On the heels of a very well received (and highly rated !) crossover with The Flash last week, Arrow is airing its midseason finale Wednesday night. It’s another big episode, as Oliver Queen will come face to face with Ra’s al Ghul for the first time.

I spoke to Arrow’s executive producer/showrunner Marc Guggenheim about the midseason finale, Ra’s al Ghul’s role, the continuing potential of Ray Palmer to become The Atom, Laurel’s transformation into Black Canary and more.

Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen and Matt Nable as Ra's al Ghu in Arrow.

Loading

His immediate reaction is “I’ve got to go Christmas shopping.” He’s not taking it too seriously. No, I’m kidding. It’s definitely a bit of a punch to the gut and a bit of a wake up call. Nyssa will sort of point out that Oliver’s focus has been split. He’s been so focused on protecting the city that she accuses him essentially of taking his eye off the ball as far as finding Sara’s killer is concerned. I think there’s an argument to be made that that’s a very fair accusation. That said, there’s some things we’ve put in motion in the first eight episodes that will come back to pay off. Certainly, STAR Labs’ analysis of the DNA on the arrow. Do not be surprised if you see that pay off in episode nine.Yes. That was 100% intentional. That’s our little nod to the Neal Adams Batman Ra’s comic story from the 70s. Obviously, when people mention Ra’s, just because the Chris Nolan films, they think of Batman Begins. But certainly one of our touchstones has been those original Batman stories. So the shirtless duels are a staple of that. One of the other things is usually it’s a shirtless duel in the desert and you know we shoot in Vancouver so that wasn’t really -- there was no way to do that in a way that would look good so we leaned into the strengths of Vancouver, which are some pretty remarkable vistas.I think so. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything to say that Ra’s is pretty damn good when it comes to using a sword. But we sort of made Ra’s… Ra’s is a very formidable figure. We’ve been keying that up basically for over a season now so seeing him fight, it had to live up to the hype as it were. I think Oliver is going to find he’s going to potentially get a little more than he bargained for.You know, certainly that’s within her wheelhouse. I guess you’ve got to sort of ask yourself what are the odds that she ends up working with two super heroes? I don’t want to spoil too much beyond that but we’ll also be dealing with the fallout from their kiss in 3x07.I’m starting to see pieces of it. I’m literally getting pieces of it emailed to me, photographs of it. So it’s coming. Slowly but surely. You’ll get a little bit more of a sense of it with episode nine.We have a master plan as far as Ray Palmer’s concerned and I haven’t even had the chance to discuss the master plan with Brandon so I certainly don’t want him reading about it on the internet. But we have a plan that we’re really, really excited about. I hope in the next week or so to actually have a chance to talk Brandon through it and let him know what we have up our sleeve and I’ll leave it at that.

Continue to Page 2 as Guggenheim discusses Laurel’s path, Brick, Diggle, Roy and more.