Hey youtubers it’s Charlie and now that Arrow is officially on break it’s time to
talk about season 3.
The cast has already started teasing what the characters are going to be doing and Stephen
Amell even talked a little about the new main villain.
So what I’m going to do is an early breakdown of what everyone on the show has been saying
and what it might mean.
If you’re finding me for the first time I do DC and Marvel videos every week, this
week is extra special because of Days of Future Past this week.
So be sure to subscribe to get everything and leave me suggestions for bonus vids to
do.
So these 10 things aren’t in any particular order, but I’m starting off with the fun
stuff.
Careful for spoilers from Arrow Season 2 if you haven’t seen it.
Here we go 1st - Merlyn will not be the main villain.
But he will be sticking it to Team Arrow.
So you can think of him as more of an antagonist and if we’re lucky an anti-hero.
If you’re not familiar with the term, it just means he’s a bad guy that the writers
want us to root for.
And he’s John Barrowman, how could you not root for him?
Merlyn and Oliver aren’t enemies the way Slade as Oliver’s enemy, but John Barrowman
is much better with long speeches and subtelty.
As opposed to Manu Bennett, who’s just much more of a big physically imposing guy in the
Schwarzenegger tradition.
So we’re going to see a lot more dinner scenes like this between Oliver and Brother
Blood.
The immovable object meets the unstoppable force for chinese takeout.
That being the case, I’d recommend you go back and watch some of Merlyn’s speeches
from season 1.
Especially starting at around episode 13.
I don’t want to do Manu any disservice, but John Barrowman is much closer to say,
like a Tom Hiddleston Loki, than Bane.
They both have their specialties.
Captain Jack is just a more devilish playful villain.
But now Merlyn has no more reason to hide his secret identity as the Dark Archer, so
he’ll be much more direct in the way he acts against Oliver and Team Arrow.
Number 2 - Merlyn will be getting a new costume
John Barrowman is a cast regular this season, which is an upgrade from being a guest actor.
It means he gets paid a ton more and gets to be in way more episodes.
He’ll be one of the core characters.
Even more so than in Season 1.
He was asked what he wanted now that he had all this newfound importance and he said a
less claustrophobic costume.
He said he wanted a black version of Oliver’s costume.
I wonder if he also meant black leather pants?
I can already hear the jokes.
Whatever his Dark Archer costume ends up being, it will be super cool.
But plan on some new evil guy threads for his new expanded role.
Number 3 - Felicity is going to get herself into a lot more trouble
When you have a super powered boyfriend like The Flash, you get to take more risks.
Just ask Lois Lane.
She used to almost get killed every week before DC retconned her relationship with Superman.
We’re also going to learn a lot more about Felicity’s backstory.
My early theories are that they’ll incorporate a few elements of the comic book version of
her character and just do that Laurel thing where they twist it into a much more practical
thing.
So in the comics for example, she’s the mother of one half of Firestorm.
If you don’t know who Firestorm is, he’s a superhero that’s made up of two different
people and the Firestorm Matrix.
It’s like this timey wimey construct whereby two people become one and they can just disassemble
and reassemble matter into whatever they want.
I do not see Arrow doing that anytime soon.
But they could pull a few easter eggs from the Firestorm or Justice League universe.
Like tying her father and mother to other known organizations like ARGUS or HIVE.
Good or Bad, there’s no way Felicity’s parents are going to be boring normal people.
Quentin holds the distinction of being the most normal Dad on the show.
No one is going to swoop in and take that from him.
Number 4 - Thea will Train With Merlyn
John Barrowman also talked about how Thea is going to learn to be tougher as she said
during the finale.
He wasn’t explicit on how he was going to help her become tougher.
But she will be physically and mentally training and possible sticking it to Team Arrow and
the people who have been lying to her for so long.
AKA Oliver and Roy.
Mostly Roy though.
So look forward to their relationship going to a really weird place.
They still really care about each other.
So when they fight it will be like Batman fighting Talia.
Roy is way less cynical than Batman, but you get the idea.
A lot of you were asking me about Thea’s persona and suggesting Cheshire.
Anything is possible, but the first half of the season all I’m expecting is the same
thing they’ve been doing with Laurel recently.
Not focusing on comic book names, just showing her using weapons with more and more confidence.
I think it’s going to take Thea all season to even get close to a comic book persona.
Think about how long it took Roy to get his mask.
And no one has even called him by a superhero name yet.
So even he hasn’t got a persona.
Even though the producers have said he’s the Arsenal version of Roy Harper.
No one on the show has said it during an episode yet.
Number 5 - Roy Will Be Arsenal Full Time
Now that the distraction formerly known as Thea is out of his life, as far as he knowns.
He’ll do what every dude does and just throw himself into his work so he won’t have to
think about her.
Until she starts shooting arrows at his face.
Because he gets to be Arsenal all season, I’m expecting his side plot to go to Bludhaven
and they’ll give him some Nightwing stories.
Arrow does a good job of taking comic book stories and repurposing them in interesting
ways.
So there aren’t a lot of direct page to page adaptations, but I think Roy will be
doing some very Nightwing-like things.
