Stephen Amell’s Oliver Queen is the cornerstone of The CW’s DC Comics Arrowverse television universe. But what if he was transported into the Marvel Cinematic Universe? According to Amell, Oliver would have some unexpected friends and enemies.
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As much as Oliver is the cornerstone of the Arrowverse, Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man has been the cornerstone of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Downey made his exit earlier this year in Avengers: Endgame, playing Tony Stark’s death scene. Amell is set to say goodbye in Arrow‘s eighth and final season later this year. Despite those parallels, Amell thinks Oliver would resent Tony Stark rather than find a friend in him.
“Well he would hate Tony Stark because of blinding jealousy,” Amell said during a panel at Fan Expo Boston in August. So who would Oliver be friends with? “I don’t know, who would be his best friend? Maybe he’d kind of dig Thanos…He’s the hero of his own story.”
The panel’s moderator suggested Spider-Man may be a good friend for Ollie. At first, Amell suggested Oliver “would be annoyed by his boyish enthusiasm,” but when the moderator compared Peter Parker to Barry Allen, Amell admitted it was a “good comparison.”
In a recent Facebook Live video, Amell reflected on the upcoming end of Arrow. He admits he thought the show should have with its seventh season the departure of co-star Emily Bett Rickards, but he’s happy to return for 10 more episodes and to participate in the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover.
“I think that we’ve had our running time,” Amell said. “That’s what I thought when I talked with Greg Berlanti in Season 6. I felt like we had done our thing. I thought ultimately theoretically Season 7 should’ve ended things. But to come back and do 10 episodes … what they’ve done with this final season is really cool. It’s like nothing you guys have ever seen. Every episode that comes out, it’s like ‘Wait a minute, what? It’s happening what and where and how? Ok, that’s cool. Let’s do it!’”
Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim spoke to ComicBook.com at San Diego Comic-Con. He said that the decision to end Arrow with Season 8 is one that came together “organically.”
“Once you start staring down the barrel of a Season 8 these conversations just quite frankly start to happen organically, and you know Stephen [Amell] was at the end of his deal and it’s like ‘what are we going to do? How long are we going to do this for?’ And for my money, I felt it was time, you know, and I think Greg [Berlanti] felt that way, I think Stephen felt that way,” Guggenheim said. “I think we all sort of collectively came to the same conclusion which is let’s go out on a high note. People are still talking about the show, which is hard in its eighth season of any show. People are still talking about it and then it becomes production budgetary things that really gets you into the tall grass but for me I felt like let’s end the show when we can still produce the show that we have all come to know and love and not try to change the show to make it work when it otherwise can’t.”
What do you think of Amell’s choices of friends and enemies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe? Let us know in the comments.
Arrow returns for its eighth and final season on Tuesday, October 15th at 9 p.m. ET on The CW. “Crisis on Infinite Earths” comes to the Arrowverse this December.
