"ARROW" Nueva serie de la CW para TV basada en Green Arrow

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- Arrow | 4.18 "Eleven-Fifty-Nine" Promo | The CW:

- Arrow | 4.18 "Eleven-Fifty-Nine" Extended Promo | The CW:

- Arrow | 4.18 "Eleven-Fifty-Nine" Extended Producers Preview | The CW:

- Arrow | 4.18 "Eleven-Fifty-Nine" Clip #1 | The CW:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJHWWnMT_pM


- Arrow | 4.18 "Eleven-Fifty-Nine" Clip #2 | The CW:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YiOjdlIjRE


- Arrow | 4.18 "Eleven-Fifty-Nine" Clip #3 | The CW:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp8Z8l9MMz4

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- Stills del 4.18 "Eleven-Fifty-Nine":

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- Reveladoras imágenes bts del rodaje parecen confirmar el destino de 'Laurel' (31-03-16):



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- Productores de "Arrow" hablan sobre la muerte de esta temporada:

El miércoles se revelará finalmente en "Arrow" quién está en la tumba.

Aunque los productores Marc Guggenheim y Wendy Mericle prometen que la muerte no será fingida, dicen que no necesariamenmte significa que la persona fallecida no aparezca de nuevo, ya sea via el Lazarus Pit, universos paralelos o el viaje en el tiempo.

"La muerte no es un adiós," le dice Guggenheim a los periodistas en un screening para la prensa este Lunes. "Definitivamente reconocemos que en todas nuestras tres series [Arrow, The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow] que cuando matamos a un personaje, significa algo diferente ahora. No voy a hacer un juicio equitativo de si es más o menos impactante... Pero ciertamente, sabemos que hay una diferencia. Y Arrow, mucho más que Flash o Legends, trafica con la muerte. Para lo bueno y para lo malo, la muerte es parte de la serie. Lo que estamos encontrando, a medida que empujamos hacia la Season 5, es que la serie tiene que evolucionar; tiene que cambiar. Y el concepto de la muerte está evolucionando y cambiando, como ya hemos visto con Sara Lance."

"Diré que los episodios que hemos escrito como secuela son devastadores y están destinados a ello. Queríamos explorar eso y realmente tener a todo el mundo que sienta el impacto de esta pérdida," dice Mericle. "Cambia el juego de manera muy triste ya que perdemos a un personaje querido, pero también en el sentido en que grandes movimientos como éste abrirá nuevas vías de historias y obligará a n uestros personajes a volver a pensar sus decisiones y volver a pensar en sus objetivos."

Como seguramente ya sabéis, las fotos obtenidas por lo paparazzi apuntan a que la muerte es de Laurel Lance y muchos son los fans que ya han manifestado su opinión en contra al respecto. Guggenheim intenta justificar su decisión diciendo que es la que "les da un mayor empuje al final de la temporada y en la próxima temporada":

"Siempre hicimos saber el hecho de que estamos contando nuestra propia versión del mito de Green Arrow. Green Arrow ha tenido tantas interpretaciones diferentes a lo largo de los años que nunca sentimos obligados a una interpretación en particular, y esta es nuestra interpretación, te guste o no, y reconozco que hay mucha gente en mi Twitter a quienes no les gusta. Respeto eso totalmente."

Guggenheim dice que "Nunca se ha tratado de una o dos bases de fans en particular. Tomamos decisiones creativas que sentimos que benefician a la serie en conjunto, y la historia que estamos intentando contar en general."


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- El ocupante de la tumba de Arrow habla (EW):

El ocupante de la tumba de Arrow habla
Por Natalie Abrams 06 Abril 2016 — 9:00 PM EDT

Warning: This story contains major spoilers from Wednesday’s episode of Arrow. Read at your own risk!

Even if you knew it was coming, the death that came at the end of Wednesday’s episode of Arrow was no less impactful.

After fans waited months to discover who was in the grave, Arrow ultimately revealed that Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) met a grim fate at the hands of Damien Darhk (Neal McDonough), who had previously vowed harm on the Black Canary should Detective Lance (Paul Blackthorne) fail to stay in line. (More on how it went down here.)

“It made sense to me creatively,” Cassidy says. “Laurel’s story has come to an end in the Arrow-verse.” Therefore, the actress, an original cast member on the CW super show, is no longer a series regular — though it’s certainly not the last we’ve seen of her. Ahead of the shocking reveal, executive producer Marc Guggenheim teased that Cassidy will appear on both The Flash and Vixen. But she’ll also return to Arrow as early as the next new episode via flashbacks.

For her part, Cassidy discovered that her character was on the chopping block while filming the courtroom scenes, where Laurel is attempting to take down Damien Darhk the legal way. “I remember I was like, ‘Okay, I need to put this on the back burner for now because I had a huge day of all legal jargon,’ ” Cassidy says, admitting the emotional moment with Team Arrow in the hospital required very little acting. “Honestly that scene was so real shooting it because it was me saying goodbye to the team and all of us. Definitely wasn’t difficult for me to get to that emotional point. For sure, it was hard, but it was very real. I felt like that was good. It was genuine and it was real.”

Though that wasn’t the site of Cassidy’s swan song. “The last scene I think I shot was we had to do a reshoot actually of when I actually die, when Darhk stabs the Black Canary,” Cassidy says, revealing she kept a Black Canary jacket and mask as keepsakes. “That was a week after. That was the very last scene that we shot. It was so weird because I remember we had broken for lunch, we came back and I was running to set and I was putting on my jacket and gloves and they were just calling me to set to show-wrap me. I didn’t know that I was done. It was a bit of a shock. But it was good. I feel like there was no other way that I would want it to go.”

“I love everyone on set,” Cassidy continues. “I love our crew. Being there for four and a half years, they’ve become family. It’s hard to not go into work every day and get to work with such amazing people. That part is certainly sad. Again, I was okay with it. We all came to an understanding that this was what was going to happen. I think the shock value is good. It’s such a jolt and such a turn in the story that it gives the [writers] so much more to do and places to go with it. Otherwise I feel like shows can get stale.”

It was that lack of stagnation that kept Cassidy excited about the character over the years. “At the end of season 2 going into 3 when I put the jacket on for the first time, that moment was something,” Cassidy says. “I still get a little choked up talking about it because I was so excited. I remember trying on the jacket; I had been waiting for that moment. I think that for me was the turning point. Obviously season 2, my character had a really hard time. As an actor, the writers were writing so brilliantly, it was great to be able to take on that challenge and go there and then hit rock bottom and come back on top. Also, being in training and fight-training and getting to be a strong female character who’s also out there kicking some ass too was definitely something that was cool and I had a blast doing it.”

With that in mind, Cassidy hopes we’ll see more of Laurel — in one incarnation or another — in the future. “As they know, I love working with them,” she says. “I’m always happy to come play with them if they time-travel or what not. To me, Laurel was always such a good person and had such a good heart and was a fighter. For her to be remembered, I think her being remembered that way is definitely important to me.”


http://www.ew.com/article/2016/04/06/ar ... ie-cassidy?

- Jefes de Arrow explican la impactante muerte (EW):

Jefes de Arrow explican la impactante muerte
Por Natalie Abrams 06 Abril 2016 — 9:00 PM EDT

Warning: This story contains major spoilers from Wednesday’s episode of Arrow. Read at your own risk!

Team Arrow said goodbye to one of their own on Wednesday. Take a deep breath and find out how it happened …

After receiving a job offer to become the new D.A., Laurel (Katie Cassidy) decided to hang up her black leather jacket as the Black Canary — that is, until Damien Darhk (Neal McDonough) initiated a prison riot to draw Team Arrow in so he could get the last piece of the idol from Andy Diggle, who had betrayed his brother. With Damien’s magical powers restored, the big bad made good on his promise to the traitorous Detective Lance (Paul Blackthorne) by killing Laurel. And therein lies which character is in the grave. Why Laurel? At a recent press screening, executive producers Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle, along with costar Blackthorne, answered what we assume are all of your burning questions right now. (Read our postmortem with Cassidy here.)

But seriously, why Laurel?

“Obviously Arrow is always a show that’s evolving,” Guggenheim says. “It’s always a show where every character, arguably except for the Arrow, is fair game. We started off this year with the promise of a death and when we worked our way through our various different creative choices, we realized that the thing that will give us the most pop going into the end of the season and into next season unfortunately would be Laurel.”

Was she killed because some of the fanbase doesn’t like Laurel?

“When I say it gives us a lot of pop I don’t mean on the Internet or publicity, I mean creatively for the show,” Guggenheim says. “Every time we’ve killed off a character on the show, it’s really been for the effect it has on all the characters left behind. I don’t want to spoil the end of season 4 or what we have planned for season 5, which we’re already in the room working on, but the way we always describe it is the creative math. How divisive Laurel is as a character on Twitter is not a factor. Truth be told, Twitter is a very specific sub-segment. The number of people who don’t like Laurel is probably an infinitesimally small group, so it’s not, as they say, statistically relevant.”

Are you ready for the Internet backlash after killing Laurel?

“We knew that it would enrage a lot of people,” Guggenheim says. “We’re not immune to the ‘shipping and we’re not immune to the Internet controversy — when I say immune, we’re not blind to it. We’ve never made decisions on the show creatively because of the Internet.”

But shouldn’t Oliver and Laurel be endgame?

“One of the things we knew people would think was, ‘Oh, well, in the season where Oliver and Felicity get engaged and Laurel dies, that’s clearly making a choice about who’s going to end up with who,” Guggenheim says. “Truth be told, we told the Laurel-Oliver romance story in season 1. We told that story. We never really thought about going back to it. The ‘shipping thing was not an element, it was not a factor to us. We recognize that that upsets a lot of fans, particularly the comic book fans.”

Yeah! Oliver and Laurel end up together in the comics! What gives?

“In the comics, Dinah Lance and Oliver Queen, depending on which version of the character you like, are in a romance together in various iterations,” Guggenheim says. “That, to some people, is considered canonical and iconic, and we respect that, but at the same time we’ve always made no bones about the fact that we are telling our own version of the Green Arrow mythos. The Green Arrow has had so many different interpretations, and Black Canary has had so many different interpretations over the years, that we never felt beholden to one particular interpretation. This is our interpretation, like it or not, and I recognize there are plenty of people up and down my Twitter feed who do not like it. I totally respect that. But it made the most creative sense for us going forward despite the fact that we love Katie, absolutely love Katie.”

So could Laurel come back to life?

“Not getting a chance to work with Katie day in and day out is tempered by the fact that we now live in a universe where there’s resurrection, parallel earths, time travel, flashbacks — we have all these different ways of keeping Katie in the Arrow-verse family,” Guggenheim says. “In fact, you will see her on an episode of Flash playing the Earth-2 version of Laurel Lance. Katie is reprising her role as Laurel of Earth-1 to be in Vixen season 2. Death does not mean goodbye on any of these shows, but we made a creative choice and we’re sticking to it. We’re recognizing that Black Canary and Laurel have an incredibly loyal fanbase, and Katie has an incredibly loyal fanbase, but the show has never been just about the comic book history, it’s never been just about one or two different particular fanbases. We make the creative choices we feel benefit the show as a whole and the story that we’re telling overall.”

But by bringing her back on other shows, doesn’t that cheapen Laurel’s death?

“We definitely recognize across all three shows that when we kill off a character, it means something different now,” Guggenheim says. “I’m not going to put a qualitative judgment on whether it’s more or less impactful. I’ll leave that to the audience, but certainly we acknowledge there’s a difference. Arrow, much more so than Flash or Legends, it traffics in death. We started off the series of the apparent death of Sara Lance and the actual death of Robert Queen and a hero who murdered people. For better or for worse, death is part of the show. What we’re finding is that death now, as it should by the way, when you start to get where we are pushing into season 5, the show has to evolve, it has to change. The concept of death on this show is evolving and changing as we’ve already seen with Sara Lance, and with seeing Laurel in a parallel universe. There’s a world where we do an episode where Oliver Queen meets the Laurel Lance of Earth-2. That’s now on the table. Time travel is now on the table. As the show has evolved, so has death.”

She’s definitely dead though, right? Because Laurel makes Oliver promise her something and then she suddenly codes.

“It’s funny, that’s the joke I’ve been making quite frankly: Oliver Queen killed her,” Guggenheim says. “Certainly what did Laurel say to Oliver [is a mystery], but we didn’t intend for it to be like she asked Oliver to euthanize her.”

Okay, so he didn’t help Laurel fake her own death?

“No,” Guggenheim says. “We’ve done a fake death before. That’s the thing, we’re always trying to figure out, ‘What’s a way to do this?’ That fake-out where she was okay and then she wasn’t was our attempt: How do we do a death that we haven’t done before? [It’s a] creative challenge, the deeper you get into your story. It’s the nature of having a long-running show that deals as a major component of it with death.”

Then what did Laurel tell Oliver?

“You’ll know in season 5,” Mericle chimes in.

How will Team Arrow deal with Laurel’s death?

“It’s going to be huge and significant,” Mericle says. “In terms of our process for making the decision, you can judge the impact by how important Laurel was to the universe we’ve created. There’s no question that it is going to be shocking. It was a shocking thing for us to process and to write the aftermath. We really wanted to make sure we did it in a way that was really honorable and gave us space to honor all the characters’ various reactions to it. The episodes that we’ve written in the aftermath are devastating and they’re meant to be. That’s what we wanted. We wanted to explore that and to really have everybody feel the impact of this loss, because it is significant.”

Will Laurel’s death bring Felicity back to the team?

“It will definitely have a huge impact on her character,” Mericle says. “If you think about Felicity and what she would do in the wake of something like this, I leave you to draw your own conclusions. You’ll find out in [episode] 19. Everyone is going to be compelled to try to fix this, figure out what happened and get revenge on the people who did it.”

Is Laurel’s death, as they say on TV, a game-changer?

“We do feel like it is a game-changer in a very sad way that we’re losing a beloved character, but also in the sense that big moves like this will open up new storytelling avenues and will force our characters to rethink their decisions and their objectives,” Mericle says. “Death is a reality. With the Lazarus Pit and the possibility of coming back, it’s easy, in some ways, to forget that our characters are vigilantes. They’re out on the street, they’re doing really dangerous things. What this does is it really brings that reality back in a very rude and brutal way. It’s good for the audience to be reminded of that and for our characters as well.”

Does the team feel guilty about Laurel’s death?

“Here’s the thing, we’ve already heard Oliver say in the flash-forward from 401, ‘In the past, I would’ve blamed myself,’ ” Guggenheim says. “It’s still Oliver, there’s an element of that. Diggle especially, like he says in that hospital, he’ll never forgive himself. The biggest consequences emotionally are felt by Thea and by Diggle. Obviously Oliver, Felicity and Lance are having their own reactions, but Diggle, you can draw a straight-ish line from his decisions in this episode to Laurel’s death and that’s certainly a fact that’s not lost on him.”

How will Lance handle losing yet another one of his daughters?!

“This death is just devastating for Lance, because this is not the one that was ever supposed to happen,” Blackthorne says. “Personally, I was almost as devastated as Lance, to be honest, with the news of this happening, because Katie and I have had such an amazing working relationship that it actually really is hard to accept. In terms of Quentin, he’s going to have to pick up the pieces, not pick up a bottle, and reconcile what’s left in his life. With that, he’s got the Arrow family. That’ll be where he’ll have to find his anchor now from here on in without his beautiful daughter. In terms of fantastic story, as awful as it is that Black Canary is a sacrifice, in terms of stories, it’s like wham! It’s an amazing turn to throw at the audience. People aren’t expecting it and it’s fantastic.”

Will Sara Lance find out that Laurel is dead?

“Sara will find out in Legends [of Tomorrow] about what happened with Laurel,” Guggenheim says. “We give it its due. I feel like we give it its due. We’ve always said on Legends we were not going to shy away from this development as far as Sara’s character is concerned. Paul was very gracious to lend his time to Legends to really allow us to explore that.”

Is anyone in denial over Laurel’s death?

“Oh, episode 19,” Guggenheim says.

Is the title of Black Canary up for grabs and we could see someone new in that role in the future?

“I don’t know that I would say up for grabs,” Guggenheim says. “I think it’s a mantle that multiple people have had. We’ll play with that notion in episode 19. I personally like the idea that DC Comics, all the comics, they all have the concept of legacy. We’ve seen on Legends that someone picks up Oliver Queen’s mantle, for example. We’re in that world, but we lean into it pretty strongly in 19. That doesn’t always mean that the person is a hero. [Episode] 19 is the answer to that question.”


http://www.ew.com/article/2016/04/06/ar ... h-spoilers?

- Showrunners, y estrellas de Arrow hablan sobre cómo este personaje terminó en la tumba (CBR):

Showrunners, y estrellas de Arrow hablan sobre cómo este personaje terminó en la tumba
Por Scott Huver, 06 Abril 2016

SPOILER WARNING: The following feature contains MAJOR spoilers regarding the outcome of tonight's "Arrow's" episode, "Eleven-Fifty-Nine."


Cue up the anguished Hall & Oates anthem: she's gone.

After spending the bulk of the season broadly hinting at the impending death of a major character closely connected to Team Arrow, tonight's episode of "Arrow" revealed just whose fight for justice is officially over: Laurel Lance, AKA The Black Canary. After it initially seemed as though she would cheat death, Laurel became the unexpected victim of Damien Darhk's vengeance, suddenly and shockingly succumbing to her injuries. Before her dying breath she confessed to Oliver Queen that, to the very end, she viewed him as the love of her life.

