Fan Expo Canada: Arrow Sneak Peek and Cast Q&A

I’m cautiously optimistic about Arrow. The pilot is not so great but it makes me really want to love the show it could turn out to be. It’s clunky and suffers from the typical burden of carrying too much exposition that pilots have. A lot of the wit is quick sharp, they spoil the ending of Lost and the past five Super Bowls so if you’ve been living in a cave until now… too damn bad. The show hasn’t really found a balance between that sense of humour and the revenge, action, super hero story quite yet. It certainly helps that the cast is very good looking, the audience seemed to appreciate the gratuitous topless workout montage featuring Stephen Amell.

Going forward I hope the show finds a good rhythm, continues some of the nice banter between the characters but balances out some of the more over the top brooding and treats it’s female characters with more agency than we see in the pilot.

Arrow stars Stephen Amell (Oliver Queen), Colin Donnell (Tommy Merlyn), Willa Holland (Thea Queen) and Katie Cassidy (Dinah ‘Laurel’ Lance) were on hand for a brief Q & A following the screening. Here are a few tidbits we gathered:

• Yes, the city name has been changed from “Star City” to “Starling City” however other cities from the DC Universe will be mentioned by name in the sixth episode
• In the episodes so far (through 6) there have been 5 characters from the DC universe introduced
• A Question comes in from the audience for Stephen Amell who plays Oliver Queen/Green Arrow regarding his archery training for the role. Amell explains that he had rigorous training to get the form exactly right. He knows that  comic book and genre fans are incredibly nit-picky, archers will be just as or more so. He tells us that there is a word they use for bad archery in film, it’s “Legolasing”
• *Note from the John Barrowman Q&A when asked if he was going to appear nude on Arrow he replied, “I’ve got love handles I’ve got to get rid of but Steve, Oliver Queen, he’s got like a 52pac and it’s awesome! It’s in my contract that he has to be naked every time he’s around me, he doesn’t know that yet.”

Arrow premieres Wednesday October 10th at 8pm on CTV Two.

(feature image credit: promo image from CTV)