Arrow Showrunner Looks Back on Series With Season 7 Behind-The-Scenes Photo

On Tuesday night, Oliver Queen’s mission to save Star City and those he loves finally comes to a definitive end. After eight seasons, Arrow will air its series finale, but as with any ending it’s natural to take a look back. To that end, Arrow showrunner Beth Schwartz took to social media to share a look behind-the-scenes at Arrow Season 7 by offering up a photo of her handwritten notes for one of the season’s scenes, offering a glimpse of the process that went into making the series.

In the post, Schwartz shares notes from what appears to be a scene from when Oliver was incarcerated at Slabside – there are mentions of both Daniel Brickwell/Brick and Stanley Dover on the page – in which she details various ideas and questions about how to make the episode work better.

“Random notes from Arrow season 7,” Schwartz writes in a caption. “Apologies for my terrible handwriting!”

Schwartz isn’t the only one reflecting on Arrow as it comes to an end. Series co-creator Marc Guggenheim is as well and that includes discussing how they came up with Arrow’s ending. In a recent interview with ComicBook.com, Guggenheim spoke about the challenges of ending the series with Oliver Queen already dead and revealed the plan was in place for over a year.

“It definitely made it more of a challenge, let’s put it that way. It definitely required a different kind of finale,” Guggenheim said. “The good news is that we’ve had this plan in place for over a year, so that’s a long time to think about something. It’s a long time to come up with ideas and sort of stress-test ideas. We just embraced the idea that this would be a more of an epilogue, more of a coda type of finale, than a finale where everything blows up or a major storyline is resolved.”

“There’s a bunch of different ways to end a show,” he added. “This is probably one of the more unconventional ways, because we presented ourselves with an unconventional challenge.”

It also isn’t just those directly involved with Arrow taking a moment to reflect on not just Arrow but the legacy the show leaves behind. Supergirl star Melissa Benoist recently spoke with TV Guide about how Arrow’s end will take some time to get used to, especially with series star Stephen Amell no longer a part of it.

“Stephen started all of this,” Benoist said. “And the legacy he’s leaving is pretty incredible. You know, we almost have our own Justice League on television, and the universe is massive and he was always at the helm. So it’ll be different without him and an adjustment without him there and without all the Arrow people there.”

A one-hour retrospective on Arrow called Hitting the Bullseye airs Tuesday January 28th at 8PM ET. The finale begins right after at 9PM on The CW.