Stephen Amell Celebrates Ten Years of Arrow in Video From Warner Bros. Lot

By Russ Burlingame

Yesterday marked the tenth anniversary of Arrow's premiere on The CW, and to celebrate, series star Stephen Amell took to social media to celebrate -- and to wander around the Warner Bros. lot talking about the show's importance to his life and crashing a studio tour. Hanging out near the Warner Bros. water tower, he sought out an Arrow costume that's on display...only to find the door locked. No, it wasn't badly planned; it just wasn't exactly an official Arrow event, since he was on the lot to record ADR for Heels. But he clearly enjoyed hanging out with some fans and looking back on Arrow, which he called the most important thing he has done in his professional career.

Arrow launched on October 10, 2012, led by Amell as Oliver Queen; John Barrowman as Malcolm Merlyn; David Ramsey as John Diggle; and Willa Holland as Thea Queen. A few weeks later, an actor hired for a quick walk-on role would steal all of her scenes, and Emily Bett Rickards's Felicity Smoak would become a fixture on the series for the rest of its eight-season run.

You can see it below.

In the series, Oliver Queen is a billionaire playboy, who is cheating on his girlfriend, Laurel (Katie Cassidy), with her sister, Sara (Jacqueline MacInnes Wood). Oliver and go on a cruise with Oliver's dad on the family yacht, only for the ship to wreck. In their final moments together on a lifeboat, Oliver's father (Jamey Sheridan) confesses to a litany of sins before taking his own life to save his son's. Reaching shore all alone, with his father dead and Sara presumed dead, Oliver finds himself stranded on the island of Lian Yu and forced to learn to live off the land.

Luckily -- or unluckily? Honestly, it's really hard to say -- Oliver isn't alone on the island. A young woman named Shado takes him under her wing and, with the help of her father Yao Fei Gulong (Byron Mann), they teach Oliver archery and self-defense, unknowingly preparing him to be the spark that lights a flame no one could possibly have imagined. After Oliver returned to Starling City, he became "The Hood," a hooded vigilante working his way down a kill list made up of his corrupt father's old business contacts.

(Yeah, his superhero identity needed some workshopping.)

In the seven seasons that followed, Arrow acted as the backbone of a shared universe of DC Comics adaptations including The Flash, Supergirl, DC's Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning, and Batwoman. But Arrow was more than just a breeding ground for crossovers; the series gave fans what many argue is the best live-action interpretation of Deathstroke, a fan-favorite villain who has shown up in the movies and on Titans. It made Ra's al Ghul (played in the series by Matt Nable) a villain who had ties to the whole DC universe, rather than just Batman. It gave Vigilante (later seen on Peacemaker) his live-action debut, and successfully pulled off one of the best surprise twists in the history of live-action superheroes with the Prometheus (Josh Segarra) reveal, which led to arguably the best cliffhanger in the genre at the end of Arrow season five. With Legends of Tomorrow and Arrow's eighth season, the show set the stage for a future generation of DC heroes, and throughout the Arrowverse, marginalized groups who didn't usually see themselves represented in superhero media, found a voice.

Arrow had its ups and downs, but remained popular throughout, and sparked a shared universe of superhero storytelling that will be difficult to match. With about 450 hours of TV created so far (not including Superman & Lois, or the final season of The Flash), what started as a show about a guy with a bow and arrow, eventually spiraled out to become a massive world filled with dozens of superheroes and villains, many of whom had never been seen in live-action before. Arrow changed the way superheroes are viewed on TV, and popularized characters like Felicity Smoak and Wild Dog, who had been essentially afterthoughts in the comics for years.  

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