Arrow: New Showrunner Beth Schwartz Talks Season 7 Arrow: New Showrunner Beth Schwartz Talks Season 7
Arrow Executive Producer Beth Schwartz previews Season 7 at Comic-Con Arrow: New Showrunner Beth Schwartz Talks Season 7

There’s a new boss in town, and armed with her texts from Mom and a long history with Arrow, Beth Schwartz will be guiding the series for the upcoming seventh season, premiering October 15 on The CW.

KSiteTV correspondent Carla Day attended Comic-Con International in San Diego to get some intel from the press room, where the first roundtable question asked of Beth was about her approach to the series.

“I’ve been on the show since Season 1, so the show is pretty much in my blood at this point,” Schwartz said. “I don’t know if I have an approach as much as I really care about these characters, and I want to make sure to honor the creator, and to make sure that this is the season that we actually get deeper into the characters.”

When new showrunners take over a series, there is a bit of a creative reset, and it was wondered if, since Season 6 left off with several threads dangling, there still would be that opportunity.

“I feel like last season did set up for a good reset, because Oliver’s in prison and his identity is out,” Beth said. “That’s something we’ve never done on the show, so it does open a lot of cool, creative stories for us, that is going to feel fresh.”

“The first episode is amazing,” Schwartz promised. “I think the fans are gonna go nuts. You see Oliver like you’ve never seen him before. All of our characters are in a new role, in trying to figure out how to save the city and honor Oliver’s request at the end of Season 6.”

“It doesn’t look great for him,” she continued about what prison will look like for Oliver Queen. “We’ll be seeing some familiar faces, people from the past that he put in there. They’re definitely going to make sure his life is a living Hell there.”

“This season is all about redemption for Oliver,” Schwartz says of this season’s theme. “He has a far way to go to redeem his name, redeem the Green Arrow, and so on.”

You can see video from the roundtable below, and if you visit the KSiteTV YouTube page, you can find more Arrow videos!

Craig Byrne

Craig Byrne has been writing about TV on the internet since 1995. He is also the author of several published books, including Smallville: The Visual Guide and the show's Official Companions for Seasons 4-7.