And if the producers of The CW hit are to be believed, there'll be no Lazarus Pit resurrection or time-traveling reset button in Laurel's future.

A contingent of the behind-the-scenes counterpart of Team Arrow assembled before the press to deliver the news -- including Laurel's off-screen alter ego, actor Katie Cassidy, and her oft-tortured on-screen papa, actor Paul Blackthorne, as well as Executive Producers and co-showrunners Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle. They eulogized the latest fatality to wear the costume of Black Canary and explained at length how hard her loss will hit the Team Arrow and the greater Arrowverse.

Story continues below

On why it felt time to say goodbye to Laurel Lance:

Marc Guggenheim: Obviously, "Arrow" is always a show that's evolving. It's always a show where every character, arguably except for The Arrow, is fair game. We started off this year with the promise of a death, and we worked our way through our various different creative choices, we realized that the thing that will give us the most pop, going into the end of the season and into next season, unfortunately would be Laurel.

By the way, we knew that it would enrage a lot of people. We're not immune to the 'shipping, and we're not immune to the internet controversy. When I say immune, we're not blind to it. But we've never made decisions on the show, creatively, because of the internet. One of the things we knew people were going to think was, "In the season where Oliver and Felicity get engaged and Laurel dies, that's clearly making a choice about who's going to end up with who."

And truth be told, we told the Laurel-Oliver romance story in Season One. We told that story, and we never really thought about going back to it. So, the 'shipping thing was not an element. It was not a factor for us. And we recognize that that upsets a lot of fans, particularly the comic book fans. In the comics, Dinah Lance and Oliver Queen, depending on which version of the character you like, are in a romance together, in various iterations. That, to some people, is considered canonical and iconic, and we respect that.

But at the same time, we've always made no bones about the fact that we are telling our own version of the Green Arrow mythos. The Green Arrow has had so many different interpretations, and Black Canary has had so many different interpretations, over the years, that we never felt beholden to one particular interpretation. This is our interpretation, like it or not, and I recognize that there are plenty of people, up and down my Twitter feed, who do not like it, and I totally respect that. It just made the most creative sense for us, going forward, despite the fact that we absolutely love Katie [Cassidy].

Not getting a chance to work with Katie, day in and day out, is tempered by the fact that we now live in a universe where there's resurrection, parallel Earths, time travel and flashbacks. We have all these different ways of keeping Katie in the Arrow-verse family. In fact, you will see her on an episode of "The Flash," playing the Earth-2 version of Laurel Lance. Katie is reprising her role as Laurel in Earth-1 to be in "Vixen" Season Two. Death does not mean goodbye, on any of these shows, but we've made a creative choice and we're sticking to it.

We recognize that Black Canary and Laurel have an incredibly loyal fan base, and Katie has an incredibly loyal fan base, but the show has never been just about the comic book history or just about one or two particular fan bases. We make the creative choices we feel benefit the show as a whole, and the story that we're telling overall.

On how Cassidy was able to make peace with letting Laurel go:

Katie Cassidy: From a creative standpoint, I think the writers -- and I've always said that since Season Two, up until now, Laurel has had truly an amazing journey and they've written so well for me. I've had such an incredible arc. It makes sense to me, creatively, that we've told Laurel's story; it has come to an end in the Arrowverse.

It's television, and I always say anything can happen. It made sense to me. I love everyone on set, I love our crew. Being there for four-and-a-half years, they've become family; it's hard to not go into work every day and to work with such amazing people. That part is certainly sad. Again, I was okay with it, and we all came to an understanding that this was going to happen. It made sense to me.

I think the shock value is good. I think being producers and writers and being in the writers' room, I think it definitely gives you so much -- it's such a jolt. It's such a turn in the story. It gives them so much to do, and places to go with it. Otherwise shows can get stale.

Paul Blackthorne: And that's what the writers are kind of masters of, as well. Every act is some kind of weird, crazy, "Where the hell did that come from?" thing. From one episode to one season, to culminating in moments like this, that's what makes the show watchable isn't it? You just never know what's coming next. And this is the mother of all "never know what's coming next."

Guggenheim: I did want to say what a class act Katie is, but I think it's pretty obvious. She's such a pro, and coming to work every day after we had this discussion, and giving 120 percent, and being gracious, and sweet and a joy to collaborate with. It's hard for us. Even though we're not up in Vancouver, we got to work with her in our own way, and we're constantly on the phone or texting back and forth. We'll miss doing that, as I like to say, on a regular basis. Like I said earlier, dead is not goodbye. We're still working together.

On Cassidy's emotional last days on set:

Cassidy: I found out that this was the choice, creatively, that was going to be made and obviously I talked to Marc and Greg [Berlanti] and Wendy and I actually had found out right before the court scenes -- that day we shot in the court. Which was hard. I remember I was like, "Okay, I need to put this on the back burner for now," because I had a huge day of all legal jargon. But it actually worked out really well because in the next episode, 19, I'm actually in the episode and it's a lot of flashbacks.

And emotionally it's interesting because that scene that you see when I'm in the hospital and I say goodbye, I say to the team, "I never wanted this, I was thinking of giving up the Black Canary and I couldn't do it." Honestly, that scene was definitely so real, shooting it, because it was my saying goodbye to the team and all of us, and so it definitely wasn't difficult for me to get to that emotional point. For sure it was hard, but it was very real and it was good, it was genuine.

And then the last scene I think I shot was... we had to do a reshoot, actually, of when I actually die, when Darhk stabs the Black Canary, and that was a week after, I think? That was the very last scene that we shot, and it was so weird because I remember we had broken for lunch, we came back -- I was running to set and putting on my jacket and my gloves and they were just calling me to set to show wrap me, and I didn't know I was done and it was just sort of a bit of a shock. But it was good, I feel like there was no other way I would want it to go.

Blackthorne: When you find out news like this, it's rather annoying and very devastating and all the rest of it -- you're going to lose a cast member such as Katie, but at the same time, it was such a shock, certainly to me and I think to everybody, when the news came out, that you're thinking 'God, we're right in the middle of this thing and it was shocking. What's it gonna be to the audience?''

And in terms of fantastic story, as awful as it is that Black Canary's the sacrifice, it's like wham -- and if that's not what story's about, then what is it about? So in terms of the element of this story, it's an amazing turn to throw at the audience and people aren't expecting it, and it's fantastic. If it shocked us that much, what's it going to do to the audience? It's great story.

On Quentin Lance's reaction to the loss of another of his daughters:

Blackthorne: From a character point of view, Quentin's point of view is almost like that of the audience's going, "What the hell is going on around here?" This year, there's all the outrageousness with the magic and all that stuff. He can't really take it on as a reality, but if this is the result of what's going on, then he has to deal with it. He can't really accept it, but he has to accept that it is happening.

And with these deaths, with Sara's reprisal through magic and the Lazarus Pit, while it's all a bit for Quentin to reconcile as something that could truly be happening, it is happening, therefore he'll deal with it. We started things off with Sara being "dead." So, there's always been a world of, "Sara's dead," and then, "Oh, but she's back," and then, "Sara's dead again," and then, "Oh, my god, she's back again," but it was always based in her being dead, since we began.

This death, of course, is just devastating for Lance because this is not the one that was ever supposed to happen. How could this be on the books? Personally, I was almost as devastated as Lance, to be honest, with the news of this happening. Katie and I have had such an amazing working relationship that it really is hard to accept that I'm going to be going to work without [her] to work with. That, as an aside, is slightly annoying.

But in terms of Quentin, he's going to have to pick up the pieces, not pick up a bottle, and reconcile what's left in his life. With that, he's got the Arrow family. That will be where he'll have to find his anchor now, from here on in, without his beautiful daughter.

On the emotional aftermath for the rest of Team Arrow:

Wendy Mericle: Well, it's going to be huge and significant, and in terms of our process for making the decision you can kind of judge the impact by how important that character was, how important Laurel was to the universe we created. And there's no question that it is going to be shocking, and it was a shocking thing to us to kind of process and to write the aftermath. We really wanted to ensure that we did it in a way that was very honorable, and that gave us space to honor all of the characters' various reactions to it.

And I will say that the episodes that we've written in the aftermath, they're devastating, and they're meant to be. And that's what we wanted. We wanted to explore that and to have everybody feel the impact of this loss. Because it is significant and we do feel that it is a game-changer -- in a very sad way, in that we're losing a very beloved character; but also in the sense that unfortunately big moves like this will open up new storytelling avenues and will force our characters to re-think their decisions and to rethink their objectives.

Guggenheim: I think Diggle -- the guilt factor -- we've already heard Oliver say, in the flash forward from 401, we've already had Oliver say 'In the past I would've blamed myself.' And it's still Oliver: there's an element of that. Like Paul said, that's also part of the show. Secrets, guilt, death, and that's our secret formula. But Diggle especially. Like he says in that hospital, he'll never forgive himself.

And I would say the biggest consequences emotionally are felt by Thea and by Diggle. And of course, Oliver, Felicity and Lance, everyone's having their own reactions, but Diggle -- you can draw a straight-ish line from his decisions in this episode to Laurel's death. And that's certainly a fact that's not lost on him.

Mericle: I can tell you this that it will definitely have a big impact on Felicity, and that if you think about Felicity and what she would do in the wake of something like this, I leave you to draw your own conclusions. You'll find out in 19, but everyone is going to be compelled to try to fix this and figure out what happened and get revenge on the people who did it.

On the permanence of Laurel's death in DC's TV universe:

Guggenheim: I think the thing we've recognized ever since the Lazarus Pit, parallel universes, etc., etc., we definitely recognize, across all three shows, that when we kill off a character, it means something different now. I'm not gonna put a qualitative judgment on whether it is more or less impactful, I'll leave that to the audience and to you guys, but certainly we acknowledge that there's a difference.

And I think "Arrow," much more so than "Flash" or "Legends" for a lot of reasons, it traffics in death. We start off the series with the apparent death of Sara Lance and the actual death of Robert Queen, and a hero that murdered people. For better or for worse, death is part of the show. What we're finding is that death now -- and as it should when you start to get, as we are, pushing into Season Five -- the show has to evolve, it has to change, and the concept of death on the show is evolving and changing, as we've already seen with Sara Lance and we've already seen with seeing Laurel in a parallel universe.

There's a world where we do an episode where Oliver Queen meets the Laurel Lance of Earth-2 -- that's now on the table. Time travel is now on the table. As the show has evolved, so has death, and I'll leave it to you guys to decide if death is more or less impactful as a result.

Mericle: With the Lazarus Pit and the possibilities of coming back, it's easy in some ways to forget that our characters are vigilantes, they're out on the street doing really dangerous things, and what this does is it really brings that reality back in a very kind of rude and brutal way. And I think that it's good for the audience to be reminded of that, and for our characters as well.

On whether Sara Lance will learn of her sister's death on "Legends of Tomorrow":

Sara will find out in "Legends" about what happened with Laurel, and I think we give it its due. I'm looking at Paul to see if I'm lying, but I feel like we give it its due. And what we said on "Legends," like, we were not going to shy away from this development, as far as Sara's character is concerned, and Paul was very gracious to lend his time to "Legends" to really allow us to explore that.

On those mysteriously unrevealed final moments between Laurel and Oliver:

Guggenheim: That's the joke I've been making: Oliver Queen killed her! But again, there are certain coins of the realm on our show. Death is one of them. Mysteries and secrets are another. Certainly, what did Laurel say to Oliver? But we didn't intend for it to be like, "She asked Oliver to euthanize her."

We've done a fake death before. And that's the thing: we're always trying to figure out what's the way to do this. That fake-out where she was okay and then she wasn't, was again, our attempt -- how do we do a death we haven't done before? We've had people killed right in front of Oliver, we've faked a death, we've had someone be fatally injured and then Oliver arrives on the scene.

"The Walking Dead" has this problem, too -- I shouldn't say "a problem," a creative challenge, the deeper you get into your story -- "Game of Thrones," also. I don't know what's going to happen with Jon Snow, but that is also probably going to change things. It's the nature of having a long running show that deals, with a major component of it, with death.

Mericle: You'll know [what happened between them] in Season Five.

On whether sometimes derisive fan reaction to Laurel factored into her exit:

Guggenheim: Let me be clear: when I say this gives us a lot of pop, I don't mean on the internet or publicity. I mean creatively for the show. Every time we've killed off a character on the show, it's really been for the effect it has on all the characters left behind.

I don't want to spoil the end of Season Four or what we have planned for Season Five -- which we're already in the room working on -- but how divisive, quote-unquote, Laurel is as a character on Twitter, that's not a factor. And truth be told, Twitter is a very specific sub-segment. And the number of people who don't like Laurel, it's probably a [very small] group. It's not statistically relevant.

On whether the title and costume of Black Canary is again up for grabs:

Guggenheim: I don't know if I'd say "up for grabs." I haven't even had a chance to discuss this with Wendy or with Greg [Berlanti]. Like you said, it's a mantle that multiple people have had. We'll play with that notion in Episode 19.

I personally like the idea that in DC Comics, all the comics, they all have the concept of legacy in them. We've seen on "Legends" that someone picks up Oliver Queen's mantle, for example. We're in that world but we lean into it and I think we lean into it pretty strongly in [Episode] 19 but that doesn't always mean that the person is a hero. 19 is the answer to that question.

On Cassidy's most memorable moments playing Laurel Lance:

Cassidy: I think at the end of Season Two, going into Three, when I put the jacket on for the first time. I mean, that moment was like... something.

I still get choked up talking about it because I was so excited. I remember trying on the jacket and I'd been waiting for that moment and I think that, for me, was sort of the turning point and obviously season two my character had a really hard time. I think, as an actor, I think the writers were writing so brilliantly and I think it was great to take on that challenge and go there, hit rock bottom and then come back on top.

I think the end of Season Two, going into Season Three, and all of Season Three, even up to Season Four, up to now, every day going there, I was excited to be there and happy to be there. Also, being in the training and fight training and getting to be a strong female character who is also out there kicking some ass, too, was definitely something that was cool and I had a blast, too.

I asked for the jacket and mask and I didn't think they would let me have it but, yes, I got to keep the Black Canary jacket and mask.

On the hoped-for legacy of Laurel Lance:

Cassidy: It's still something I still feel so close to, this character. Obviously for the last four years it's been a character that's very close to me, and also, as we said, I go onto "The Flash" and I am on Earth 2 as the Black Siren -- as they know, I love working with them and always happy to come play with them, if they have time travel and whatnot. I think to me, Laurel was always such a good person and had such a good heart and was a fighter, and for her being remembered that way is definitely important to me.

Guggenheim: Just to further that, someone had pointed out to me that "Arrow," unlike the other shows, when we published the DVD boxes, it doesn't say Green Arrow and Speedy and Spartan and Black Canary. It says Oliver and Diggle and Thea and Laurel. On this show, we really always start with who these characters are before they put on the mask.

I think Katie has always so embodied Laurel that even when she's wearing the mask you think, that's Laurel Lance, this good person who is doing good things. She just changes up her methodology for how to make the world a better place. Laurel Lance, always trying to save the world.

Cassidy: Always trying to save the world!


http://www.comicbookresources.com/artic ... -the-grave

- Estrella de Arrow dice que la muerte de Laurel es un shock y que la emocional escena de la despedida final fue ' muy real' (TVLine):

Estrella de Arrow dice que la muerte de Laurel es un shock y que la emocional escena de la despedida final fue 'muy real'
Por Vlada Gelman / 06 Abril 2016, 6:01 PM PDT

Warning: The following contains major spoilers for Wednesday’s Arrow.

The CW’s Arrow said goodbye to a member of the team during Wednesday night’s episode, and the departing castmember was on board with the deadly twist.

“I was OK with it,” Katie Cassidy said during a recent press screening of the game-changing hour, which found Laurel being stabbed by Damien Darhk and later flatlining at the hospital. “We all sort of came to an understanding that this is what was going to happen, and it made sense to me.”

“The shock value is good” and gives the writers’ room “a jolt,” she continued. “It’s such a turn in the story that it gives them so much more to do and places to go with it. Otherwise, I feel like shows can get stale.” (Click here to read executive producer Marc Guggenheim’s explanation for the decision.)

To be sure, Cassidy got her own jolt when she learned that it would be Laurel in that flash-forward grave from the Season 4 opener. “I actually had found out right before [shooting] the court scenes” in the episode “Broken Hearts,” the actress recalled. “I just was like, ‘OK, I need to put this on the backburner for now,’ because I had a huge day of all legal jargon.”

Then came the tough task of filming the lawyer/superhero’s heartbreaking final moments. “That scene when I’m in the hospital and I say goodbye [and] I say to the team, ‘I never wanted this. I was thinking of giving up the Black Canary. I can do it,’ it was so real shooting it,” Cassidy shared, “because it was my saying goodbye to the team and all of us. So it definitely wasn’t difficult for me to get to that emotional point.” As “hard” as it was to deal with the overwhelming feelings in that exchange, “I felt like that was good,” she added. “It was genuine, and it was real.”

Looking back at her time on the CW series, “Since Season 2 up until now, Laurel has had a truly amazing journey,” Cassidy said. “They’ve written so well for me, and I’ve had such an incredible arc.”

Given her love of playing a comic book crimefighter come to life, it’s no surprise that Cassidy says that trying on the Black Canary jacket — which she got to keep, along with the mask — was one of her most memorable moments on the show. “I still get a little choked up talking about it because I was so excited,” she shared. “I’d been waiting for that moment. That, for me, was sort of the turning point. My character had a really hard time [in Season 2]. As an actor, the writers were writing so brilliantly, and it was great to be able to take on that challenge and go there and then hit rock bottom and come back on top.

