Merlyn? “There is a great scene between Oliver and Thea about this in episode 17,” says Guggenheim. “There is so much in the Queen family that is affected by the amount of lies. There is just lies all over the place in this whole family. Almost every episode post this one deals with the ramifications of all those lies. How do you have a family, even, when it’s based on lies?”
At least Oliver’s love life is stress-free, right? Wrong. “That’s actually part of the journey of these next five episodes,” Kreisberg says of Oliver and Sara’s rekindled relationship. “Oliver has not had many successful relationships and part of he and Sara moving forward is, is this something that can work given that my last relationship was with an international assassin and Oliver’s last relationships were with the Huntress and McKenna who got shot by the Huntress and Laurel, and that didn’t work out so well.”
[Source: Zap2It]