Stephen Amell played the titular role of Arrow during the CW show’s entire 8-season run. In an Entertainment Weekly interview with Amell, he talks about the rigorous demands the first season had:
The first season was very, very difficult for me. Everything was going great. They wanted my character to be very stoic and disaffected, right? And then the show came out and got a great rating and was a smash hit, and then all of a sudden I had an acting coach, because all of a sudden now that the show was a hit, people wanted to have an opinion. We were on our own for the first nine, 10 episodes. That was very, very tough.
Stephen Amell went on to add that he was absolutely “done” after his experience with one season:
At the end of the first season, once I realized I was done, I flew back from Vancouver and I did The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, and Carol Burnett was the first guest. We went for dinner afterwards with my buddy and my wife, and he goes, “You’re done, man. You’re done with season 1.” And I go, “Yeah, I am.” And I got sick really bad. I got walking pneumonia. I was sick until the fourth episode of season 2.
Despite all this, Amell would continue to star in the show for seven more seasons of The CW show.
Stephen Amell Was the First Choice To Play Arrow
Stephen Amell was the first person to read for the character Arrow and was cast by David Rapaport, who has hired numerous CW characters since. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Rapaport spoke about the choice of casting Amell:
They said to me, ‘We want someone that looks like a superhero and can act. I had just cast Stephen [Amell] in a guest spot on 90210, and it was a pretty dramatic role. He had the muscles and that kind of dark mysterious look behind his eyes, so he was the first person I thought of when I read the Arrow script.
Amell, in the interview with EW, recalls an anecdote of how he heard about the role from his cousin brother, Robbie Amell, who was also supposed to audition for the role. Robbie Amell read the pilot and pictured Stephen Amell the “entire time”.
Looks like both Robbie Amell and David Rapaport pictured Stephen Amell playing the role of Arrow, so there’s no surprise that he bagged the role right after his first reading. Stephen Amell adds:
I went in, read, and Dave Nutter looked at me, and he goes, “Can you go outside for a couple minutes?” And I go, “Yeah, for sure.” And I came back into the room, and there are 11 more people there, and they just had me read again….I got the job the following Tuesday morning.
Stephen Amell played the hell out of his role, despite his arc being overshadowed throughout the series.
Our Thoughts on Why Arrow Went Downhill After Season 1 & 2
Arrow started on a strong note, but eventually became a mess because of the choice of introducing multiple story arcs that fans were just not interested in, along with the forced inclusion of the Arrowverse. The drama between Arrow and Felicity would often stop the good momentum the show had when dealing with its villains. After a point, the show became a storytelling cacophony of flashbacks, love triangles, crossovers, and formulaic villains.
Let’s break down each season and see why the show went downhill after the first two seasons.
Arrow Season 1 started with a dark and gritty take on Oliver’s Arrow, giving the show a very Batman-esque feel to the vigilante. The season saw Arrow take on the Dark Archer on a street level that many fans appreciated, given that Smallville had just ended and left a void in DC’s TV domain.
Season 2 saw one of the coolest villains and a formidable match to Arrow, Deathstroke, come to life in the form of Manu Bennett’s Slade Wilson. With Deathstroke’s cunningness, we saw Arrow face-to-face with a villain who exploited every weakness of Arrow’s, from his personal life to his vigilante life. The action sequences were well-choreographed, and the stakes were genuine with minimal plot armour.
After this season, unfortunately, Arrow started moving in multiple directions, taking away from the tone it established. Season 3 followed the establishment of Ra’s al Ghul’s League of Assassins, who took the show to a global scale despite being an underwhelming adversary following Slade Wilson.
Season 4 took audiences to the realm of fantasy that involved Damien Darhk, a magic user who faced off against the emerald vigilante in another end-of-the-world plot. The show also took too much time focusing on Oliver and Felicity’s relationship drama.
Season 5 was the closest redemption the show had, where the writing was back on track, with Arrow battling the antihero Adrian Chase. This was a personal attack on Oliver, as Chase had formerly helped Arrow in his pursuit of justice as the district attorney of Star City. Thematically, this season made more sense, exploring Oliver’s guilt of being a hero or antihero.
Season 6 was received with mixed responses and eventually fell apart mid-season. Arrow’s adversary was the Dragon (Ricardo Diaz), whose arc was beaten to death.
Season 7 saw Oliver in prison for seven episodes, which attested to the show’s dark and gritty tone once again. Unfortunately, the villain Emiko Queen was so underdeveloped that it was easy to forget her presence once the season was done.
Finally, with season 8, Arrow saw a satisfying finale, despite only having 10 episodes. Most of the previous seasons had what many considered to be filler, but with this season’s tight story arc, Oliver had a cathartic finish to his run as Arrow in the show.
| SEASON | YEARS | VILLAIN | ROTTEN TOMATOES POPCORN METER |
| S1 | 2012–2013 | Malcolm Merlyn (Dark Archer) | 81% |
| S2 | 2013–2014 | Slade Wilson (Deathstroke) | 85% |
| S3 | 2014–2015 | Ra’s al Ghul/League of Assassins | 67% |
| S4 | 2015–2016 | Damien Darhk | 40% |
| S5 | 2016–2017 | Prometheus (Adrian Chase) | 62% |
| S6 | 2017–2018 | Ricardo Diaz (Dragon) | 43% |
| S7 | 2018–2019 | Emiko Queen | 46% |
| S8 | 2019–2020 | Crisis on Infinite Earths | 51% |
Judging by the Popcorn meter, the decline of the show is evident. Fans who made it all the way through to the finale were far and few between, as viewership ratings also reduced over the seasons with occasional spikes.
What did you think of Stephen Amell as Arrow? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Arrow is currently streaming on Netflix in the U.S.