“Also, fight training and getting to be a strong female character who’s also out there kicking some ass was something that was cool,” she continued, “and I had a blast doing it.”

Cassidy will also miss the camaraderie of the job. “I love everyone on set, I love our crew,” she said. “Being there for four-and-a-half years, they’ve become family, so it’s hard not to get to go into work everyday and get to work with such amazing people. That part is certainly sad.”

It’s lucky then that death isn’t necessarily the end for an actor in the Arrowverse: Cassidy appears via flashbacks in Episode 19 and later this spring will play Earth-Two’s Laurel, aka Black Siren, on The Flash, in addition to lending her voice to Vixen Season 2.

“In the future, you never know what can happen,” Cassidy admitted. “As they know, I’m always happy to come play with them if they time travel and whatnot.”

As for Laurel’s legacy, it’s “definitely important” to the actress that her character be remembered as someone who “was always such a good person and had such a good heart and was a fighter.”



http://tvline.com/2016/04/06/katie-cass ... interview/

- Jefe de Arrow aclara el aire sobre la muerte y la reacción de la estrella, y se prepara para una ¡bastante fuerte' respuesta de los fans (TVLine):

Jefe de Arrow aclara el aire sobre la muerte y la reacción de la estrella, y se prepara para una ¡bastante fuerte' respuesta de los fans
Por Matt Webb Mitovich / 06 Abril 2016, 6:01 PM PDT

Warning: The following contains major spoilers for Wednesday’s Arrow.

Damien Dahrk has made his point, in brutal fashion.

Speaking 1-on-1 with TVLine, Arrow showrunner Marc Guggenheim says that the eventual decision of who to put in the flash-forward mystery grave was born out of a desire to “move the show forward” in a way that impacts as many characters as possible.

So, as Team Arrow set out to thwart Damien Darhk’s Malcolm Merlyn-assisted prison break, it was Laurel Lance aka Black Canary — played by original cast member Katie Cassidy — who found herself on the business end of an arrow, with Darhk twisting it into her gut for good measure. Later, at the hospital, the would-be DA succumbed to her wound, though not before bidding Oliver and others an emotional farewell.

TVLine spoke with Guggenheim about the decision process that led to Laurel’s tragic demise, having that “hard conversation” with original cast member Cassidy, and which team members will be particularly affected by the loss. Plus: Who’s the new girl in town?

TVLINE | Eighty-seven episodes and out for Miss Katie Cassidy. This was a big one, man. I even got verklempt talking about it to someone the other day.
Yeah. This was big. I think it’s fair to say, without any disrespect to any of the other actors we’ve killed off — and lord knows there’s probably enough to spin off another show! — this is clearly theArrow-Laurel-Dies-Katie-Cassidy biggest one we’ve done.

TVLINE | What were the arguments for and against the death being Laurel?
The argument against it was the fact that we all love Katie. We love working with Katie, we love having her on the show. We love the fact that she plays Black Canary. [Another reason is] quite frankly the fact that there would be some corners of the Internet who in a season where Oliver got engaged to Felicity would interpret this as us choosing a side in the “shipper wars.” With respect to that last point, we felt like we had told the Oliver/Laurel love story in Season 1, and we had no intention of getting them back together. We never felt like we had to kill off Laurel to put an end to that story.

TVLINE | Right, and you did give them some really nice callbacks this season. They had some talks that they needed to have.
I think so, too. A lot of those talks were written before we even made the decision [to kill Laurel]. When we went into the season, we really went in with an eye towards repairing the Oliver/Laurel relationship and moving them into a “friend” place — and a “good friend” place. ArrowThose little moments weren’t to lay the foundation for a death we didn’t know was coming. Rather, as with the beginning of any season, we start off with a list of things we want to accomplish, and one of those things was to move Oliver and Laurel to a new, more healthy place. I was very glad we got a chance to do that. The scenes were very, very effective.

The reason to [kill Laurel off] is it is big. It is bold. It does move the show forward. It does impact all of our characters. Diggle and Thea in particular will be making a lot of choices from now until the end of the season that are directly influenced by the events of this episode. Fundamentally, whenever we kill off a character, it usually comes down to, “How will this death impact all the other characters?” Then there’s also the feeling of: We’ve had Laurel be in love with Oliver, fall out of love with Oliver… be in love with Tommy, lose Tommy… hit bottom, have a drug addiction… rise up, become the Black Canary….

TVLINE | Get invited to be the DA….
Get invited to be the DA…. But the truth is — and bear in mind, this is the lawyer/legal writer in me speaking — every time we’ve tried to set scenes in a courtroom, I don’t think it’s always been the strongest element of the show. It has nothing to do with the directors, the actors or anything. The show is just not built for that, and I feel like every time we do it, it shows. Some people occasionally tweet at me, “Why don’t we see Laurel in the courtroom more?” Honestly, it’s very expensive to go on location, and when we do it the scenes always fall flat for some reason.

TVLINE | It’s a very real thing within a slightly surreal world.
Yes. There’s that, and there’s also the argument to be made that television legal dramas are kind of an old genre. It’s hard to keep the camera moving in a dynamic way, so the show feels like it slows down. Long story short, we were looking ahead toward Season 5 and we were like,Arrow “It kind of feels like Laurel’s story has come to a very organic… if not “conclusion,” certainly a “plateau.”

Look, you’re going to publish this and the people who love Laurel and love Katie are going to say we didn’t try hard enough, that we have failed this character. And I fully respect their point of view — they’re very vocal and very passionate. Katie and the show are lucky to have them. But at the end of the day, we have to tell the story we’re telling, and we did it in spite of what we imagine will be a rather loud response from a very vocal minority.

TVLINE | How did Katie take the news? Did the fact that a death had been teased in the season-opening flash-forward soften the blow at all?
I would say probably not. Look, it’s a hard conversation for both parties to have, for the showrunner and the actor. And we’ve had a few of them. I will say that Katie, from that conversation to when she show wrapped, has been a class act all the way. She’s been so professional and so gracious. And what’s kind of nice is the fact that [Arrow, The Flash and DC’s Legends of Tomorrow] have introduced different elements [that allow for improbable returns], so fundamentally no one is ever gone for good. In fact, right after we show wrapped Katie on Arrow, she signed on to be in [CW Seed’]s Vixen Season 2, she signed on to be in an episode of Flash. I said to her that between the three shows we have time travel, resurrection, parallel universes and flashbacks — dead does not mean goodbye. I meant it when I said it, and lo and behold within the space of a month there are two more instances where she’s working for us. Again, I’ve got to give Katie a lot of credit. There are a lot of actors who would have been petulant. They would have had a colorful response.

TVLINE | But this isn’t her first rodeo. She’s been on a lot of shows. She is a pro.
She is such a pro. And that’s one of the things she said — “I know the way this business works and the way this show works.” One of these days, I swear to God, we’re going to kill off a character who’s played by an actor we don’t like, and it will probablyarrow-black-canary-dies feel very different. But the truth of the matter is everyone’s who has died on the show have all been [played by] genuinely wonderful people. Katie, in addition to being a pro, is also in possession of a really good story sense. She’s always understood the show very well, she’s understood her character very well. It didn’t require a lot of explanation or persuasion for us to articulate what this story development would do for the series going forward. She’s a really smart cookie.

TVLINE | Were any other manners of death for Laurel considered?
We did talk about a lot of different things. “Does Damien use his magic on her in a more direct way?” We talked about all of the various ways, quite frankly, you can kill someone. This felt to us in the writers room as the most sort of… “poetic” is the wrong word…

TVLINE | “Live by the arrow, die by the arrow?”
Damien is using Oliver’s own weapon against her. That’s a particular kind of viciousness.

TVLINE | Quentin didn’t get to say goodbye to Laurel. Why the decision to again heap that extra bit of hurt upon the poor guy?
I’ll be totally frank with you — I don’t remember. I just remember being in the writers room and pitching out this moment, where Oliver walks out of the room, Lance comes around the corner, Lance sees the look on Oliver, and he immediately knows.

TVLINE | The team of course is now down a man, and at a critical time. Is that perhaps where the mystery character being played by Madison McLaughlin comes in? To maybe eventually fill that void?
I don’t want to spoil it, honestly. Madison is terrific, she’s in Episode 19 in a circumstance that is very dependent upon the events of [this week’s episode]. [Arrow writer] Brain Ford Sullivan pitched a very interesting story involving her character that is something we haven’t done on the show, and is something I don’t think any show has ever done.

TVLINE | That’s plenty cryptic, but I can work with it.
Cryptic is what I do, man!


http://tvline.com/2016/04/06/arrow-kati ... -season-4/

- Jefes y estrellas de ‘Arrow’ hablan sobre la impactante muerte ‘Sabíamos que enfadaría a mucha gente’ (Variety):

Jefes y estrellas de ‘Arrow’ hablan sobre la impactante muerte ‘Sabíamos que enfadaría a mucha gente’
Por Laura Prudom 06 Abril, 2016 | 06:00PM PT

Warning: This post contains spoilers for “Arrow” Season 4, Episode 18, titled “Eleven-Fifty-Nine.” Do not read on unless you’ve watched the April 6 episode.

After almost an entire season of build-up, tonight’s “Arrow” finally revealed which team member dies and ends up in the grave that was introduced in the Season 4 premiere: Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy), aka Black Canary — a character that many comic book fans likely thought was safe, given Black Canary’s iconic status in the DC Comics universe.

Executive producers Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle, along with Cassidy and her co-star Paul Blackthorne (who plays Laurel’s father, Quentin Lance), sat down with reporters earlier this week to discuss the shocking events of the episode, which saw a newly escaped Damien Darhk (Neal McDonough), stab Laurel as payback for her father’s earlier betrayal. After it seemed like doctors had managed to stabilize Laurel at the hospital, she shared a heartfelt scene with the other members of Team Arrow, and confided something in Oliver (Stephen Amell), before she began coding and ultimately died. Below, the producers explain how they came to this decision, and Cassidy recalls her emotions while filming her final scenes, and what she hopes her character’s legacy will be.

This group interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

So, why Laurel Lance?

Guggenheim: Obviously, “Arrow” is always a show that’s evolving. It’s always a show where every character, arguably except for the Arrow, is fair game. We started off this year with the promise of a death, and when we worked our way through our various different creative choices, we realized that the thing that will give us the most pop, going into the end of the season and into next season, unfortunately would be Laurel. By the way, we knew that it would enrage a lot of people. We’re not [blind] to the shipping, and we’re not [blind] to the internet controversy … But we’ve never made decisions on the show, creatively, because of the internet.

One of the things we knew people would think was, “In the season where Oliver and Felicity get engaged and Laurel dies, that’s clearly making a choice about who’s going to end up with who.” And truth be told, we told the Laurel-Oliver romance story in Season 1 … and we never really thought about going back to it. So, the shipping thing was not an element. It was not a factor for us. And we recognize that that upsets a lot of fans, particularly the comic book fans. In the comics, Dinah Lance and Oliver Queen, depending on which version of the character you like, are in a romance together, in various iterations. That, to some people, is considered canonical and iconic, and we respect that. But at the same time, we’ve always made no bones about the fact that we are telling our own version of the Green Arrow mythos.

The Green Arrow has had so many different interpretations, and Black Canary has had so many different interpretations, over the years, that we never felt beholden to one particular interpretation. This is our interpretation, like it or not, and I recognize that there are plenty of people, up and down my Twitter feed, who do not like it, and I totally respect that. It just made the most creative sense for us, going forward, despite the fact that we absolutely love Katie. Not getting a chance to work with Katie, day in and day out, is tempered by the fact that we now live in a universe where there’s resurrection, parallel Earths, time travel and flashbacks. We have all these different ways of keeping Katie in the “Arrow”-verse family. In fact, you will see her on an episode of “The Flash”, playing the Earth-2 version of Laurel Lance. Katie is reprising her role as Laurel in Earth-1 to be in “Vixen” Season 2. Death does not mean goodbye on any of these shows, but we’ve made a creative choice and we’re sticking to it. We’re recognizing that Black Canary and Laurel have an incredibly loyal fan base, and Katie has an incredibly loyal fan base, but the show has never been just about the comic book history, it’s never been just about one or two different particular fan bases. We make the creative choices we feel benefit the show as a whole, and the story that we’re telling overall.

Quentin has lost Sara twice, only to get her back, and now he’s lost Laurel. Can you talk about how that impacts him?

Blackthorne: From a character point of view… Quentin’s point of view is almost like that of the audience’s going, “What the hell is going on ‘round here?” This year, there’s all the outrageousness with the magic and all this stuff. He can’t really take it on as a reality, but if this is the result of what’s going on, than I have to deal with it. He can’t really accept it, but he has to accept that it is happening. And with these deaths, with Sara’s reprisal through magic and the Lazarus Pit, while it’s all a bit for Quentin to reconcile as something that could truly be happening, it is happening, therefore he’ll deal with it. We started things off with [Sara] being “dead.” So, there’s always been a world of, “Sara’s dead,” and then, “Oh, but she’s back,” and then, “Sara’s dead again,” and then, “Oh, my god, she’s back again,” but it was always based in her being dead, since we began. This death, of course, is just devastating for Lance because this is not the one that was ever supposed to happen. How could this ever be on the books? Personally, I was almost as devastated as Lance, to be honest, with the news of this happening. Katie and I have had such an amazing working relationship that it really is hard to accept that I’m going to be going to work without [her] to work with. That, as an aside, is slightly annoying. But in terms of Quentin, he’s going to have to pick up the pieces, not pick up a bottle, and reconcile what’s left in his life. With that, he’s got the Arrow family. That will be where he’ll have to find his anchor now, from here on in, without his beautiful daughter.

Katie, can you talk about the emotions of shooting your death scene, and the last scene you shot?

Cassidy: I found out that this was the choice, creatively, that was going to be made and obviously I talked to Marc and Greg and Wendy and I actually had found out right before the court scenes – that day we shot in the court.

Blackthorne: And that’s when you told me, yeah.

Cassidy: Which was hard. I remember I was like “okay, I need to put this on the backburner for now,” because I had a huge day of all legal jargon and a lot. But it actually worked out really well because in the next episode, 19, I’m actually in the episode and it’s a lot of flashbacks. And emotionally it’s interesting because that scene that you see when I’m in the hospital and I say goodbye, I say to the team, “I never wanted this, I was thinking up giving up the Black Canary and I couldn’t do it,” honestly, that scene was definitely so real, shooting it, because it was my saying goodbye to the team … So it definitely wasn’t difficult for me to get to that emotional point. For sure it was hard, but it was very real and it was good, it was genuine. And then the last scene I think I shot was… we had to do a reshoot, actually, of when I actually die, when Darhk stabs the Black Canary, and that was a week after, I think? That was the very last scene that we shot, and it was so weird because I remember we had broken for lunch, we came back – I was running to set and putting on my jacket and my gloves and they were just calling me to set to show wrap me, and I didn’t know I was done and it was just sort of a bit of a shock. But it was good, I feel like there was no other way I would want it to go.

Blackthorne: Can I just add something? In terms of, when you find out news like this, it’s rather annoying and very devastating and all the rest of it – you’re going to lose a cast member such as Katie, but at the same time, it was such a shock, certainly to me and I think to everybody, when the news came out, that you’re thinking “god, we’re right in the middle of this thing and it was shocking. What’s it gonna be to the audience?’’ and in terms of fantastic story, as awful as it is that Black Canary’s the sacrifice, in terms of story, it’s like wham – and if that’s not what story’s about, then what is it about? So in terms of the element of this story, it’s an amazing turn to throw at the audience and people aren’t expecting it, and it’s fantastic. If it shocked us that much, what’s it going to do to the audience? It’s great story.

Marc, you said the death was permanent – but since Katie is appearing on “Flash” and “Vixen,” do you feel that cheapens the death, because it isn’t technically permanent?

Guggenheim: I think the thing we’ve recognized ever since the Lazarus Pit, parallel universes, etcetera, etcetera, is we definitely recognize, across all three shows, that when we kill off a character, it means something different now. I’m not gonna put a qualitative judgment on whether it is more or less impactful, I’ll leave that to the audience and to you guys, but certainly we acknowledge that there’s a difference. And I think “Arrow,” much more so than “Flash” or “Legends,” for a lot of the reasons Paul was saying, it traffics in death. We start off the series with the apparent death of Sara Lance and the actual death of Robert Queen, and a hero that murdered people. For better or for worse, death is part of the show. What we’re finding is that death now – and as it should when you start to get, as we are, pushing into Season 5 – the show has to evolve, it has to change, and the concept of death on the show is evolving and changing, as we’ve already seen with Sara Lance and we’ve already seen with seeing Laurel in a parallel universe. There’s a world where we do an episode where Oliver Queen meets the Laurel Lance of Earth-2 — that’s now on the table. Time travel is now on the table. As the show has evolved, so has death, and I’ll leave it to you guys to decide if death is more or less impactful as a result.

How suspicious should viewers be that Laurel was fine, she asked Oliver for a favor that we didn’t hear, and then she was dead. Is there any wiggle room there?

Guggenheim: That’s the joke I’ve been making, quite frankly: Oliver Queen killed her! But that was not… again, there are certain coins of the realm on our show. Death is one of them. Mysteries and secrets are another. Certainly, “what did Laurel say to Oliver?” But we didn’t intend for it to be like, she asked Oliver to euthanize her.

No room that Oliver drugged her and faked her death?

