Stephen Amell Wants ‘Arrow’ Season 7 Written as If There Might Not Be a Season 8

Arrow has been gracing television screens for over half a decade now, but it sounds like the The CW series could have a new approach going into Season 7.

Stephen Amell, who stars as Oliver Queen/Green Arrow on the series, recently spoke about the new season in an interview with The Music Australia. As Amell explained, Arrow‘s recent change of showrunners has prompted a new sort of “write like there’s no tomorrow” outlook in the writers’ room.

“We have a new showrunner this year, Beth Schwartz, who’s been with the show since season one.” Amell explained. “[The writers] have a very clear vision of what they want season seven to be, and what I asked them to do – and it’s not up to me – but what I asked of them is to not just assume that we have an eighth season. I wanted them to write like, ‘If you have a good idea, and you have something you’ve always wanted to do or see on the show, then just do it! Do it right now!’”

“I think that’s one of the things I’m getting out of what they’ve planned for season seven – we’re not writing like we’re guaranteed something beyond this, because we’re not; nobody is.” Amell continued. “I want them to really push forward and take the fact we have a certain license and a certain respect from the fans to take some chances.”

And according to Amell, that desire to take some chances could have some interesting positive or negative responses from the show’s fanbase, something that he welcomes to an extent.

“Obviously, you want to lean into things that you think fans would want, right?” Amell suggested. “Concurrently, I’m all for things that make fans mad, because mad is no different than happy. The only thing that I don’t want is indifference. I always joke with fans about my alter-ego, Evil Story Steve. If you were to tell me, you know, that four people died in the season premiere of Arrow in season seven, I’d be very sad … but my alter-ego, Evil Story Steve, would be like, ‘Oh – that’s very exciting; why’d that happen?’”

“So, I think that making fans happy, clearly, is what you wanna do when you’re on a show in general because you want people to keep watching, as long as you’re not afraid to lean into things that may make them go, ‘But why would you do that? I hate that. That’s awful,’ because that’s not actually what they mean. If someone screams out on Twitter, ‘I’m gonna stop watching the show!’ they’re probably not gonna stop watching the show, you know what I mean?”

Are you excited to see what’s in store for Arrow‘s seventh season? Let us know what you think in the comments below.

Arrow‘s seventh season will debut Mondays this fall at 9/8c, following brand new episodes of Legends of Tomorrow.