Arrow Producer Teases the Show’s “Endgame” With New Behind-the-Scenes Look at Oliver’s Statue

Arrow aired its penultimate episode ever on Tuesday night, and it clued fans in on what shape the show’s post-“Crisis” future is going to take. Now that Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) has sacrificed himself in order to save the multiverse, the show’s tapestry of other heroes are continuing to live on in his wake — and we got an endearing look at that tonight, with the “Green Arrow and the Canaries” backdoor pilot. Spoilers for this week’s episode of Arrow, “Green Arrow and the Canaries”, below! Only look if you want to know! The episode’s final moments saw Mia Queen (Katherine McNamara) and William Clayton-Queen (Ben Lewis) standing in Star City, in front of a statue that was erected in Oliver’s memory. A new series of photos from consulting producer Marc Guggenheim show how that statue was constructed, including Amell standing in 360-degree cameras to create the statue.

“It’s what I want,” Amell said of Oliver’s ending this past August. “I pitched it for a very long time. It’s what I want, but concurrently, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t surprises along the way. I was floored when I got the pitch for the crossover. I don’t see it coming — nobody sees it coming. It’s going to be so rad.”

“The good news is unlike Game of Thrones or unlike Lost, were not burdened with having to answer a question,” Guggenheim told ComicBook.com last summer. “We’re not burdened with ‘who’s going to sit on the Iron Throne?’ or “what was the island?’ so we get to do, I think, a much more character-based ending. So, at the same time, the complication for us is that we also have Crisis and I think a lot of the stuff that was always in my head in terms of how to end the show we’re now actually going to end up doing in the crossover instead so it’s like now what does the series finale become? But, you know, we’ve got plans.”

“I’m really excited about it. The goal is to make it satisfying for the fans, but the good news for us is we don’t have the challenges that Lost, or Game of Thrones had,” he continued. We also don’t have the ratings, so there’s that, too. But I feel the pain of Damon, Benioff, and Weiss. It’s hard. It’s a hard thing to do in a way that satisfies everyone. I also think, because I’ve been thinking how does one end a series, there’s what the initial reaction to something is and then there’s how it stands the test of time and those two things are not always the same.”

Arrow‘s series finale will air Tuesday, January 28th, beginning at 8/7c on The CW.