I know everyone wants Robbie Amell to be Nightwing on the show, now that Tomorrow People has
been cancelled.
Number 6 - There will be no Nightwing On Arrow, no Dick Grayson that is
That’s basically the role Roy inhabits.
He’s the Nightwing to Oliver’s Batman.
But I do think we’ll see another superhero from the comics, and the main villain of course.
But I don’t think we’ll be seeing a ton of Batman characters beyond what we’ve already
seen.
Gotham on Fox is basically using all those people and for another show to use them too,
it would be just way too crazy.
The League of Assassins doesn’t count.
Because Arrow kind of claimed them in primetime first.
Number 7 - Laurel will get a lot Closer to Black Canary
I don’t want to say Black Canary outright, she could be White Canary, so Sara could still
inhabit the character.
But Kate Cassidy said in a recent interview that she had been upping her workout regimen
and she felt like Sara passed the torch to Laurel in the finale when she gave her the
jacket.
So I think that means we’ll see Laurel do some hands on crime fighting, not necessarily
as Black Canary, but I do think she’ll take a much more proactive role in taking down
freak of the week villains.
A lot of you asked about who would train her, I think Oliver is the only person for that
job.
Number 8 - Crossovers With The Flash
Stephen Amell already confirmed he was in the pilot episode as we saw in the trailer.
But there will be characters bouncing back and forth between both shows.
Those will take two different forms.
The most important kind will be episodes like the pilot and the two-parter on Arrow where
they introduced the Barry Allen character.
Those will involve the lead characters Stephen Amell and Grant Gustin going on each other
shows.
I’m only expecting that to happen in two episodes of the flash and two episodes of
Arrow.
Probably one big story broken into two or four parts.
Like the reason Oliver goes to central city will also be part of the reason Barry comes
to Starling City.
The other kind of crossover will be like episode 19, where you have one or more secondary character
visiting.
This would be like Felicity visiting Barry, but not Oliver.
And Caitlin Snow and Cisco visiting Felicity, but not Barry.
You get the idea.
It’s not confirmed how many episodes of The Flash we’ll get, but I’m expecting
a full season pick up with 23 episodes.
So I think only about 3 or four of those will be crossovers of varying degrees.
And the same goes for Arrow.
It’s not going to be like an every week kind of thing.
Number 9 - More Suicide Squad and ARGUS
Amanda Waller is a key component of Oliver’s new flashbacks.
So naturally she has to become a bigger part of the present day story.
And where there’s Amanda Waller, there’s the Suicide Squad.
Plus Diggle and Lyla are having a baby.
I think that pregnancy will probably run across the course of the season.
It just seems like her going into labor during the climax of the season would be a good story
beat to hit.
But Oliver’s child is a bit of a wild card.
In know a lot of you have been commenting that it was a throwaway moment just meant
to show us how Moira was really a good person, but with the mother raising the child in Central
City, I just feel like a 7 year old Connor Hawke would be too much fun to visit in an
Arrow Flash crossover.
I’m not expecting to see him a lot though.
But fingers crossed that we get a casting announcement for a 7 year old looking actor
on the show.
and Number 10 - The New Big Bad
So Stephen Amell teased the new villain by comparing them to Slade.
He said where Slade had been omnipresent - meaning everywhere at the same time, this new villain
would be much less so.
I think what he meant was that you had Slade who existed in all points and times of the
story, he was all up in Team Arrow’s face in the present, and he was a core part of
Oliver’s time on the Island.
So in season 2, there was never a moment when Slade wasn’t right next to him or watching
him from a distance.
The new villain is probably going to be someone Oliver hasn’t met yet.
Someone who isn’t directly tied to him in the way Slade was.
It will be much less personal.
Based on that we can eliminate Merlyn.
Because he’s almost close enough to be Oliver’s father.
And through Thea, they’re even linked by blood.
I also think saying the villain won’t be omnipresent means it won’t necessarily be
HIVE, the organization that is.
It will still be one person.
I do expect them to stick with tradition and use someone from the comics, but the list
of viable threats that fit the bill is pretty small.
There’s Vandal Savage, Ra’s Al Ghul, Doctor Light, Amanda Waller, China White or Maxwell
Lord.
Amanda Waller is the long shot, and really I expect their choice to be someone practical,
without crazy superpowers.
Doctor Light would be a way for them to connect both Arrow and Flash season finales though.
Even though Zoom is the Flash Big Bad, I think it’s possible that they could put off a
showdown between him and Barry till season 2.
But now it’s your turn, let me know who you want the villain to be, remember.
Think about someone who exists in both the Flash and Arrow universes.
Or at least in the Justice League Universe.
I’ll be doing a Q&A tomorrow like normal, so leave me all your questions.
I’ll be traveling so I’ll probably be posting it late.
Plus there’s also a new trailer for Big Hero Six.
I’ll try to do a video for that too.
It’s the first animated movie Disney is doing with Marvel since they bought the company.
Right now click here for my breakdown of the Flash trailer and click here for the Q&A.
I’ll add the annotation as soon as I post it.
Thanks for watching, see you guys tomorrow.
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