Arrow: Andrew Kreisberg Talks About The State Of Oliver & Laurel

After a screening that was held today showing off the next two action-packed episodes of Arrow (read our impressions of “The Man Under The Hood” here), Executive Producer Andrew Kreisberg participated in a press Q&A where he talked a bit about what is coming up between now and the end of Season 2. Among the topics discussed — and one we got a lot of questions about on our Twitter feed —  was the current status of the relationship between Oliver and Laurel, especially now that – with the end of “Deathstroke” – she knows about his alter ego.

Kreisberg appealed to the iconic comic book pairing as being like “Lois and Clark” – “they can break up, get together, sleep together, break up, get married, get divorced, she forgets him,” he points out… but he did admit that with the success of the show, “Lauriver” is one of those things that they can take their time on.

“It’s always our desire to just speed through story,” Kreisberg admitted.” I think the fans appreciate that, just blowing through things and not [saving] like ‘well, we’ll do that in Season 4.’ No. We’ll do that now. On the other hand, the one thing success has enabled us to do is to slow play some things, and I think that we’ve really adopted this mantra – we give people what they need, even if that’s not what they want,” he explained.

“Having Oliver and Laurel get together in Season 1 was what people needed then, but then they needed them to go on a break, so Oliver can have his storyline with Sara for this season, which is what felt right to us. He has women in his life. He has Laurel, he has Felicity… Helena’s doing a 10-to-20 stretch… so I think that Laurel will always be one of the closest people to him, whether that’s romantic or not,” Andrew continued.

Kreisberg is well aware that some fans have questioned decisions and the sanity of the folks bringing Arrow to life, and that inevitably, some fans will be upset, but there is a plan. “I think that a lot of the things that we have done, have been leading up to what we’re doing in the finale, and then moving that forward to Season 3,” he said.

Arrow returns with “The Man Under The Hood” Wednesday, April 16 at 8PM on The CW.