Guggenheim: No. We’ve done that. We’ve done a fake death before. And that’s the thing: we’re always trying to figure out what’s the way to do this. That fake-out where she was OK and then she wasn’t, that was, again, our attempt at “how do we do a death we haven’t done before?” We’ve had people killed right in front of Oliver; we’ve faked a death; we’ve had someone be fatally injured and then Oliver arrives on the scene. “Walking Dead” has this problem, too, which I suppose [the finale] episode indicates. I shouldn’t say a problem: a creative challenge. The deeper you get into your story… “Game of Thrones,” also. I don’t know what’s going to happen with Jon Snow, but that is also probably going to change things. It’s the nature of having a long-running show that deals, with a major component of it, with death.

How long before we know what was said?

Mericle: You’ll know in Season 5.

You say the internet doesn’t impact your storytelling…

Guggenheim: I also know the internet doesn’t believe me when I say that. [Laughs.]

Laurel is a somewhat divisive character among portions of the fanbase, so why did you think this would give you pop?

MG: Let me be clear: when I say this gives us a lot of pop, I don’t mean on the internet or publicity. I mean creatively for the show. Every time we’ve killed off a character on the show, it’s really been for the effect it has on all the characters left behind. I don’t want to spoil the end of Season 4, or what we have planned for Season 5 — which we’re already in the room working on — but the way we describe it, and you guys have been in enough of these screenings to know that this is a favorite phrase of ours, is the creative math. How “divisive” Laurel is as a character on Twitter, that’s not a factor. And truth be told, Twitter is a very specific sub-segment. And the number of people who don’t like Laurel, it’s probably an infinitesimally small group. It’s not statistically relevant.

Katie, can you talk about letting go, from the time you found out this was the plan?

Cassidy: From a creative standpoint, I think the writers — and I’ve always said that since Season 2, up until now, Laurel has had truly an amazing journey and they’ve written so well for me. I’ve had such an incredible arc. It made sense to me, creatively, that we’ve told Laurel’s story; [it] has come to an end in the “Arrow”-verse. Again, it’s television, and I always say anything can happen. It made sense to me. I love everyone on set, I love our crew. Being there for four-and-a-half years, they’ve become family; it’s hard to not go into work every day and to work with such amazing people. That part is certainly sad. Again, I was OK with it, and we all came to an understanding that this was going to happen. It made sense to me. I think the shock value is good. I think being producers and writers and being in the writers’ room, I think it definitely gives you so much — it’s such a jolt. It’s such a turn in the story. It gives them so much more to do, and places to go with it. Otherwise shows can get stale.

Blackthorne: And that’s what you guys are kind of masters of, as well, the writers, these guys. Every act is some kind of weird, crazy, “Where the hell did that come from?” thing. From one episode to one season, culminating in moments like this, that’s what makes the show so watchable isn’t it? You just never know what’s coming next. And this is the mother of all “never know what’s coming nexts.”

Guggenheim: I did want to say what a class act Katie is, but I think it’s pretty obvious. She’s such a pro, and coming to work every day after we had this discussion, and giving 120 percent, and being gracious, and sweet and a joy to collaborate with. It’s hard for us. Even though we’re not up in Vancouver, we got to work with her in our own way, and we’re constantly on the phone or texting back and forth. And we’ll miss doing that, as I like to say, on a regular basis. Like I said earlier, dead is not goodbye. We’re still working together.

What will the emotional aftermath for the rest of the team be?

Mericle: Well, it’s going to be huge and significant, and in terms of our process for making the decision, you can judge the impact by how important that character was, how important Laurel was to the universe we created. And there’s no question that it is going to be shocking, and it was a shocking thing to us to process and to write the aftermath. We really wanted to ensure that we did it in a way that was very honorable, and that gave us space to honor all of the characters’ various reactions to it. And I will say that the episodes that we’ve written in the aftermath, they’re devastating, and they’re meant to be. That’s what we wanted. We wanted to explore that and to have everybody feel the impact of this loss. Because it is significant and we do feel that it is a game-changer – in a very sad way, in that we’re losing a very beloved character; but also in the sense that unfortunately big moves like this will open up new storytelling avenues and will force our characters to re-think their decisions and to rethink their objectives.

One of the things Marc was saying earlier about the show we’ve created is that death is a reality, and with the Lazarus Pit and the possibilities of coming back, it’s easy in some ways to forget that our characters are vigilantes — they’re out on the street doing really dangerous things, and what this does is it really brings that reality back in a very kind of rude and brutal way. And I think that it’s good for the audience to be reminded of that, and for our characters as well.

How much guilt will the team be feeling over Laurel’s death, and will we see Sara find out on “Legends of Tomorrow”?

Guggenheim: Diggle especially, like he says in the hospital, he’ll never forgive himself. And I would say the biggest consequences emotionally are felt by Thea and by Diggle. And of course, Oliver, Felicity and Lance, everyone’s having their own reactions, but Diggle – you can draw a straight-ish line from his decisions in this episode to Laurel’s death. And that’s certainly a fact that’s not lost on him. Sara will find out in “Legends” about what happened with Laurel, and I think we give it its due. I’m looking at Paul to see if I’m lying, but I feel like we give it its due. And we always said on “Legends,” we were not going to shy away from this development, as far as Sara’s character is concerned, and Paul was very gracious to lend his time to “Legends” to really allow us to explore that.

Damien says before he stabs Laurel that he’s doing it because Lance betrayed him. Are those words going to find their way back to Quentin, and will that have an adverse affect on how he accepts this?

Guggenheim: Not this season. Anything is possible next season.

More than one woman has been Black Canary already. Is the title and the costume up for grabs?

Guggenheim: I don’t know if I’d say up for grabs. I haven’t even had a chance to discuss this with Wendy or with Greg [Berlanti]. Like you said, it’s a mantle that multiple people have had. We’ll play with that notion in episode 19. I personally like the idea that in DC Comics, all the comics, they all have the concept of legacy in them. We’ve seen on “Legends” that someone picks up Oliver Queen’s mantle, for example. We’re in that world but we lean into it pretty strongly in 19 but that doesn’t always mean that the person is a hero. 19 is the answer to that question.

Felicity has been absent from the team lately, especially in this episode. Will Laurel’s death bring her back into the fold?

Mericle: I can tell you this, it will definitely have a huge impact on her character and that if you think about Felicity and what she would do in the wake of something like this, I leave you to draw your own conclusions. You’ll find out in 19 but everyone is going to be compelled to try to fix this and figure out what happened and get revenge on the people who did it.

Spoilers about Laurel’s death leaked online early thanks to paparazzi photos — how did you deal with that and does that matter to you?

Guggenheim: It does matter. Look, it’s not cool, straight up. Honestly, all I can say is you’ve got … we’ve had the paparazzi on “Legends” and on “Arrow” so you’re talking about two shows’ worth of crews, people who work really hard to do the jobs that they do; who care a lot about the shows; who care a lot about the stories that we’re telling. Like Paul said, these shows deal with surprises, particularly “Arrow,” and honestly I just look at these paparazzi people as… they’re just spoiling it for everybody. They’re kind of taking a big steaming dump on the work that all these people do. They work in Vancouver, unbelievable hours in the rain … to produce shows that everyone can be entertained by and part of being entertained is being surprised. I look at these paparazzi as… they’re ruining the party for everybody. We take precautions but unfortunately when you’re dealing with a cemetery, we have to go out on location. We have to be out in the world. We can’t produce the show just on our soundstages. We take precautions, we have extra on-set PAs patrolling and we try to put things up to block people but it does happen and it just sucks. It just sucks, and I’ll just say it, shame on those people.

Katie, can you talk about the most memorable part of playing Laurel all these seasons?

Cassidy: Oh gosh. Obviously I think at the end of Season 2 … when I put the [Black Canary] jacket on for the first time. I still get choked up talking about it because I was so excited. I remember trying on the jacket and I’d been waiting for that moment and I think that, for me, was sort of the turning point. And obviously Season 2 my character had a really hard time. I think, as an actor, the writers were writing so brilliantly and I think it was great to take on that challenge and go there — hit rock bottom and then come back on top. I think the end of Season 2, going into Season 3 and all of Season 3, even up to Season 4, up to now, every day going there, I was excited to be there and happy to be there. Also, being in training and fight training and getting to be a strong female character who is also out there kicking some ass, too, was definitely something that was cool and I had a blast, too.

Did you get to keep anything from the set?

Cassidy: Yes, actually. I asked for the jacket and mask and I didn’t think they would let me have it but, yes, I got to keep the Black Canary jacket and mask.

What do you hope the legacy is for this character?

Cassidy: I don’t know … I still feel so close to this character. Obviously for the last four and a half years it’s been a character that’s very close to me and, also, as we said, I go onto “The Flash” and I am on Earth-2 as the Black Siren and so I feel like it’s still… you talked about in the future, you never know what can happen. As [the writers] know, I love working with them and always happy to come play with them if they have time travel and what not. To me, Laurel was always such a good person and had such a good heart and was a fighter, and her being remembered that way is definitely important to me.

Guggenheim: Just to further that, someone had pointed out to me that “Arrow,” unlike, I think the other shows, when we publish the DVD boxes, it doesn’t say Green Arrow and Speedy and Spartan and Black Canary. It says Oliver and Diggle and Thea and Laurel. On this show, we really always start with who these characters are before they put on the mask. I think Katie has always so embodied Laurel, even when she’s wearing the mask you think, that’s Laurel Lance, this good person who is doing good things. She just changes up her methodology for how to make the world a better place. But Laurel Lance, always trying to save the world.

Cassidy: Always trying to save the world!


http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/arrow-s ... 201747805/

- Productores y estrellas de Arrow sobre la impactante revelación de la tumba y si muerto significa muerto (Collider):

Productores y estrellas de Arrow sobre la impactante revelación de la tumba y si muerto significa muerto
Por Christina Radish 06 Abril 2016

[Be aware that this interview discusses major spoilers for tonight’s episode of Arrow.]

Losing any long-running character on a TV series is tough, for the viewers and the cast and crew, but losing one as beloved as the one on the most recent episode of The CW series Arrow is a heart-breaking tear-jerker. And even though Arrow deals in death and has since the beginning, knowing it could come at any time doesn’t really soften the blow.

After a screening of Episode 418, “Eleven-Fifty-Nine,” executive producers Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle were joined by co-stars Katie Cassidy and Paul Blackthorne to chat with press about the episode and the aftermath of its events. During the Q&A they talked about how they came to the decisions they did in this episode, shooting the death scene, how the death will affect Team Arrow, future appearances, the character’s legacy, and handling paparazzi leaks.

Question: So, why Laurel Lance?

MARC GUGGENHEIM: Obviously, Arrow is always a show that’s evolving. It’s always a show where every character, arguably except for The Arrow, is fair game. We started off this year with the promise of a death, and we worked our way through our various different creative choices, we realized that the thing that will give us the most pop, going into the end of the season and into next season, unfortunately would be Laurel. By the way, we knew that it would enrage a lot of people. We’re not immune to the ‘shipping, and we’re not immune to the internet controversy. When I say immune, we’re not blind to it. But we’ve never made decisions on the show, creatively, because of the internet. One of the things we knew people were going to think was, “In the season where Oliver and Felicity get engaged and Laurel dies, that’s clearly making a choice about who’s going to end up with who.” And truth be told, we told the Laurel-Oliver romance story in Season 1. We told that story, and we never really thought about going back to it. So, the ‘shipping thing was not an element. It was not a factor for us. And we recognize that that upsets a lot of fans, particularly the comic book fans. In the comics, Dinah Lance and Oliver Queen, depending on which version of the character you like, are in a romance together, in various iterations. That, to some people, is considered canonical and iconic, and we respect that. But at the same time, we’ve always made no bones about the fact that we are telling our own version of the Green Arrow mythos.

The Green Arrow has had so many different interpretations, and Black Canary has had so many different interpretations, over the years, that we never felt beholden to one particular interpretation. This is our interpretation, like it or not, and I recognize that there are plenty of people, up and down my Twitter feed, who do not like it, and I totally respect that. It just made the most creative sense for us, going forward, despite the fact that we absolutely love Katie [Cassidy]. Not getting a chance to work with Katie, day in and day out, is tempered by the fact that we now live in a universe where there’s resurrection, parallel Earths, time travel and flashbacks. We have all these different ways of keeping Katie in the Arrow-verse family. In fact, you will see her on an episode of The Flash, playing the Earth-2 version of Laurel Lance. Katie is reprising her role as Laurel in Earth-1 to be in Vixen Season 2. Death does not mean goodbye, on any of these shows, but we’ve made a creative choice and we’re sticking to it. We recognize that Black Canary and Laurel have an incredibly loyal fan base, and Katie has an incredibly loyal fan base, but the show has never been just about the comic book history or just about one or two particular fan bases. We make the creative choices we feel benefit the show as a whole, and the story that we’re telling overall.

You said that the internet doesn’t impact your storytelling.

GUGGENHEIM: I also know the internet doesn’t believe me when I say that.

If Laurel is such a divisive character, why did you think her death would give you a lot of pop?

GUGGENHEIM: Let me be clear that when I say this gives us a lot of pop, I don’t mean on the internet or with publicity, but creatively for the show. Every time we’ve killed off a character on the show, it’s really been for the effect that it has on all the characters left behind. I don’t want to spoil the end of Season 4, or what we have planned for Season 5, which we’re already in the room working on, but the way we describe it is creative math. How “divisive” Laurel is, as a character on Twitter, is not a factor. And truth be told, Twitter is a very specific sub-segment. The number of people who don’t like Laurel is probably a [very small] group. It’s not statistically relevant.

Katie, can you talk about the emotions of shooting your death scene?

KATIE CASSIDY: I found out that this was the choice, creatively, that was going to be made. Obviously, I talked to Marc [Guggenheim] and Greg [Berlanti] and Wendy [Mericle], and I actually had found out right before that day we shot in the court, which was hard. I remember I was like, “Okay, I need to put this on the backburner for now,” because I had a huge day of a lot of legal jargon. But it actually worked out really well because, in the next episode, Episode 19, I’m actually in the episode and it’s a lot of flashbacks. Emotionally, it’s interesting because that scene that you see when I’m in the hospital and I say goodbye, and I say to the team, “I never wanted this, I was thinking up giving up the Black Canary and I couldn’t do it,” honestly, that scene was definitely so real, shooting it, because it was my saying goodbye to the team. It definitely wasn’t difficult for me to get to that emotional point. For sure, it was hard, but it was very real. It was good and it was genuine.

What was the actual last scene that you shot?

CASSIDY: The last scene I shot was a reshoot of when I actually die and Darhk stabs the Black Canary, and that was a week after. That was the very last scene that we shot, and it was so weird because I remember that we had broken for lunch, and then when we came back, I was running to set and putting on my jacket and gloves, and they were just calling me to set to show wrap me. I didn’t know I was done, so it was just a bit of a shock, but it was good. I feel like there was no other way I would want it to go.

PAUL BLACKTHORNE: In terms of when you find out news like this, it’s rather annoying and very devastating to lose a cast member such as Katie, but at the same time, it was such a shock, certainly to me and I think to everybody, when the news came out. You’re thinking, “God, we’re right in the middle of this thing,” and it was shocking. What’s it gonna be to the audience? And in terms of fantastic story, as awful as it is that Black Canary is the sacrifice, it’s like, “Wham!,” and if that’s not what story is about, then what is it about? So in terms of the element of this story, it’s an amazing turn to throw at the audience. People aren’t expecting it, and that’s fantastic. If it shocked us that much, what’s it going to do to the audience? It’s great story.

Paul, Quentin Lance has lost Sara twice, and now he’s lost Laurel. How is he processing that?

BLACKTHORNE: From a character point of view, Quentin’s point of view is almost like that of the audience’s going, “What the hell is going on ‘round here?” This year, there’s all the outrageousness with the magic and all that stuff. He can’t really take it on as a reality, but if this is the result of what’s going on, than he has to deal with it. He can’t really accept it, but he has to accept that it is happening. And with these deaths, with Sara’s reprisal through magic and the Lazarus Pit, while it’s all a bit for Quentin to reconcile as something that could truly be happening, it is happening, therefore he’ll deal with it. We started things off with Sara being “dead.” So, there’s always been a world of, “Sara’s dead,” and then, “Oh, but she’s back,” and then, “Sara’s dead again,” and then, “Oh, my god, she’s back again,” but it was always based in her being dead, since we began. This death, of course, is just devastating for Lance because this is not the one that was ever supposed to happen. How could this be on the books? Personally, I was almost as devastated as Lance, to be honest, with the news of this happening. Katie and I have had such an amazing working relationship that it really is hard to accept that I’m going to be going to work without [her] to work with. That, as an aside, is slightly annoying. But in terms of Quentin, he’s going to have to pick up the pieces, not pick up a bottle, and reconcile what’s left in his life. With that, he’s got the Arrow family. That will be where he’ll have to find his anchor now, from here on in, without his beautiful daughter.

Marc, you said that the death is permanent, but since Katie Cassidy is going to be appearing on other shows, do you feel that cheapens the death because it isn’t technically permanent?

GUGGENHEIM: I think the thing we’ve recognized, ever since the Lazarus Pit and parallel universes is that, across all three shows, when we kill off a character, it means something different now. I’m not gonna put a qualitative judgment on whether it is more or less impactful. I’ll leave that to the audience. But certainly, we acknowledge that there’s a difference. And I think Arrow, much more so than The Flash or Legends, traffics in death. We started off the series with the apparent death of Sara Lance and the actual death of Robert Queen, and a hero that murdered people. For better or for worse, death is part of the show. What we’re finding now is that the show has to evolve, and it should, as we push into Season 5. It has to change, and the concept of death on the show is evolving and changing. We can do an episode where Oliver Queen meets the Laurel Lance of Earth-2. That’s now on the table. Time travel is now on the table. As the show has evolved, so has death, and I’ll leave it to the audience to decide if death is more or less impactful, as a result.

