According to TVLine, Oliver Queen saved not only Starling City but also the CW network. In recent interview with The Showrunner Whisperer podcast, co-creator and showrunner of Arrow Marc Guggenheim (Green Lantern, Carnival Row) revealed many details about the series on the network. Marc Guggenheim (Green Lantern, Carnival Row) revealed many details about the series on the network. He revealed that after the Stephen Amell (Calamity Jane, The Flash)-led series gained a pilot order at The CW, Warner Bros. TV chairman Peter Roth (Riverdale) “took us out to lunch and laid out for us in incredible detail the reality that if Arrow wasn’t a hit, there would be no more CW… Now we also have the pressure of keeping the whole network on the air.”
Guggenheim also remembers that it was not an easy sell when it originally debuted. He said, “We were trying to do a superhero show in a way that had never been done before. The closest thing to it at the time was the WB/CW’s Superman origin story Smallville. But Arrow was nothing like Smallville. It was much grittier, it was much darker, it had a lot more action… That made it challenging.”
With the network now pivoting away from scripted series Guggenheim looks back on those days that may never come again. He said, “I don’t think we could do Arrow today… I don’t think we could have done it with the amount of leeway and creative freedom that we had. It was a very special, unique time in the business.”
Arrow and all series, in the Arrowverse are available to stream on either Netflix or Max.