‘Arrow’ Star Stephen Amell Breaks Down the “Unique” Action-Packed Prison Episode

This week’s episode of Arrow, “The Slabside Redemption,” was and exciting one for fans of The CW series and not just because Stephen Amell‘s Oliver Queen walked out of the titular prison a free man at the end. The episode was one of the most action-packed yet, and Amell revealed to fans a bit about just what made it so unique.

In an appearance at Heroes and Villains Fan Fest in San Jose on Saturday, Amell told fans that one of the major differences about the episode, from a behind-the-scenes perspective, was the script itself.

“Normally when a script comes in, like I just read the script for episode 7×13, it came in at 58 pages,” Amell said. “A lot of that is screen direction. This script came in at I think 29, 30 pages because normally the stage direction is very specific to how the fights and action sequences happen. In this one the stage direction just said, ‘James make a cool fight’ and went back to the dialogue.”

A “cool fight” may have been the barest of direction, but it’s exactly what the episode delivered. The episode featured one of director and stunt coordinator James Bamford‘s trademark long, action-packed single-take shots, specifically one pushing Oliver up the stairs while fighting back to back with his surprising ally Bronze Tiger (Michael Jai White) the whole way. Scenes like that were, in part, what made the episode stand apart from other episodes of Arrow, something Bamford himself elaborated on in a recent interview.

“The episode itself is a stand-alone episode, so it’s not really a cookie cutter episode,” Bamford said. “I should actually go back a year, and the episode was actually born out of a conversation Marc Guggenheim and I had. He was like, ‘you know what we should do? We should do a whole episode that has like three words and the rest of it is just action beats.’ I was like ‘Yeah, that’s what we should do. It should be like a silent film. The rest of it should be action like Buster Keaton. I’ll do you one better; it should be like Birdman, the whole episode should be a oner.’ He goes, ‘Yeah, let’s do that, yeah.’ And then he kind of stepped back. So 707 came along and turned out to be Beth and Rebecca writing it, and we started discussing what the original aspirations were — a giant oner with no words that was just carnage and murder and mayhem and vigilantism. It turned into what you guys saw. They asked me right off the bat, ‘how much screen direction do you want?’ I said, ‘well, just tell me the story you need to tell — the beginning, the middle, the end, any details you want specifically — and I’ll fill in the rest of the blanks.’”

Bamford’s approach appears to have paid off. “The Slabside Redemption” had the biggest audience since the session premiere according to TV Line and, has been well-received by fans. Amell told some of those fans at Heroes and Villains that he hopes they can do more episodes like it — format-wise — in the future.

“It was a very unique episode for us, I hope that the response we’ve gotten to it, which has been very heart warming and rewarding for a show that’s as far in as we are, I hope they look at that and we look at more episodes similar, may be where it’s two people in a room, like a one-act play or something that’s off typical format,” Amell said.

What did you think about “The Slabside Redemption”? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

Arrow airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET. on The CW.