How suspicious should viewers be about what Laurel and Oliver talked about in the hospital room, since we couldn’t hear the exchange?

GUGGENHEIM: The joke I’ve been making, quite frankly, is that Oliver Queen killed her. But there are certain coins of the realm on our show. Death is one of them. Mysteries and secrets are another. What did Laurel say to Oliver? We didn’t intend for it to be that she asked Oliver to euthanize her.

So, there is no room for it to be that he drugged her and faked her death?

GUGGENHEIM: No. We’ve done that. We’ve done a fake death before. We’re always trying to figure out the next way to do this. That fake-out where she was okay, and then she wasn’t, was our attempt to do a death that we haven’t done before. We’ve had people killed right in front of Oliver. We’ve faked a death. We’ve had someone be fatally injured, and then Oliver arrives on the scene. The Walking Dead has this problem, too. I shouldn’t say problem, but creative challenge. Game of Thrones has it, also. I don’t know what’s going to happen with Jon Snow, but that is also probably going to change things. It’s the nature of having a long-running show that deals, with death as a major component of it.

How long will it be before we know what was said?

WENDY MERICLE: You’ll know in Season 5.

Katie, can you talk about letting go, from the time you found out this was the plan?

CASSIDY: From a creative standpoint, since Season 2, up until now, Laurel has had truly an amazing journey. The writers have written so well for me. I’ve had such an incredible arc. It makes sense to me, creatively, that we’ve told Laurel’s story and that it had to come to an end, in the Arrow-verse. It’s television, and I always say that anything can happen. It made sense to me. I love everyone on set. I love our crew. Being there for four-and-a-half years, they’ve become family. It’s hard to not go into work every day, and to work with such amazing people. That part is certainly sad. But, I was okay with it. We all came to an understanding that this was going to happen. It made sense to me. I think the shock value is good. It definitely gives you such a jolt. It’s such a turn in the story. It gives the writers so much to do, and so many places to go with it. Otherwise, shows can get stale.

BLACKTHORNE: Every act is some kind of weird, crazy, “Where the hell did that come from?” thing. That’s what makes the show watchable, isn’t it? You just never know what’s coming next. And this is the mother of all never knowing what’s coming next.

GUGGENHEIM: I did want to say what a class act Katie is, but I think it’s pretty obvious. She’s such a pro. She came to work, every day after we had this discussion, and gave 120%, and was gracious, sweet and a joy to collaborate with. It’s hard for us. Even though we’re not up in Vancouver, we got to work with her, in our own way, and were constantly on the phone or texting back and forth. We’ll miss doing that on a regular basis. But, dead is not goodbye. We’re still working together.

What can you say about the emotional aftermath of this death on the rest of the team?

MERICLE: Well, it’s going to be huge and significant. And in terms of our process for making the decision, you can judge the impact by how important Laurel was to the universe we created. There’s no question that it is going to be shocking, and it was a shocking thing to us to process and to write the aftermath of. We really wanted to ensure that we did it in a way that was very honorable, and that gave us space to honor all of the characters’ various reactions to it. I will say that the episodes that we’ve written in the aftermath are devastating, and they’re meant to be. That’s what we wanted. We wanted to explore that, and to have everybody feel the impact of this loss. Because it is significant and we do feel that it is a game-changer, in a very sad way. We’re losing a very beloved character, but unfortunately, big moves like this will open up new storytelling avenues and will force our characters to re-think their decisions and objectives. Death is a reality, and with the Lazarus Pit and the possibilities of coming back, it’s easy, in some ways, to forget that our characters are vigilantes who are out on the street doing really dangerous things. What this does is that it really brings that reality back in a very rude and brutal way. I think that it’s good for the audience to be reminded of that, and for our characters, as well.

Are these characters going to suffer from a lot of guilt for this? And also, is this going to reverberate over to Sara on Legends of Tomorrow?

GUGGENHEIM: In the flash forward from Episode 401, we’ve already had Oliver say, “In the past, I would’ve blamed myself.” And it’s still Oliver, so there’s an element of that. That’s also part of the show. Secrets, guilt and death are our secret formula. But Diggle will feel that, especially. Like he says in that hospital, he’ll never forgive himself. I would say the biggest consequences, emotionally, are felt by Thea and Diggle. Of course, Oliver, Felicity, Lance and everyone are having their own reactions, but you can draw a straight-ish line from Diggle’s decisions in this episode to Laurel’s death, and that’s certainly a fact that’s not lost on him. Sara will find out on Legends about what happened with Laurel, and I think we give it its due. On Legends, we said that we were not going to shy away from this development, as far as Sara’s character is concerned, and Paul was very gracious to lend his time to Legends to really allow us to explore that.

Before he stabbed Laurel, Damien Darhk said that he was doing it because Lance betrayed him. Are those words going to find their way back to Quentin, and will that have an adverse affect on how he accepts this?

GUGGENHEIM: Not this season. Anything is possible next season.

BLACKTHORNE: That’s from the writing point of view. From my character’s point of view, absolutely. Just the fact that he sat there during that dinner at the Chinese restaurant and condoned it by saying, “Go off and be the Black Canary. Don’t be district attorney. That’s silly! Go and be the Black Canary.” And then, ten minutes later, she’s dead.

Are there any characters who are in denial about Laurel’s death?

GUGGENHEIM: Watch Episode 19.

Felicity has absent from the team. Will Laurel’s death launch her back onto the team?

MERICLE: I can tell you that it will definitely have a big impact on her character. If you think about Felicity and what she would do, in the wake of something like this, than I will leave you to draw your own conclusions. You’ll find out in Episode 19. Everyone is going to be compelled to try to fix this and figure out what happened, and get revenge on the people who did it.

More than one woman has been Black Canary. Is the title and costume up for grabs?

GUGGENHEIM: I don’t know if I’d say up for grabs. We haven’t even had a chance to discuss that. It’s a mantel that multiple people have had. We’ll play with that notion in Episode 19. I personally like the idea that, in DC Comics and in all comics, they have the concept of legacy in them. We’ve seen on Legends that someone picks up Oliver Queen’s mantel, for example. We’re in that world, but we lean into it, and I think we lean into it pretty strongly in Episode 19, but that doesn’t always mean that the person is a hero. Episode 19 is the answer to that question.

How do you guys deal with paparazzi leaks, especially when it came to this happening?

GUGGENHEIM: It’s not cool, straight up. We’ve had paparazzi on Legends and on Arrow, so you’re talking about two shows worth of crews and people who work really, really, really hard to do the jobs that they do, who care a lot about the shows, and who care a lot about the stories that we’re telling. These shows, particularly Arrow, deal with surprises and honestly I just look at those paparazzi people as spoiling it for everybody. They’re taking a big steaming dump on the work that all these people do. They work in Vancouver, doing unbelievable hours in the rain, in terrible conditions, and they do it all to produce shows that everyone can be entertained by, and part of being entertained is being surprised. I look at these paparazzi as they’re ruining the party for everybody. We take precautions, but unfortunately, when you’re dealing with a cemetery, we have to go out on location. We have to be out in the world. We can’t produce the show just on our soundstages. We take precautions. We have extra on-set PAs patrolling and we try to put things up to block people, but it does happen and it sucks. I’ll just say shame on those people.

Katie, can you talk about the most memorable part of playing Laurel, all these seasons?

CASSIDY: Oh, gosh! At the end of Season 2, going into Season 3, when I put the jacket on for the first time, I still get choked up talking about it because I was so excited. I’d been waiting for that moment. For me, that was the turning point. Obviously, in Season 2, my character had a really hard time. I think the writers were writing so brilliantly, and it was great to take on that challenge and hit rock bottom, and then come back on top. The end of Season 2, going into Season 3 and all of Season 3, even up to Season 4, I was excited and happy to be there, every day. Also, being in the fight training and getting to be a strong female character who is also out there kicking some ass, too, was definitely something that was cool. I had a blast.

Did you get to keep anything from the set?

CASSIDY: Yes, actually. I asked for the jacket and mask, and I didn’t think they would let me have it. But, I got to keep the Black Canary jacket and mask.

BLACKTHORNE: That’s this year’s Halloween costume.

What do you hope the legacy is for the character of Laurel and the Black Canary?

CASSIDY: I don’t know. It’s something I still feel so close to. Obviously, for the last four years, it’s been a character that’s very close to me. I get to go onto The Flash and be on Earth-2 as the Black Siren, and in the future, you never know what can happen. As they know, I love working with them and am always happy to come play with them, if they have time travel and what not. To me, Laurel was always such a good person and had such a good heart. She was a fighter, and remembering her that way is definitely important to me.

GUGGENHEIM: Just to further that, someone had pointed out to me that unlike the other shows, when we publish the DVD boxes, it doesn’t say Green Arrow and Speedy and Spartan and Black Canary. It says Oliver and Diggle and Thea and Laurel. On this show, we really always start with who these characters are before they put on the mask. I think Katie has always so embodied Laurel that, even when she’s wearing the mask, you think, “That’s Laurel Lance, this good person who is doing good things.” She just changes up her methodology for how to make the world a better place, but Laurel Lance is always trying to save the world.


http://collider.com/arrow-grave-reveal-death-interview/?

- Wendy Mericle habla sobre las consecuencias de la muerte de Laurel (Ksitetv):

Wendy Mericle habla sobre las consecuencias de la muerte de Laurel
Por Craig Byrne 06 Abril, 2016

This is part of a series of articles about tonight’s episode of Arrow, titled “Eleven-Fifty-Nine.” If you are not on the East Coast and have not seen tonight’s show, read no further!

As we saw in “Eleven-Fifty-Nine,” Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) is dead. What will this mean for the rest of the team?

“It’s going to be huge and significant, and in terms of our process for making the decision, you can judge the impact by how important Laurel was to the universe we’ve created,” Executive Producer Wendy Mericle said earlier this week about tonight’s game-changer. “There is no question that it is going to be shocking, and it was a shocking thing for us to process, and to write the aftermath… we really wanted to make sure that we did it in a way that was very honorable, and that it gave us space to honor all of the characters’ various reactions to it. I will say that the episodes that we’ve written in the aftermath, they’re devastating, and they’re meant to be. That’s what we wanted. We wanted to explore that, and to really have everybody feel the impact of this loss, because it is significant, and we do feel like it is a game-changer, in a very sad way, in that we’re losing a beloved character, but big moves like that will open up new storytelling avenues and will force our characters to re-think their decisions, and to re-think their objectives. Death is a reality, and I think with the Lazarus Pit and the possibility of coming back, it’s easy in some ways to forget that our characters are vigilantes. They’re out on the street. They’re doing really dangerous things. And what this does, is it really brings that reality back in a very kind of rude and brutal way. It’s good for the audience to be reminded of that, and for our characters as well.”

At the CW-hosted Q&A, Mericle was also asked how this would specifically affect Felicity. “I can tell you this: It will definitely have a huge impact on her character, and that if you think about Felicity and what she would do in the wake of something like this, I leave you to draw your conclusions, you’ll find out in 19, but everyone is going to be compelled to try to fix this, and figure out what happened, and get revenge on the people who did it,” Mericle says.


http://www.greenarrowtv.com/wendy-meric ... ers-death/

- Marc Guggenheim habla sobre la decición de matar a Laurel en Arrow (Ksitetv):

Marc Guggenheim habla sobre la decición de matar a Laurel en Arrow
Por Craig Byrne 06 Abril 2016


This is part of a series of articles about tonight’s episode of Arrow, titled “Eleven-Fifty-Nine.” If you are not on the East Coast and have not seen tonight’s show, read no further!

Tonight’s game-changing episode of Arrow killed off a character who has been with the show from the beginning

Earlier this week, we attended a Q&A with Katie as well as Executive Producers Marc Guggenheim & Wendy Mericle and fellow actor Paul Blackthorne, who plays Captain Quentin Lance on the show. You can find all of the post-mortem interviews here. For the post, let’s shine the spotlight on Guggenheim, who talks about why the decision was made.

“Arrow is always a show that’s evolving,” Guggenheim said as soon as he was asked why the show decided to kill Laurel. “It’s always a show where every character, arguably except for the Arrow, is fair game. We started off this year with the promise of a death, and when we worked our way through our various different creative choices, we realized that the thing that will give us the most pop going into the end of the season and into next season, unfortunately, would be Laurel,” he said.

“We knew that it would enrage a lot of people,” he acknowledged, assuring that online reaction is not what caused the death of the Canary. “We’re not immune to the ‘shipping,’ and we’re not immune to the internet controversy — when I say immune, we’re not blind to it — but we’ve never made decisions on the show, creatively, because of the internet. One of the things we knew people would think is, ‘Oh, well in the season where Oliver and Felicity get engaged and Laurel dies, that’s clearly making a choice about who’s gonna end up with who!’ Truth be told, we told the Laurel/Oliver romance story in Season 1. We never really thought about going back to it. So, the ‘shipping’ thing was not an element; it was not a factor for us. We recognize that that upsets a lot of fans, particularly the comic book fans who [know] in the comics, Dinah Lance and Oliver Queen are – depending on which version of the character you like, are in a romance together, in various iterations. That, to some people, is considered canonical and iconic, and we respect that, but at the same time, we’ve always made no bones about the fact that we are telling our own version of the Green Arrow mythos,” he explained.

“Green Arrow has had so many interpretations, and Black Canary has had so many interpretations over the years, that we never felt beholden to one particular interpretation, and this is our interpretation, like it or not, and I recognize that there are plenty of people up and down my Twitter feed who do not like it. Totally respect that. But, it made the most creative sense for us going forward, despite the fact that we absolutely love Katie,” he said, adding that death doesn’t necessarily mean “goodbye” on any of their shows…. in fact, Katie will be appearing on an episode of The Flash later this season as well as Season 2 of the Vixen series on CW Seed.

With that said, and knowing that there are fans who might not be happy, Guggenheim stands by the show’s creative choice. “We made a creative choice, and we’re sticking to it,” he said. “We’re recognizing that Black Canary and Laurel have an incredibly loyal fan base, and Katie has an incredibly loyal fan base, but the show has never been just about the comic book history. It’s never been just about one or two different particular fan bases. We make the creative choices we feel benefit the show as a whole, and the story that we’re telling, overall.” But, fans wanting more Green Arrow/Black Canary might look to the possibilities of what might happen as a result of us meeting Katie’s “Black Siren” of Earth-2 in her episode of The Flash. “Seeing Laurel in a parallel universe, there’s a world where we [could] do an episode where Oliver Queen meets the Laurel Lance of Earth-2. That’s now on the table. Time travel is now on the table. So as the shows evolve, so has death. Again, I’ll leave it to you to decide if death is more or less impactful as a result,” Guggenheim said. Since Laurel said something to Oliver before she died — and Guggenheim insists that it wasn’t something like ‘she asked Oliver to euthanize her’ – one might wonder if the death was faked… a notion Guggenheim shoots down. “No. We’ve done that. We’ve done a fake death before,” he said. As for what was said? We will find out what Laurel told Oliver in Season 5.

What’s next? We will see Laurel in flashbacks in the next episode, and certain characters will have different reactions to Laurel’s passing. “Diggle, especially, like he says in the hospital, he will never forgive himself,” Guggenheim recalled. “I would say that the biggest consequences, emotionally, are felt by Thea and by Diggle. Of course, obviously Oliver and Felicity, and Lance… everyone’s also having their own reactions… [but with] Diggle, you can draw a straightish line from his decisions in this episode to Laurel’s death, and that’s certainly a fact that’s not lost on him,” he explained. We will also see the reaction of Laurel’s sister Sara, in an upcoming episode of DC’s Legends of Tomorrow.

“Sara will find out in Legends about what happened with Laurel. I think we give it its due,” Guggenheim confirmed. “We always said on Legends that we were not gonna shy away from this development as far as Sara’s character is concerned, and Paul [Blackthorne] was very gracious to lend his time to Legends, to really allow us to explore that.” And even though the body isn’t even cold yet, is the Black Canary costume up for grabs? “I don’t know if I’d say ‘up for grabs’,” Marc responded. “I haven’t even had a chance to really discuss this with Wendy or with Greg. It’s a mantle that multiple people have had. We’ll play with that notion in Episode 19 [this season]. I personally like the idea that DC Comics all have the concept of legacy in them. We’ve seen on Legends, that someone picks up Oliver Queen’s mantle, for example. That doesn’t always mean that the person is a hero. 19 is the answer to that question.”

In the end, Guggenheim wanted to praise what a “class act” Katie Cassidy is. “She’s such a pro. Coming to work every day after we had this discussion and giving 120% and being gracious, and sweet, and a joy to collaborate with… it’s hard for us. Even though we’re not in Vancouver, we go to work with her in our own way. We’re constantly on the phone, or texting back and forth. We will miss doing that on a regular basis. But like I said earlier, dead is not goodbye, and we’re still working together.”

