Stephen Amell Admits ARROW Flashbacks Were Crafted On The Fly, Talks Flash-Forward Possibilities

While discussing the future of Arrow with Entertainment Weekly, star Stephen Amell also addressed the show's maligned flashbacks and how the concept didn't pan out the way they thought it would...

When Arrow first debuted on the CW in 2012, the show set up a story structure that told Oliver Queen's story in the present while flashing back to his time on the island of Lian-Yu. As the seasons went on, it was revealed that the narrative of "five years on an island" was a little misleading, as Oliver had actually been to Hong Kong, Russia, and even his home of Starling City in that span of time. While the current season of the show plans to conclude the flashbacks and show how Oliver got back to the island, many fans have grown weary of a storytelling device that seems directionless.



In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, star Stephen Amell addressed the possibilties of how Arrow may attempt to tackle or reinvigorate the "flashes" in future seasons, especially since there will be no more flashbacks. "I am open and excited about any possible idea, whether that’s a simple flash-forward narrative that we carry through the season, which I think we did to varying degrees of success in season 4. If that means that simply the flashbacks do not exist anymore and it allows us to expand the universe in terms of focusing more on other people’s backstories, not even necessarily flashbacks of people’s home life, just their life outside of the Arrow cave, I think that’s interesting. We can do that because, quite simply, we have more time, we have more pages, we have more chance for dialogue."



Amell also admitted to the fact that the team behind Arrow never coherently planned Oliver's five-year story on the island, leading to the team to craft it as they went along, with the actor citing that as the "nature" of television shows. "I think that the key to a story like that is that — look, Green Arrow was obviously pitched as a five-year origin story, but we’re breaking the flashback story as we go along. There’s always an overarching plan, but it generally has to go season to season. Like, I don’t think we knew at the beginning of the season that at the end of season 2, Oliver would end up in Hong Kong. We don’t necessarily know that stuff, and that’s just the nature of episodic television in 23 episodes a year."



Amell did conclude that if a flash-forward (or similar device) were to be used, it would have to be properly planned out to avoid the issues they ran into with the flashbacks. "I think that the critical element, if we ever did something like a flash-forward, would be to make sure that we understood the precise beginning point and end point of that story and all the things that went into it, because I think that if we try to piecemeal it together, especially because it’s a flash-forward, that it just wouldn’t work."



Do you want to see flashforwards on Arrow, or would you rather the show just abandon the concept entirely? Let us know in the comments!

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