Oliver Queen’s fate in the midseason finale of “Arrow” will open up a void to be filled with more superheroes and villains.
Executive producers Marc Guggenheim, Greg Berlanti and Andrew Kreisberg led a packed panel at the Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena on Friday, and discussed even more costumed characters hitting Starling City.
“We always said in Season 3 there would be more costumed characters populating Staring City,” said Guggenheim. “Oliver Queen had a plan, but he never envisioned all these people being part of that plan, he thought he would be a solo act. Part of this season has been seeing this crusade go beyond him. It ties into everything we have planned for Season 3.”
One of the new costumed superheroes showing up will be Katie Cassidy, who’s been a series regular since the first season, but who will be donning the moniker of Black Canary for the first time. It’s been a long time coming going back all the way to the comics, but the journey for Cassidy’s Laurel Lance has taken some turns, not the least of which is giving the alter ego of the Canary to her sister, Sara Lance (Caity Lotz).
Sara’s death at the beginning of Season 3 served as the biggest catalyst for Laurel discovering her inner superhero, finally.
“I’ve been waiting for this to happen and I’m obviously very excited and thrilled about it,” Cassidy said. “They told me this is where the character was going before we even shot the pilot. But every character has to go through a journey and you can’t just become a superhero. In Season 2, [Laurel] definitely hit rock bottom and then she lost her sister. She’s going from avenging her sister, to honoring her sister to becoming her sister.”
Brandon Routh‘s Ray Palmer, a new addition to the show, is another character set to suit up with a superhero alter-ego, the DC comic book character Atom. The Atom hasn’t even appeared on screen yet, but producers already see him as a potential leading man for his own spinoff series.
“We have a very general idea,” Berlanti said of a potential Atom spinoff series. More spinoff series set in the DC superhero universe is certainly something the network is actively pursuing, according to President Mark Pedowitz.
There is even the potential for cross-network universe expansion, with CBS recently picking up a “Supergirl” series from Berlanti and Kreisberg, but the producers are cautious to temper expectations of crossovers in the vein of “Arrow” and “The Flash.”
“There’s potential for the two universes to intersect,” teased Kreisberg. “But right now, they are very much their own things.”