As for the legacy of Laurel Lance? “Someone had pointed out to me that with Arrow, when we publish the DVD boxes, it doesn’t say ‘Green Arrow, and Speedy, and Spartan, and Black Canary.’ It says ‘Oliver, and Diggle, and Thea, and Laurel.’ On this show, we really always start with who these characters are before they put on the mask, and I think Katie has so embodied Laurel. Even when she’s wearing the mask, you feel like ‘oh. That’s Laurel Lance. That’s this good person who’s doing good things.’ She just changes up her methodology for how to make the world a better place. Laurel Lance, always trying to save the world.”


http://www.greenarrowtv.com/marc-guggen ... l-spoiler/

- Paul Blackthorne habla sobre la sorprendente muerte de Arrow de esta noche (KsiteTV):

Paul Blackthorne habla sobre la sorprendente muerte de Arrow de esta noche
Por Craig Byrne 06 Abril 2016

This is part of a series of articles about tonight’s episode of Arrow, titled “Eleven-Fifty-Nine.” If you are not on the East Coast and have not seen tonight’s show, read no further!

Arrow killed Laurel Lance tonight, and now her father, Quentin Lance (played by Paul Blackthorne) is starting to have gone through more kid funerals than the McCormicks of South Park.

Heir to the Demon“It’s all getting a bit boring for Quentin, I’ll have to say,” he joked at a Q&A hosted by The CW earlier this week. “No more kid deaths, please!”

In all seriousness, Blackthorne told the room full of journalists that as a character, Quentin has a unique perspective on things like this. “It’s almost like Quentin’s point of view is almost like that of the audience, in terms of ‘what the hell is going on around here?’ With all of the outrageousness of this year, with the magic and all of this stuff… he can’t really take it on as a reality, but if this is the result of what’s going on, then I have to deal with it. He can’t really accept it, but he has to accept that it is happening,” he explained.

The previous events of Arrow will make reconciling these elements difficult for Quentin. “With these deaths, whether it’s Caity [Lotz]’s reprisal through magic and Lazarus Pits and all the rest of it… it’s all a bit hard for Quentin to reconcile as something that could truly be happening,” Paul said. “It is happening; therefore, he’ll deal with it. But this one… we started things off with Caity [Sara] being ‘dead.’ So there’s always been a world of ‘Sara’s dead, oh, but she’s back, but she’s dead again. But ‘oh my God, she’s back again.’ But it’s always based in her being dead since we began. This death, of course, is just devastating for Lance, because this is not the one that was ever supposed to happen. How could this be on the books? Personally, I was almost as devastated as Lance, to be honest, with the news of this happening, because Katie and I have had such an amazing working relationship that it actually really is hard to accept… that I’m going to go into work without this fabulous lady to work with. So that, as an aside, is slightly annoying. But in terms of Quentin, he’s going to have to pick up the pieces, and not pick up a bottle, and reconcile what’s left in his life. Obviously with that, he’s got the Arrow ‘family,’ and that will be where he’ll have to find his anchor now, from here on in, without his beautiful daughter.”

Regarding the “annoying” comment said earlier, Blackthorne felt the need to qualify what he meant. “In terms of when you find out news like this… it’s not annoying, it’s really devastating that you’re going to lose a cast member such as Katie, but at the same time, it was such a shock. I mean, certainly to me, and I think to everybody, when the news came out. We were thinking ‘we were right in the middle of this thing and it was shocking. What’s it going to be to the audience?’ And in terms of fantastic story, it’s like WHAM, you know. And if that’s not what story’s about, then what is it about? It’s an amazing turn to throw at the audience. People aren’t expecting it, and it’s fantastic. If it shocked us that much, what’s it going to do to the audience?”


http://www.greenarrowtv.com/paul-blackt ... row-death/

- ¿Quién estaba en la tumba? Jefe de Arrow habla sobre la gran muerte (Eonline):

¿Quién estaba en la tumba? Jefe de Arrow habla sobre la gran muerte
Por Lauren Piester 07 Abril, 2016 3:00 AM

Game changed, right Arrow fans?

The Black Canary just put on her mask for the last time and paid the ultimate price for it, all thanks to Damien Darhk's (Neal McDonough) continued determination to be the absolute worst.

It turns out that Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) was the one in the grave that ended the season four premiere. She was stabbed by Damien himself, who wanted payback for Quentin Lance's betrayal. Thanks to Diggle's brother, Andy, Team Arrow ended up right where Damien needed them to be, and Damien stuck one of Oliver's arrows right into Laurel's gut.

Laurel, who had only just decided to accept a promotion to District Attorney (which would have placed her right in new mayor Ruve Adams' inner circle), was rushed to the hospital, and at first everything seemed fine. Then, during a heartbreaking conversation with Oliver, she started convulsing, and she was declared dead just before midnight.

Laurel's demise marks the first death of a major character who's been there since the beginning, and it comes after months of speculating as to who Oliver was crying over in the season premiere. Theories were all over the internet, and the impending death has loomed over the entire season.

"We started off the year with the promise of a death, and when we sort of worked our way through our various different creative choices, we realized the thing that would give us the most pop [creatively] going into the end of the season and into next season unfortunately would be Laurel," executive producer Marc Guggenheim told reporters at a screening of tonight's episode.

After the screening, we got on the phone with Guggenheim to find out exactly what it takes for a show to kill off one of its original characters.

E! News: I'd really like to just talk about the process of killing a major character. What is required to make a move like that?

Guggenheim: It requires a lot of fortitude. We've killed off a lot of characters on the show before, but I don't think we've ever killed off a character with this kind of profile and importance to the show and it's a very gutsy move. I don't say that as a way of sort of patting ourselves on the back, but it's a risk we felt was important to take in light of the fact that we're going into our fifth season. We've always said that Arrow is a show that has to evolve or die. As much as we would love to play it safe, I think the show benefits from these occasional really throwing a hard six. It's produced some of our best episodes of the show, so there's that.

The other thing I think it requires is it requires a really amazing cast, because if it was just Katie Cassidy and a whole bunch of other actors that no one wanted to watch and we didn't feel like they could sustain a show, then this would go from risky to just plain old stupid.

When and how did you decide you needed to kill someone off the show?

Basically we began the season with a grave and a tombstone and we knew that we want to open the season with something that would make you lean forward and pull you through the season. We had never done a flash forward on the show before, and it was just a notion that Greg Berlanti, Wendy Mericle, and myself were really intrigued by. We sort of did it in part because we knew, while we didn't know who was in the grave initially, we knew that someone would probably die on the show, because that's basically been our modus operandi going forward.

Generally speaking, we've killed off a character once a year, so we didn't think we were doing anything unexpected when we said we're going to be killing off a character this year. I think the thing that was different was when we ultimately came to the conclusion that it be Laurel, someone who's sort of a charter member of our cast, we were doing something that was extra bold. It was a death that had greater ramifications for the show than any deaths we had done on the show previously.

At what point in the season did you decide that it was Laurel?

I think it was around the time when we were in production on episode 16. Honestly, we pushed the decision off as late as we possibly could.

What is that like for the production when you know someone's leaving?

I think it's always difficult. When we've killed off characters in the past, we always start with having a conversation with the actor playing that character. We always ask the actor, how do you want us to message this to the crew and the rest of the cast? Everyone in the cast and crew has always been, for four years now, incredibly respectful, in part because they're great people, and in part because death on the show is sort of the unspoken cast member.

Was it different this time since everyone knew from the beginning of the season that someone was dying, but they didn't know who?

You know, that's funny. I think originally we thought it wouldn't be different, because again, we've killed off characters in all three seasons, so season four we didn't think would be all that different, but yeah, I think things were a little different. The fact that we'd sort of codified the reality that we always kill off a character each year, I think that had an interesting effect on the audience, it had an interesting effect on the cast. That was not intentional, but it had an unintended effect.

Have you noticed a big difference in audience reception with the death teased so far ahead of time, vs. when you've kept it a surprise?

It's a good question. We mixed episode 18 [Monday] and I was watching it for the first time with an eye for the promo that we released, which basically said someone's going to die in this episode. I think once you sort of say that, it's less surprising. The one thing we've discovered over the history of the show is there's different types of audience.

There's the audience that reads everything on twitter, reads everything online and sees every promo and sees the show one way, and then there's a lot of audience members who don't pay attention to any of that stuff and experience the show a different way and you try to write and produce the show for both sets of audiences, but at the end of the day, different types of audiences are going to have different types of experience.

People are definitely going to see something fishy in the fact that Laurel was supposed to be OK, then asked Oliver for a favor, and then was suddenly dying. Are we really not supposed to read into that?

I think that that's fine, I think that that's fair game. I'm very much the believer that the best version of television is kind of interactive. I'm of the school of thought that I want the audience to engage and ask questions and see things differently than we as writers intended to play things, or even differently from the way the actors intended to play things. That to me makes for a more vital viewing experience, the idea that people aren't just interpreting moments and scenes and stories the way we intended but are bringing their own set of interpretations to things. So when it won't spoil something, I'll always be honest about our intentions.

In this case, our intention was not to imply that Oliver had something to do with Laurel's death, but I love the idea that people will push against that and question it and reexamine it. I'm all for it. I think to me there's actually no higher compliment that an audience can pay a show than watch with that level of engagement. I would much rather have a small number of very active viewers than a huge number of inactive viewers.


http://www.eonline.com/news/754702/who- ... ajor-death

- 'Arrow': se revela el personaje que estaba en la tumba; actriz habla sobre la salida (Acess Hollywood):

'Arrow': se revela el personaje que estaba en la tumba; actriz habla sobre la salida
Por Jolie Lash 06 Abril, 2016 6:02 PM PDT

"Arrow" said goodbye to one of the team on Wednesday night's episode, when The CW show finally revealed a season-long secret – who is in the grave.

(Spoiler alert! This story reveals which character was killed off of the show.)

At the end of Wednesday's episode, which featured many twists and a little misdirection – could it be John Diggle? Could it be Thea Queen? – Katie Cassidy's Laurel Lance, an integral part of the series since its 2012 premiere, was the one who died, the result of an arrow that pierced her chest courtesy of a repowered Damien Darhk.

Katie found out the news the day they were shooting the Damien Dahrk court scenes from a recent episode.

"I remember I just was like, 'I need to put this on the back burner for now because I had a huge day of all legal jargon,' but it actually worked out really well because in the next episode – 19 – I'm actually in the episode and it's a lot of flashbacks. And emotionally, it's interesting because that scene that you see when I'm in the hospital in [Episode] 18, and… I say to the team, 'I never wanted this,' 'I was thinking about giving up the Black Canary,' and 'I can do it,' and honestly, that scene was definitely – it was so real shooting it because it was my saying goodbye to the team and all of us," Katie told reporters at a recent screening, after Access Hollywood asked her about the emotions of shooting her character's death scene. "It definitely wasn't difficult for me to get to that emotional point, but yeah, for sure it was hard, but it was very real and I felt like that was, you know, it was good, it was genuine and it was real."

Oftentimes, the last scenes an actor who is exiting a show shoots aren't death-scene related, and Katie revealed her final scene was the one where she's stabbed by the show's Season 4 villain, at Iron Heights, by the arrow.

"The last scene I think I shot was – we had to do a reshoot actually, of… when Darhk stabs the Black Canary and that was like a week after, I think," she said. "So that was… the very last scene that we shot and it was so weird because I remember… we had broken for lunch, we came back, and I was running to set, and I was putting on my jacket and my gloves and they were just calling me to set to show wrap me and I didn't know that I was done, and it was kind of just sort of a bit of a shock. But it was good. I feel like there was no other way that I would want it to go."

Paul Blackthorne, who plays Quentin Lance, the father of Laurel and Sara Lance, said it was a real shock to find out that Katie's character was being killed off the show, but he understands it sets up a lot.

"It was such a shock, I mean, certainly to me and I think to everybody when the news came out that you're thinking, 'And God, we're right in the middle of this thing and it was shocking. What's it going to be to the audience?' And in terms of fantastic story -- as awful as it is that Black Canary's sacrificed, in terms of story it's just like wham, you know? And if that's not what story's about then what is it about," Paul said at the same screening.

"It's an amazing turn to throw at the audience and people aren't expecting it and it's fantastic. If it shocked us that much, what's it going to do to the audience?" he added.

Katie, as she said, will appear in next week's "Arrow" in flashbacks. She also is set to turn up sometime on "The Flash" as the Earth 2 Laurel Lance. Additionally, producers (Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle) confirmed that Sara, Laurel's sister, who is currently time traveling on "DC's Legends of Tomorrow" will find out about what happened to her sister.

While Katie now hangs up her Black Canary jacket and mask, she now hangs them up in the place of her choice. When Access asked if she got to keep anything from set, she revealed they gave her both of those items from her costume as mementos from her time on the show. It's fitting, as when one reporter asked her to reflect on her favorite Laurel memories, she brought up the first time she put the suit on.

"Obviously, I think at the end of Season 2 going into 3, when I put the jacket on for the first time. I mean that moment was like that something ... I still get a little choked up talking about it because I was so excited and I remember trying on the jacket and it was like I had been waiting for that moment," Katie told reporters.



http://www.accesshollywood.com/articles ... ler-alert/

- Cambiando todo: productores y estrellas de Arrow hablan sobre la impactante muerte de la S4 (dccomics):

Cambiando todo: productores y estrellas de Arrow hablan sobre la impactante muerte de la S4
Por Tim Beedle Wednesday, 06 Abril 2016

SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains major spoilers for this week’s episode of Arrow, “Eleven-Fifty-Nine.” Read on at your own risk!

We knew it was coming, but that didn’t make it any less brutal. In a shocking turn of events, Damien Darhk violently stabbed Laurel Lance to death in revenge for Quentin’s betrayal in tonight’s episode of Arrow. While Arrow fans have speculated as to which of the show’s characters would be meeting their maker this season after the death was teased in the season premiere, tonight that morbid little mystery was solved…most likely to the great shock of comic book fans everywhere. Dinah “Laurel” Lance is the Black Canary, one of the most iconic female heroes in DC’s stable and Oliver Queen’s most consistent comic book soul mate. So of all of Arrow’s cast, why was she the one chosen?

To answer that question and fill us in on what this means for the show, we caught up with Arrow Executive Producers Marc Guggenheim and Wendy Mericle, along with actors Paul Blackthorne (Quentin Lance) and the dearly departed herself, Katie Cassidy (Laurel Lance), at a recent event to discuss tonight’s emotionally charged episode and tearjerker of a death.

So why Laurel?

Marc Guggenheim: Arrow is always evolving. It’s a show where every character, arguably except for Oliver, is fair game. We started off this year with the promise of a death, and when we worked our way through our creative choices, we realized that the thing that will give us the most pop going into the end of the season and next season, unfortunately, would be Laurel.

We knew that it would enrage a lot of people. We’re not blind to the “shipping” and the internet controversy, but we’ve never made decisions on the show creatively because of the internet. One of the things we knew that people would think is that in a season where Oliver and Felicity get engaged and Laurel dies, that’s clearly making a choice about who’s going to end up with whom. Truth be told, we told the Laurel/Oliver romance story in Season 1. We never really thought about going back to it.

We recognize that upsets a lot of fans, particularly the comic book fans. In the comics, Dinah Lance and Oliver Queen are in a romance together. To some people, that is considered canonical and iconic. We respect that, but at the same time we’ve always made no bones about the fact that we’re telling our own version of the Green Arrow mythos. Green Arrow and Black Canary have had so many different interpretations over the years that we never felt beholden to one particular interpretation.

This is our interpretation, like it or not, and I recognize that there are plenty of people up and down my Twitter feed who do not like it. I totally respect that. But it made the most creative sense for us going forward, despite the fact that we love Katie. We absolutely love her. That part, not getting the chance to work with Katie day in and day out is tempered by the fact that [the show] now lives in a universe where there’s resurrection, parallel earths, time travel and flashbacks. We have all these different ways of keeping Katie in the Arrowverse family. In fact, you will see her in an episode of Flash, playing the Earth-2 version of Laurel Lance. Katie is also reprising her role as Laurel of Earth-1 in Vixen Season 2. Death does not mean goodbye on any of these shows.

Katie, can you talk about the emotions of shooting your death scene?

Katie Cassidy: I had found out that this was the choice that was going to be made creatively right before we were shooting some court scenes, and I remember having to put it on the backburner because I had a huge day of legal jargon ahead. But it actually worked out really well because I’m actually in [the April 27th episode] in flashbacks.

The scene where I’m in the hospital and I say to the team that I was thinking of giving up the Black Canary and I couldn’t do it—shooting that scene was so real for me because it was my saying goodbye to the team and all of us. It definitely wasn’t difficult for me to get to that emotional point. It was hard, but it was very real and I felt like that was good. It was genuine.

Paul, Quentin Lance has lost Sara twice and now has lost Laurel. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Paul Blackthorne: Quentin’s point of view is almost like that of the audience’s, and all of the outrageousness this year with the magic and everything, he can’t really take it on as a reality. But if this is the result of what’s going on, he has to deal with it. He can’t really accept it, but he has to accept that it is happening.

This death, of course, is just devastating for Quentin. Because this is not the one that was ever supposed to happen. Personally, I was almost as devastated as Quentin was when I got the news about this because Katie and I have had such an amazing working relationship, it actually really is hard to accept that I’ll be going to work without this fabulous lady to work with.

In terms of Quentin, he’s going to have to pick up the pieces, not pick up a bottle, and reconcile what’s left of his life. Obviously, he’s got the Arrow family. That will be where he’ll have to find his anchor now from here on in without his beautiful daughter.

Should viewers be suspicious about how the death was presented? How Laurel was fine and wanted some sort of favor from Oliver, and then the next time we see her, she’s dying?

Guggenheim: That’s the joke I’ve been making—“Oliver Queen killed Laurel!” There are certain coins of the realm on our show. Death is one of them, mysteries and secrets are another. What did Laurel say to Oliver? We didn’t intend for it to be that she asked Oliver to euthanize her.

