Heels, the wrestling drama from Arrow star Stephen Amell, is coming to Netflix this fall. Showrunner Mike O’Malley is hoping that the show can generate enough buzz on the platform to get some more episodes — something that happened with Suits, the USA Network series with a new spinoff starring Amell. While the TV space is awash in streaming platforms, it really is just Netflix that has an audience big enough to realistically revive shows from the dead, and both fans of the short-lived Starz series and the creatives involved are hoping that can happen as the show finds a whole new audience.
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It can’t hurt that the series will now share a space with WWE Raw. Certainly there’s likely to be at least some audience crossover — and Arrow and other CW series have always done well on the streamer. Heels arrives on Netflix on Sunday, September 15th, while WWE Raw will be making Netflix its home beginning in January 2025.
Heels is a small-town sports drama series based on a wrestling league in rural Georgia, The series is named after the wrestling term for a villain or antagonist. Most stories center around heroes vs. villains, but in wrestling, it’s faces vs. heels. Season two of the series brings fans back to the family-owned wrestling organization, Duffy Wrestling League (DWL), where brothers and rivals, Jack (Stephen Amell, “Arrow”) and Ace Spade (Alexander Ludwig, “Vikings”), continue to fight over their late father’s legacy and their individual versions of success, while also working to find their own identity as a “face” or a “heel.” The show invokes feelings of nostalgia akin to “Friday Night Lights,” while covering topics like the effects of trauma on communities, finding personal identity, and women taking the lead in every facet. It is centered around a small-town community where everyone knows each other and everyone in town follows the saga of the Heels and Faces in the DWL.
Heels showrunner and executive producer Mike O’Malley (Survivor’s Remorse, Shameless) also portrays Charlie Gully on the series. Michael Waldron (Loki, Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Rick and Morty) is the show creator. Christopher Donnelly (By Sidney Lumet), Pete Segal (Get Smart, 50 First Dates, Tommy Boy, Shameless), Patrick Walmsley (JT LeRoy), and Julie Yorn (Hell or High Water, White Boy Rick) also serve as executive producers on the series. Heels is produced through O’Malley Ink and LBI Entertainment in association with Lionsgate Television for STARZ.
