Timelines collided this season on Arrow when Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) was unexpectedly reunited with his now-adult children William (Ben Lewis) and Mia (Katherine McNamara) not in their future but in his present — 2019. While the reunion was a happy one for Oliver and William, Mia struggled with suddenly having the opportunity to know her long-dead (in her timeline) father. However, in the upcoming episode, “Prochnost,” Oliver and his children will head to Russia in search of a weapon that can stop The Monitor and according to McNamara the experience there will have significant impact on Mia’s relationship with her father.
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Speaking with Entertainment Weekly, McNamara explained that Russia will offer Mia an avenue to better understand her father by getting a look at the darker side of his history, a history that he might not want his kids to really know.
“Well, if there’s anything we know about Mia, she thrives on a seedy environment — and Mia loves Russia. She takes to it like a fish to water,” McNamara said. “It’s fascinating to her. For Oliver, as any parent would, he wants to protect his kids from learning about the dark side of his past, and he quickly learns that’s a lot more difficult than he expects. That becomes a huge challenge for them, but it gives Mia an opportunity to understand her father a bit more and to really see the difficult choices that have been put in front of him his entire time being the Green Arrow.”
“I think it allows her to come to terms a little bit more with the decisions that he’s made and with her blaming him for abandoning her, in a sense, to be this hero,” she continued. “She’s slowly starting to see his perspective a bit more, just as he’s starting to see hers. They bond in a sense because they start to realize how similar they are.”
Part of that similarity may include fighting together, something that is teased in previews for the episode and when it comes to fighting in “Prochnost”, McNamara told TV Line that she did the majority of her own fighting — and leaned on some of her training from Shadowhunters for it.
“Well, I think in this episode I do the majority of my own fighting,” McNamara said. “There was one piece which had a couple of aerial tricks where I, you know, don’t have that skill set, but the rest of the actual fighting I was able to do in this episode, and I absolutely love that. I take every opportunity to do that when I can. That all comes from Shadowhunters — I had incredible stunt coordinators on that who trained me extensively and took advantage of my long legs and made sure I was a kicker and made sure I could use these skills not only for that job but for future jobs as well. That has served me very well here, and I’m so thankful for that Arrow stunt team, as well, because they’ve given me the opportunity to use my skill set. It’s been a great partnership throughout.”
Arrow airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on The CW.