But could he have drugged her and faked her death?

Guggenheim: No, we’ve done that. We’ve done a fake death before. That’s the thing. We’re always trying to figure out new ways of doing this. That fake out where she was okay and then she wasn’t was our attempt at doing a death that we hadn’t done before. We’ve had people killed right in front of Oliver, we’ve faked a death, we’ve had someone be fatally injured and then Oliver arrives on the scene. The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones have this same creative challenge. It’s the nature of having a long-running show that deals with death as a major component of it.

Will we find out what Laurel said to Oliver?

Wendy Mericle: You’ll know in Season 5.

Katie, how did you go about letting go of the character after you found out about the plan?

Cassidy: Since Season 2 up until now, Laurel has had a truly amazing journey. The writers have written so well for me and I’ve had such an incredible arc. It made sense to me creatively. Laurel’s story has come to an end in the Arrowverse.

I love everyone on set and our crew. Being there for four and a half years, they’ve become family, so it’s hard to not go into work every day and get to work with such amazing people. That part is certainly sad, but I was okay with it. We all came to an understanding that this was what was going to happen and it made sense to me.

I think the shock value is good. It’s such a jolt and a turn in the story that it gives the writers so much more to do and places to go with it. Otherwise, I feel like shows can get stale.

Blackthorne: That’s what the writers are masters of. From one episode to one season, culminating in months like this. That’s what makes the show so watchable. You never know what’s coming next, and this is like the mother of all of that.

So what sort of emotional aftermath will this have on the rest of the team?

Mericle: Well, it’s going to be huge and significant. There’s no question that it is going to be shocking. It was a shocking thing for us to process. We really wanted to make sure we [wrote the aftermath] in a way that was very honorable and that gave us space to honor all of the characters’ reactions to it. The episode’s we’ve written after this one are devastating, and they’re meant to be. That’s what we wanted. We wanted to explore that and have everyone feel the impact of this loss because it is significant. It’s a game changer. In both a very sad way because we’re losing a beloved character, but also in a sense that it’s going to open up new storytelling avenues and will force our character to rethink their decisions and their objectives.

Death is a reality on this show, and I think with the Lazarus Pit and possibility of coming back that it’s easy sometimes to forget that our characters are vigilantes. They’re out on the street and they’re doing really dangerous things. What this does is it really brings that reality back in a very brutal way. I think it’s good for the audience to be reminded of that and our characters as well.

How much guilt will the characters be carrying over this?

Guggenheim: We’ve already heard Oliver say in the first episode’s flashforward that in the past he would have blamed himself. It’s still Oliver. There’s an element of that. But Diggle… Like he says in that hospital, he’ll never forgive himself. I’d say the biggest consequences emotionally are felt by Thea and Diggle. You can draw a straightish line from his decisions in this episode to Laurel’s death, and that’s certainly not a fact lost on him.

Will news of this reach Sara on Legends of Tomorrow?

Guggenheim: Sara will find out on Legends. I think we give it it’s due. We always said on Legends that we weren’t going to shy away from this development as far as Sara was concerned and Paul was very gracious to lend his time to Legends to really allow us to explore that.

Katie, what was the most memorable part of playing Laurel for four seasons?

Cassidy: When I put the jacket on for the first time at the end of Season 2.

Guggenheim: I remember that night!

Cassidy: Yeah, I still get a little choked up talking about it because I was so excited. I remember trying on the jacket because I’d been waiting for that moment.

I think that for me was the turning point. Obviously, in Season 2, my character had a really hard time. The writers were writing so brilliantly and it was great to be able to take on that challenge and hit rock bottom and then come back on top. Being in fight training and getting to become a strong female character that’s also out there kicking some ass too was definitely something cool. I had a blast doing it.


http://www.dccomics.com/blog/2016/04/06 ... king-death

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- Arrow | 4.19 "Canary Cry" Promo | The CW:

- Arrow | 4.19 "Canary Cry" Extended Promo | The CW:

- Arrow | 4.19 "Canary Cry" Producers Preview | The CW:

- Arrow | 4.19 "Canary Cry" Clip #1 | TVLine:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9hlvcWjGzM
http://tvline.com/2016/04/27/arrow-seas ... ck-canary/


- Arrow | 4.19 "Canary Cry" Clip #2 | EOnline:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlSEY-j5pFI
http://www.eonline.com/news/760097/laur ... arrow-clip


- Arrow | 4.19 "Canary Cry" Clip #3 | The CW:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMphMnhcryE

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- Stills del 4.19 "Canary Cry":

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- Descripción oficial del 4.19 “Canary Cry”:

4.19 “Canary Cry” (27/04/16): OLIVER, LANCE Y EL EQUIPO LIDIAN CON LA MUERTE DE LAUREL – Oliver (Stephen Amell) y el equipo luchan por hacerse a la idea de la muerte de Laurel (Katie Cassidy), especialmente Diggle (David Ramsey) quien se siente abrumado por la culpa por escoger creer que Andy (la estrella invitada Eugene Byrd) había cambiado. Mientras tanto, Lance (Paul Blackthorne) se niega a creer que su hija se ha ido realmente y le pide a Nyssa (la estrella invitada Katrina Law) que le ayude para traerla de vuelta. Un vistazo reciente de Black Canary en Star City sólo parece probar su teoría de que Laurel no está realmente muerta. Laura Belsey dirige el episodio escrito por Wendy Mericle & Beth Schwartz (#419).

http://www.greenarrowtv.com/arrow-canary-cry-photos/

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- Revelados títulos y créditos del 4.23 (season finale):

Marc Guggenheim ha compartido en su cuenta de twitter los créditos del episodio 4.23:




https://twitter.com/mguggenheim/status/ ... 1228636161


El episodio 4.23 tiene por título "Schism". Está escrito por Wendy Mericle & Marc Guggenheim con historia de Greg Berlanti y dirigido por John Behring

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- 'Arrow' Star Stephen Amell Reveals His Best On-Screen Kiss (ETOnline):

http://www.etonline.com/news/186402_exc ... reen_kiss/


- Stephen Amell Reacts To Social Media Response To 'Arrow's' Big Death (accesshollywood):

http://bcove.me/3mclzbvf




- MTV Movie Awards 2016:

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- ¿Traerá la tragedia a Felicity de vuelta al Team Arrow, si no de vuelta a Oliver? (TVline):

¿Traerá la tragedia a Felicity de vuelta al Team Arrow, si no de vuelta a Oliver?
Por Matt Webb Mitovich / 13 Abril 2016, 8:55 AM PDT

In the wake of Laurel Lance aka Black Canary’s vicious death at the hands of Damien Darhk, Team Arrow is down a man, and at a critical time. Might that tragic setback, coupled with a sense of empathy, nudge Felicity back into the fold?

Executive producer Marc Guggenheim tells TVLine, “There are two issues” at play for Felicity, who exited the team shortly after ending her engagement to Oliver. “She’s broken up with Oliver and she’s also broken up with the team essentially. And in Episode 19 [‘Canary Cry,’ airing Wednesday, April 27], we’ll see the undoing of one of those decisions.”

And yes, there is an Arrow reality where Felicity resolves one split and one split only. “One does not mean the other is going to happen,” showrunner Wendy Mericle told TVLine as part of our May Sweeps/Finale Preview Extravaganza. “She could come back to the team and that does not mean that she’s back together with Oliver.”

At the close of the March 30 episode, “Beacon of Hope,” Thea tried to coax Felicity into returning to the team, after seeing the tech whiz ably and enthusiastically fend off that bee-yotch Brie Larvan’s assault on Palmer Tech. Felicity, though, held her ground, indicating that she sees a way for her to offer “hope” to others by way of life-enriching next-gen biotechnology, such as the chip that allowed her to walk again.

Circling back to the recently touched-upon issue of Felicity secretly synching with Team Arrow during her and Oliver’s time in suburbia, Mericle notes, “We started off this season with Felicity really wanting to come back and do this because she herself enjoys this kind of vigilante lifestyle, but that is separate from Oliver. In [the Season 4 premiere], he didn’t want to; it was more about her making herself happy than anything else. So she’ll be grappling in some ways with that.

The coming episodes “will echo [the premiere] in terms of where a lot of the characters end up,” the EP adds, “specifically Oliver and Felicity.”

Guggenheim says of the “Olicity” sitch, “People will have to see if things change or not change” as Season 4 winds to a close. He then reiterates, with regard to the series’ latest death, that which was shared in TVLine’s post mortem Q&A: “We never had to kill Laurel to make Oliver and Felicity a couple. That is really independent from the romantic history that Oliver and Laurel had, and a completely different set of dynamics.”


http://tvline.com/2016/04/13/arrow-seas ... r-reunion/

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- Descripción oficial del 4.20 “Genesis”:

4.20 “Genesis” (04/05/16): DIGGLE ESTÁ CONSUMIDO POR LA CULPA Y BUSCA VENGANZA – Mientras que Oliver (Stephen Amell) y Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) buscan una solución mágica para derrotar a Darhk (la estrella invitada Neal McDonough), un Diggle (David Ramsey) movido por la venganza consigue una pista sobre el paradero de Andy (la estrella invitada Eugene Byrd) y se dirige hacia enfrentar a su hermano. Mientras tanto, Alex (la estrella invitada Parker Young) lleva a Thea (Willa Holland) a unas vacaciones que rápidamente se convierten en una pesadilla. Gregory Smith dirige el episodio escrito por Oscar Balderrama & Emilio Ortega Aldrich (#420).

http://www.comicbookresources.com/artic ... w-synopsis

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- Nuevas imágenes bts del rodaje del episodio final de la S4 (14-28 Abril 2016):




Más fotos de la season finale: AQUÍ


(@Glen__Winter: Having so much fun editing @CW_Arrow 422! ITS GONNA BE EPIC!!!
@davidpaulramsey: Yep, that's me wrapping work at the crack of dawn. Why Cause I work on a kickass show that requires 100%, 100% of the time! #arrowseason
@davidpaulramsey: Arrowseason4 wrap. I am grateful. Thank you all
@stephenamell: Same spot as the scene in the pilot
@charlotteross: Last day on set w my loves @amellywood & @EmilyBett I will miss them sooo much... #Arrow @CW_Arrow #MamaSmoak
@charlotteross: Lots of behind the scenes snaps on our last day of #arrowseason4 on snapchat CharCharRoss
@charlotteross: And..that's a wrap for #smoaknlance season 4 @CW_Arrow Grateful for everyday I got to work w @PaulBlackthorne
@stephenamell: That's a wrap
@emilybett: Officially reached baller status WRAP @willaaaahh @charlotteross2 @davidpaulramsey @melissajin92 @stephenamell @echokells
@entertainmentweekly: Charlotte doesn't need makeup, she wakes up gorgeous. #Arrow @cw_arrow
@entertainmentweekly: There's always a lightness to the Dhark. #Arrow @cw_arrow)





http://yvrshoots.com/2016/04/shoot-arro ... xEVp3p1W4l


Vids:
https://twitter.com/kissfromSaturn/stat ... 1014918144
https://www.instagram.com/p/BEcgt9NRoNe/
https://twitter.com/oliversmoakin/statu ... 7942541312
https://twitter.com/oliversmoakin/statu ... 7942541312
https://twitter.com/sundaytrain/status/ ... 6507171840
https://twitter.com/amellxwood/status/7 ... 7413977090

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- Productor de "Arrow" habla sobre cómo la muerte de Laurel afectará al Team Arrow (EW):

Una gran parte de los fans se han quedado en shock por la muerte de uno de los personajes principales de la serie como era el de 'Laurel'

Ahora, en la sección de spoilers de EW, el productor Andrew Kreisberg ha elaborado un poco más sobre el cómo esta muerte afectará al resto del equipo:

“Ahora mismo, están siendo un poco demasiado cautelosos, con lo que es más qué es lo que les está haciendo tropezar tras la muerte de Laurel. Ellos siguen tambaleándose. Fue un gran golpe para la audiencia, fue un gran golpe para nosotros como escritores y productores, y ciertamente es un gran golpe para los personajes. Laurel ha estado en la serie desde el principio. En algunas maneras, ella era el héroe más verdadero de todos, porque realmente la vemos convertirse en esta heroína. Cuando nos encontramos con Oliver, él ya era Arrow, ya tenía sus habilidades y había pasado por el bautismo de fuego. Vimos cómo Laurel era una abogada haciendo cruzadas, luego se quebró y se reconstruyó a sí misma como esta heroína. El verla caer es triste y trágico y doloroso. Es un recordatorio de que sí todos llevan puestos estos disfraces de Halloween y máscaras, pero hay consecuencias reales a lo que están haciendo y sus vidas están constantemente en peligro; en cualquier momento cualquiera de ellos puede perderlas. Esto es con lo que está realmente lidiando el equipo en los últimos seis episodios de la temporadau.”

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/04/15/sp ... t-spoilers?

- Productor de "Arrow" se abre sobre los infortunios de los Flashbacks y por qué la S5 debería de ser mejor (TVLine):

Productor de "Arrow" se abre sobre los infortunios de los Flashbacks y por qué la S5 debería de ser mejor
Por Matt Webb Mitovich y Vlada Gelman / 17 Abril 2016, 1:07 PM PDT

If you’re enjoying Arrow‘s Season 4 flashback storyline, you’re on an island.

The storytelling device, which since the CW series’ launch has revealed how a mop-topped billionaire brat was honed into the hero known as Arrow, offered compelling correlations during Seasons 1 and 2, as Oliver Queen (played by Stephen Amell) first washed up on ArrowLian Yu and learned some hard lessons at the hands of Yao Fei, Slade Wilson and the Amazo captain.

The flashbacks began failing this series, however, with Season 3’s meandering trip to Hong Kong, while this season’s return to Lian Yu seemingly exists solely to tell us that Oliver encountered Damien Darhk’s mystical idol once before. TVLine recaps regularly sum up the island events in a single sentence, while The CW’s own press site hosts exactly one photo from the glacially paced arc.

Arrow‘s showrunners are not unaware of viewers’ escalating indifference to the flashbacks, and in fact addressed the topic head on at the Writers Guild Festival on Saturday.

“Part of the appeal of the flashbacks – certainly in the first two years, but I think the first three years – is seeing what a big difference Arrowit is between Oliver Queen in the present day and Oliver Queen five years ago,” EP Marc Guggenheim shared. “The problem is that we are telling a five-year story in the flashbacks of Oliver becoming the guy you met in the pilot. So the deeper you get into the flashbacks, the closer he becomes to being that guy, and, thus, you lose that element of the flashbacks that was so interesting, which is how different he was…. That’s something we have struggled with this year.”

In addition to highlighting any disparity between Oliver then and now, the flashbacks endeavor to be “emotionally or thematically connected” to the current storyline, said EP Wendy Mericle, though the writers have also “experimented with having them not speak to what’s going on currently” — which is probably when the flashbacks are most met with ennui by the audience.

So, might it be time to put an arrow in the flashback device and let Arrow simply and exclusively unfold in the present?

Speaking with TVLine after Arrowthe panel discussion, Mericle said that she “loved” Stephen Amell’s work in the earlier flashbacks, “because I thought he really inhabited that character. It was less the very stoic superhero and much more dimensional, because he was so flawed.” And though Oliver has evolved in the flashbacks to a point where, as aforementioned, he’s not a far cry from the man who set out to save his city, Mericle said, “The way we write the story is still very much married to that backstory, and trying to change it up at this point would feel weird.”

But looking ahead to next season, “We know what we’re working up to,” she shared, as the past timeline inches ever closer to where the series began. Thus, the flashbacks are poised to be more engrossing and focused. “The season will be easier to break because we have an endpoint, and we work backwards from there.”

And where might Season 5’s flashbacks take us? Mericle would not confirm the destination, but a recent reference to Russia by Taiana (that’s the name of Oliver’s island gal pal, by the way), would seem to offer a clue. “I don’t want to tip too much,” the EP allowed with a coy smile, “but it’s a very good possibility that we’ll finally find out how Oliver got that Bratva tattoo and how he learned to speak Russian.” (With reporting by Vlada Gelman)


http://tvline.com/2016/04/17/arrow-seas ... ia-bratva/

- Paul Blackthorne habla sobre el luto de Lance', Donna Smoak y otras apariciones en Legends of Tomorrow (IGN):

Paul Blackthorne habla sobre el luto de Lance', Donna Smoak y otras apariciones en Legends of Tomorrow
Por Amy Ratcliffe 27 Abril 2016

Captain Quentin Lance has had quite the winding path over four seasons of Arrow. He's faced loss again and again. He thought he lost Sara in the shipwreck years ago, then he did lose her temporarily, and now, Laurel's gone. Grief is a cornerstone of the character at this point, but it doesn't mean the process gets any easier. In fact, this death is especially difficult for Lance to work through because Laurel was his rock and she's the one who's gone.

We caught up with Paul Blackthorne to discuss how Lance will react to Laurel's death, how his relationship with Donna Smoak will or won't move forward, and we also discussed Blackthorne's upcoming trip to Vietnam to raise awareness about Save the Rhino International.

IGN: In this world where people have been resurrected again and again, is Lance still thinking Laurel can be brought back?

Paul Blackthorne: The next episode is all about him sitting there going, "Hang on a minute, we've brought other people back from the dead – namely my daughter Sara – why can't we do the same for Laurel?" Also, she was the one responsible for bringing Sara back, so there's even more onus upon us to bring her back. She brought somebody else back, let's bring her back. Then the door's shut in his face. It's devastating for him to let go of any hope of bringing her back at all, especially considering the type of world they live in. It's pretty soul destroying for him to not only have to face the grief of Laurel's death but the fact that there is no way to bring her back unlike with Sara.

