Major spoilers came out earlier this week about the upcoming Arrowverse crossover episode, and those spoilers are a potential game-changer for Arrow — but executive producer Marc Guggenheim told ComicBook.com last week that going to war with paparazzi and fans is a losing battle.
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Last week, Guggenheim took a break from shooting the epic, four-show crossover set to hit The CW in late November to speak with ComicBook.com about tonight’s season premiere of Arrow.
At that point, we did not know what was going to happen during the crossover to change the trajectory of the series, but season 5 ended on a cliffhanger that implied most of the cast was dead.
“I think we’ve gotten very good at avoiding talking about spoilers,” Guggenheim said. “The thing is, if you read all the interviews Wendy and I have given over the last six months, we’ve slipped up a few times.”
Guggenheim said that while he would obviously rather not “slip up,” he has talked with other producers and with The CW about the problem and decided that such mistakes are not the end of the world.
“Going into season six, we only have so much energy and bandwidth to dedicate towards the preserving its surprises,” Guggenheim admitted. “That’s not to say that we don’t care about surprises — we totally do, and we’re always trying. There’s stuff coming up to season where we’re taking people’s names out of credits, we’re issuing false script pages, we’re issuing false casting breakdowns. We’re still doing our thing to try to keep the surprises intact, but it’s a little hard to do. I also think that we live in a world where if you really, truly, desperately want to know something, there are means of finding out. And if you want to not be spoiled…well that’s a lot easier.”
Arrow‘s first wave of surprises will be revealed later tonight. The show airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.