Arrow‘s original ending was meant to show Oliver Queen inspiring Batman. Marc Guggenheim helped create the show and he visited the Fake Nerd Podcast to talk about the series. The Consulting Producer is coming off a huge year with both the conclusion of the show and Crisis on Infinite Earths. That shot of the porto-Hall of Justice with Oliver’s chair there still hits you right in the gut. But, the true tribute that Green Arrow left behind is the heroes that he influenced with his presence and his words. Originally that would have included the Dark Knight.
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“I’ll tell you the way I originally planned on it ending. You’ll certainly see how this is different and why it’s different. I always saw the show ending with Oliver’s death, but Oliver’s death in the actual finale,” Guggenheim began. “Then I kind of had a little bit of a fantasy that Oliver would die and you’d end with some sort of news broadcast talking about his legacy and that would sort of become the voice over.”
“And then you would go to this rooftop in a whole other city, and on the cut a thug or some bad guy would crash into the frame, having been punched off-screen,” he added. “And these pair of black boots would come down right in front of him and there’d be a flutter of a scalloped cape and the voice over would say something along the lines of, ‘Oliver Queen inspired a whole new generation of vigilantes.’ The implication being, of course, that he inspired Batman. So that, of course, didn’t happen for a variety of different reasons — not the least of which is Batwoman came along — but that was my original conception.”
There was a ton of pressure for the finale of Arrow to live up to expectations. But Guggenheim also said that he was thankful that it wasn’t a Game of Thrones-type situation heading into the last episodes.
“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 said in a previous interview. 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.”
How would you have reacted to Batman being in the Arrow finale? Let us know in the comments!