IGN: Given that Sara was resurrected using the Lazarus Pit, do we see Lance reach out to Nyssa?

Blackthorne: Absolutely. He's looking everywhere for help right now because he knows somewhere in this world, this magical world, there has to be some way to resolve this. He's looking to anybody and everybody he can. He's flipping through the Rolodex – the "Ways to Bring Back Dead Daughters" Rolodex.

IGN: Lance has gone through ups and downs with Team Arrow. How will the loss of Laurel affect his dynamic with them moving forward?

Blackthorne: It's interesting, really, because they've obviously bonded a lot this last season. They got over the bumps in the road. There's been a team effort going on, and Lance has felt part of that and Lance has felt good because of that. Strangely, this death will probably bring them together even more. They're bonding more, in a tragic way obviously.

There's a lot of guilt going around. David Ramsey's character [Diggle] has guilt about Laurel's death, Lance has guilt about it. He testified against Darhk and that didn't exactly help the cause; Darhk threatened Laurel before. Everybody's trying to work out what they could have done differently as people do in the event of death. Everybody's wrestling with their inner demons and trying to work out what they could have done better, how they could have stopped it, but whatever it is, that's not going to change anything – as Lance discovers. They all have to come to terms with life without her.

That's particularly devastating to Lance because Laurel is the cornerstone of his life. He only got through that last grief because of her. Now the person who got him through that grief is not around to get him through this. The only glimmer of light for Lance is the relationship with Donna Smoak, which is interesting to see how that develops before the end of season.

IGN: So, we will see them together again?

Blackthorne: Yeah. Lance has lost a woman who is hugely pivotal in his life, the moral compass of his life. He's obviously never going to replace that. But there's some interesting exploratory scenes on that front with Donna. Lance is really thinking, "Maybe I can shift from everything being about Laurel to something being about Donna." It's still very sad. I find myself feeling depressed talking about it.

IGN: After we experience loss, I feel like we look for anchors and Donna could be his anchor, maybe?

Blackthorne: It's so funny because you never would have thought that when Lance first saw Donna. I always thought he looked at her and thought, "Who is this crazy woman in front of me dressed like this, she's out of her mind, what the hell's going on – oh my god, I'm attracted to her. This is rather strange." He surprised himself with his attraction toward her, especially considering that contrast between her and Dinah is extraordinary. Charlotte Ross plays that character so well; she really brings depth and gravitas to it so it's easy to actually see how a character like Lance could really find something deeply attractive about her. It's been nice with the scenes Charlotte and I've had to explore that a bit more. It's lovely, actually.

IGN: We've learned Lance will be guesting on Legends of Tomorrow and will have to break the news to Sara. I can only imagine how hard it is for him.

Blackthorne: Initially, Lance is reaching out to Sara to tell her, but he can't get a hold of her, and in my mind, I was thinking, "You know what, in some ways, Lance is kind of glad he can't get a hold of her at the moment because the longer she doesn't know, the longer she doesn't know." To leave her in that place knowing how devastating it is when you do know... Lance also then understood more why Laurel didn't tell him about Sara being dead last year. It was a weird thought I/Lance had on all that.

But then as Marc [Guggenheim] has alluded to, there is a moment where Sara pops up and suddenly Lance is confronted with the idea of having to tell her that her sister is dead.

IGN: We've seen several sides of Lance as Arrow's progressed. He's certainly experienced his share of sadness. Which facets of the character, if any, would you like to explore more?

Blackthorne: We've explored so much. That's the great thing when you get into the longevity we have; it's amazing. You get to explore so many sides of people. Lance has been a pretty extraordinary character. Sometimes I pinch myself to think of what's going on here in terms of being with this character for so long. With regards to what comes up in the future, clearly from here it's a whole new chapter, isn't it? It's another gravestone to stand in front of, a new relationship to try and live life through with Donna, the most different the relationship has ever been with Oliver and the team, the closest he's ever been to them. Being a cop, where does he stand with that? Laurel was inextricably tied into that world, too. It's going to be interesting to see where he goes.

IGN: Speaking of exploring, you're traveling to Vietnam soon to talk about Save the Rhino International. Tell me about your trip.

Blackthorne: I'm going to Vietnam because ninety percent of the rhino horns poached in Africa, currently, end up in Vietnam, which is a shocking statistic. And at the current rate of killing, they'll be extinct in ten years, and they've been around for fifty million years. So I’ve launched this t-shirt campaign with Represent.com with Aaron Ramsey, who's one of my football heroes. We've launched this campaign to sell as many t-shirts as we can to raise awareness about this situation and to raise money for Save the Rhino International.

The t-shirts are on sale now through May 16. I'm going to Vietnam to talk about the issues. Arrow is a hit there so I'm going to use that platform. We're going to talk to schools, scientists, doctors, government folks, business leaders. It [having a rhino horn] is considered a big status symbol over there, and people believe it has detoxifying medicinal qualities – it doesn't, it's the same thing as your fingernails – so we're going to go there and bang that message out there. We want to make people really understand what's going on with this crisis.


http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/04/27/ ... appearance

- Ramsey llama a Diggle "Un hombre roto tomando decisiones difíciles" (CBR):

Ramsey llama a Diggle "Un hombre roto tomando decisiones difíciles"
Por Bryan Cairns, 27 Abril 2016

While all of Team Arrow felt the loss of Black Canary in "Eleven-Fifty-Nine," Diggle in particular found himself suffering from emotional blow after blow. Not only did Diggle's brother Andy turn out to be a loyal member of H.I.V.E., his betrayal resulted in the death of Laurel at the hands of Damien Darhk.

Now, as the entire cast of "Arrow" comes to grips with the tragic loss of their friend, Diggle becomes consumed with guilt over trusting his brother. As a result, the vigilante hero has found himself crossing moral boundaries in the name of vengeance.

In a one-on-one interview with CBR News, David Ramsey spoke about the impact Laurel's demise and his brother's betrayal has had on Diggle. The actor delved deep into what is really behind his character's current emotional tailspin, the need he and Team Arrow have to track down and punish Damien Darhk, and what Season 5 holds in store for the popular character.

CBR News: Last episode featured the shocking death of Laurel at the hands of Damien Darhk. How emotional was it filming that hospital scene and saying goodbye not only to Laurel, but Katie Cassidy?

David Ramsey: It was very difficult. Those tears you're seeing in that death scene in the hospital -- every single frame of that scene was heartfelt, genuine and completely devastating. We knew that moment was coming, so we shared some of that.

The crew and the cast genuinely like each other. That's something that can't be said about a lot of shows, particularly going into their fifth season. We are all very close. The questions were, "When can we see you again? Is there any hope of you coming back?" Those were the things we immediately asked of the producers. None of us were happy to see Katie go. It was very difficult to get through and, as I said, every frame of that hospital scene was heartfelt and completely honest.

Prior to his betrayal, Oliver warned Diggle about Andy's loyalties. How heavy does Laurel's fate weigh on Diggle's conscience?

Probably heavier on Diggle than it does on any member of Team Arrow. There's a straight line you can draw: "I trust Andy. He's my brother." Arrow says, "Don't trust him." I trust him anyway. Diggle might as well have put the arrow in Canary himself, in terms of how closely related to her death he is. He draws a straight line. He made the choice to trust Andy, to let him into the inner circle against Oliver's wishes. There's been a complete reversal of relationships here. That would have normally been Diggle's sound advice given to Oliver that he didn't heed, but it was Diggle, this time.

Can he accept the dark side? Can he push away the dark side? Those are the questions Oliver usually starts to ask himself. Diggle goes to a different place. Diggle is dealing with this clearly catastrophic choice to trust his brother and does things we haven't seen him do before. He makes choices we haven't seen him make. He cracks. He's a fractured man. This is a Diggle we haven't ever seen. It's going to be Oliver who helps reel him in. It's great storytelling, and it's a great place for Diggle, a guy who has been the mentor. There's a fall from grace we're going to see.

At the same time, are Oliver and Quentin Lance blaming Diggle for Laurel's death?

No. This is a family; there is no blame in that sense, that Diggle will be ostracized from the team for his part in misjudging Andy. In fact, it's just the opposite. There's an embracing. There's a sharing of grief. "How do we turn this grief into a constructive plan to stop this force that is Damien Darhk?" So, the answer is no. Diggle will not be ostracized by Team Arrow.

Even with the support of family and lloved ones, grief is an emotion that can eat you alive. How does Diggle deal with these feelings of guilt and loss?

Not well. Diggle is not well-equipped with the gray, with the betrayal. There are some great moments that Lyla had with Oliver last season in terms of them understanding that sometimes lives are lost in battle, there's collateral damage. Even her reconciling with Oliver quicker than Diggle did in terms of being kidnapped by Oliver -- we see that, at the beginning of this season, she has let it go. She's willing to move on, understanding that he made a choice. There was a ruse to be played, and Lyla was part of that in order to take down a man for the greater good.
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Diggle doesn't deal well with that. He sees these things in black and white. It's betrayal, period, full stop. These big issues of betrayal and this gray area, Diggle is not very well-equipped to deal with them. He's a "nuts and bolts" kind of guy. "We're on the team, I take the grenade -- period. If someone has to die, I'm the man to do it. You go on with your life. Get the bad guy." That's the type of guy he is.

When we have to deal with people coming back from the dead, people moving faster than the speed of light, a 14-foot, mutant shark -- these are things Diggle is not prepared for. Even those very human elements, like betrayal and this dark side of ourselves that we can't really reconcile with, he doesn't do well with that. In the following episodes, you'll see a Diggle that really has to deal with betrayal, accountability, responsibility and guilt in a way that he's never dealt with. We are going to see a fractured man making hard choices.

What can viewers expect when Diggle finally confronts Andy again?

We can expect a man possessed. We can expect a man that's willing to do whatever it takes to bring him to justice, and more importantly, do whatever it takes to protect the people he loves. You are going to see a Diggle like a man possessed to bring Andy and Damien Darhk down, particularly to bring his brother to justice.

At this point, is Team Arrow's top priority Damien Darhk?

It is. Damien and Andy have it coming to them with the death of Laurel. We saw that scene between Oliver and Felicity where she says, "You have to kill him." There is something we have to pay off here. The driving force of the remaining episodes is to kill Damien Darhk.

The season finale is fast approaching -- how does it pave the way for next year?

What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. That's the big theme. You are going to see a team that's more fractured than it ever has been. The elements that remain of that team, ultimately, in Season 5, will be the strongest of the strong. I'm excited, because you are going to see a team stronger than it has been.


http://www.comicbookresources.com/artic ... rd-choices

- Paul Blackthorne habla sobre "Canary Cry" y el resto de la cuarta temporada (comicbook):

Paul Blackthorne habla sobre "Canary Cry" y el resto de la cuarta temporada
Por Russ Burlingame 27/04/16


Paul Blackthorne's Quentin Lance will be mourning his daughter Laurel as the rest of Team Arrow mourns the death of Black Canary in action during the most recent episode of the series. Blackthorne, who has had a long and complicated relationship with the team, will be playing a man who's mourning his daughter for the third time since the start of the show -- an impressive feat, considering that he only has two daughters.

ComicBook.com's Emily Donn had a chance to talk to Blackthorne about tonight's episode, his charity work, and more. The full interview will run over the weekend, with video, but for now, here's what he had to say about "Canary Cry."

What is Lance feeling at this point?

Well, it’s the fallout now, isn’t it? It’s the emotional fallout of the death of Laurel. Everybody’s trying to reconcile how they deal with this, and Lance is obviously walking around trying to find a way in this magical world that we live in now that we can bring her back. We brought Sara back; why can’t we do the same for Laurel? So it’s him desperately searching for any way which he could possibly bring her back from the dead. She did that for Sara; why couldn’t somebody do that for her?

So it’s a bit desperate, watching him try to pursue that course, but of course it’s only natural that he does, so it’s kind of a sad episode for Lance.

I suppose that’s going to last the rest of the season…

Probably the rest of his life, I suppose. But yes, for the rest of the season, for sure.

Because Laurel became Black Canary, Lance became much more involved with Team Arrow. Is he going to continue working with them as much as he has?

Well, I think everybody’s going to be taking stock at the end of the season in terms of where they are now. Damien Darhk is still lurking around doing his thing, and we’ll see how that resolves. Laurel is gone. The landscape has changed once more, which is what they do so well on the show. As each season starts, there’s a new landscape in which the characters are trying to pick up the pieces and work out how to live their own lives. This will be obviously a challenging time in terms of Lance’s relationship with everybody, but we’ll see how that plays out in Season Five.

He’s sort of lost everyone by this point. His wife has left, Sara has died and then left…

…The dog’s run off.

He’s a country song, isn’t he?

Yeah, he’s a walking country song. He does have Donna, and that’s his one saving grace at the moment. Laurel was the cornerstone of his life, she’s gone, and although she can never be replaced, thankfully there’s a Donna Smoak about, because she does represent some huge notion of love, hope, and that’s probably what’s stopping him from running off to the fridge with a bottle in his hand.

Do you think this might affect his relationship with Felicity, then, that the woman he’s seeing has a daughter about the same age as Laurel?

I think it would affect anybody’s relationship when you’re seeing their mother or father, right? “By the way, I’m sleeping with your mother.” “Okay, Lance, no problem.” Of course it has an effect on the relationship. When I was trying to break up with Donna because he was protecting her from Darhk, and then Felicity rolls in on her wheelchair and says “What’d you do to my mom?” And Lance says “Why do you think it’s my fault?” and she says, b”Because you’re a man.” I remember as Lance looking at her and thinking “Geez. The pain the daughter is going through because of what the mother has been through.” Seeing that transferred hurt form mother to daughter, it’s such a human sort of trait to do that.

I think that’s one of the great aspect of Arrow and the writing: it’s not just the stunts and the action. It’s about real characters with real lives who are struggling to understand each other and themselves, and that scene really encapsulated that for me. There’s some rich character stuff going on in this show.

Felicity’s father is coming back, and Dinah of course for the funeral. Are Donna and Quentin sort of dealing with each other’s exes in the next few weeks?

Yeah, a bit more drama.

We also saw you on Legends of Tomorrow last week and gave some insight into Sara and Quentin’s relationship than we’ve seen before. Did you create backstory for that?

It’s kind of weird: the wardrobe had two different costumes. It was like “Did I pack a bag for this time travel?” We always create a backstory. It’s like “How did we get here? What happened?” You always find a way to justify it. You have to, or you don’t have a scene unless you know why you’re there.

And how was that wig?

Itchy! Itchy wigs.

Do you like how you look in it?

They do a good job of it; I think it looks alright, the wig, but it’s a bit weird seeing it now. i’m used to seeing my shaven head now. It reminds me of my youth.

What’s the difference in the way you played losing Laurel versus losing Sara?

That’s a good question. Sara was the little tear-away in our family, and the little rebel. So somehow it was never a surprise that the path that she took, and losing her was huge, but somehow less surprising in a way than losing Laurel. Obviously, there was a huge bond with father and daughter with Sara, but there is a really really strong bond with Laurel.

She was sort of Lance’s protege in a way, because Lance would look at her as a child and see how smart she was and would instill in her the morals and ethics of life, of what’s right and what’s wrong. Part of our backstory was that we would play the “right-wrong game,” and she was so smart, she’d end up teaching Lance things, even when she was a kid. Her awareness was so much greater than grumpy Lance’s was. Lance could really see that she was going to blossom into something much more than what Lance ever was. And he would tell her, the more you learn about the law, the more chance you’ll have of finding justice. So there was a greater closeness in that sense, rather than Sara, who would be running off to music festivals with a guitar on her back.

As awful as it really was to lose Sara, losing Laurel cuts close to the bone.

And at some point, he’s probably going to learn that Darhk’s last words to her were blaming him for her death.

Yeah. [Pause] It’s funny, actually, because I was thinking about that a lot with the script: would the team have ever told Lance that’s what he said? And I don’t think they would. In some future way it will come out, whether it’s on the page or I bring it into backstory or something, but I don’t think any of them would have had the heart to tell Lance.

They do have a long history of not telling the truth to protect each other…

Exactly. But clearly he did what he did. Actions speak louder than words and his actions were pretty loud. It doesn’t take much to work out that that revenge had much to do with Lance’s actions in the past and testifying against Darhk in the courtroom and in a twisted way, he obviously gave her enough reason to kill her, which is something that will haunt Lance forever.


http://comicbook.com/2016/04/27/arrows- ... f-the-fou/

[Shelby]

- Descripción oficial del 4.21 “Monument Point”:

4.21 “Monument Point”: (11/05/16): TOM AMANDES REGRESA COMO NOAH KUTTLER – Cuando el Team Arrow descubre cuál es el próximo movimiento de Damien Darhk (la estrella invitada Neal McDonough) Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) se da cuenta de que necesita pedirle a su padre, Noah Kuttler (la estrella invitada Tom Amandes), que la ayude. Noah y Oliver (Stephen Amell) tienen una charla a corazón abierto que deja a Oliver inquieto. Kevin Tancharoen dirige el episodio escrito por Speed Weed & Jenny Lynn (#421).

http://www.greenarrowtv.com/arrow-4-21- ... r-returns/

[Shelby]

- Paul Blackthorne On What's Next For Lance In 'Arrow' (AccessHollywood):

http://bcove.me/09e7s6t9