In a recent interview with Comicbook Resources, executive producer Marc Guggenheim talked about next season of Arrow and the upcoming new show, Legends of Tomorrow. He described the tone of the show being similar to that of The Flash, in that it will be fun for the whole family.
Guggenheim also discussed Arrow moving closer to its comic book roots.
“I think, actually, this does go back to your tonal question, which is, [“Arrow”] was always conceived of as an origin show. We always said, “we’re doing ‘Arrow,’ not ‘Green Arrow.'” And that each year, whether it was depressing and dark or light and hopeful, we were always progressing Oliver’s character towards becoming the Green Arrow, the superhero, as opposed to “The Hood” of season one, who was a dark — basically, a serial killer. So, I think season four really shows you where we always thought we were heading. There will even be, I think, stuff this weekend that people will find out that will excite them along those lines.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BukuN8lIg-c
Guggenheim also talked about the casting of Neal McDonough as Arrow’s next major villain, Damien Darhk.
“We’re doing something we’ve never done before, which is really exciting … We’ve always done a big bad, as everyone who watches [“Arrow”] knows, but that big bad typically gets introduced in the middle of the season. We’re coming out of the gate with our big bad, and we’re coming out strong. You know, right from jump you’re going to see that [Damien Darhk] is not to be messed with. And we’re not hiding him in the shadows. We’re not keeping him off the board, waiting for the mid-season finale. We’re coming in guns blazing. He’s coming in guns blazing. And it’s awesome because we knew we wanted to start off the year, again, with our big bad, but we didn’t have a great actor ’til Neal said yes. … You can write the greatest villain in the world — unless you have an actor who embodies it and is capable of pulling off that material, it’s all hypothetical. So, Neal’s amazing, Damien is… very, very different from any kind of villain we’ve had on the show before. He’s sort of got the malevolence of Ra’s al Ghul combined with the twinkle in his eye of John Barrowman’s Malcolm Merlyn, with a bit of the sick, twistedness of Slade Wilson. He’s his own animal, and just, quite frankly, so much fun to write.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hHXiUy8Y00
