Marc Guggenheim Says He Tried For Years to Get Smallville’s Justin Hartley on Arrow

Over the years, fans of The CW’s Arrowverse have gotten to enjoy a number of fun cameo appearances, many of them being from actors from other DC properties, but one appearance fans of Arrow hoped to see over the show’s eight seasons never happened. Smallville‘s Green Arrow Justin Hartley never appeared on the series despite fan demand. While Hartley’s Green Arrow costume did make a brief appearance that was the extent of things and now, Arrow co-creator Marc Guggenheim explains it’s not for lack of trying.

In a recent appearance on Fake Nerd Podcast, Guggenheim spoke about trying to get Hartley on Arrow for years, ultimately settling for being able to use the costume, albeit with some pretty strict rules around even that.

“I’ll tell you, Justin is someone that I’ve been trying to get on Arrow for years,” Guggenheim said. “I did send down the request, ‘Could we borrow the costume from the archives?’ They said yes, but they said yes with a lot of caveats, not the least of which is, ‘No one can wear it,’ and ‘You can’t get it dirty.’ So we put it on a dummy, so thereby we satisfied that loophole, and as far as not getting it dirty, hopefully whoever at the archives provided it to us never actually saw that episode.”

Hartley’s Smallville Green Arrow costume made its appearance in the lead up to 2018 “Elseworlds” crossover. In a stinger scene at the end of Supergirl’s “Bunker Hill”, viewers were taken to a decimated Earth-90 where the earth itself was scorched and littered with the bodies of familiar DC heroes strewn all over the landscape. Among those dead heroes and identifiable elements of their costumes was the Smallville Green Arrow costume, appearing to lie face down near the remains of Hawkgirl and Hakwman.

While fans never got more in terms of that version of Green Arrow, they did end up with more Smallville nods, especially in “Crisis on Infinite Earths” which actually saw Tom Welling briefly reprise his role as Clark Kent of Earth-167, living a happy, quiet life on the farm with his wife, Erica Durance’s Lois Lane enjoying a normal life with his family — a life in which he gave up his powers just to be a happy husband and father.

All eight seasons of Arrow is now streaming on Netflix.

What do you think about Guggenheim having tried to get Hartley on Arrow for years? Let us know in the comments below.