Arrowverse Producers Discuss Oliver Queen’s Fate In Crisis on Infinite Earths

If you have not watched Hour One of Crisis on Infinite Earths yet, you really don’t want to read any further!

SPOILER ALERT: Oliver Queen is dead.

It what many may have thought to be unimaginable, the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover killed Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) a little sooner than many may have expected — at the climax of Part One, with four episodes (plus two additional episodes of Arrow) left to go! This came very soon after Oliver gave a costume to his legacy — his daughter, Mia.

What could come next?

“The leads all have a different take on how to grieve or handle Oliver’s death,” Batwoman Executive Producer Caroline Dries teased about Crisis’ second hour. “Some of them believe it’s over. Some of them believe we can fix this. Some of them are not wanting to even think about it. So there’s everyone has a different approach to it, and that helps generate the story for the episode,” she said.

For those watching the Arrowverse, Oliver Queen’s death may not have been a surprise — but when it happens may have been.”Elseworlds strongly suggested that Oliver was going to die, and then in the Arrow seventh season finale we we told the audience ‘Oliver is going to die in crisis,’ Marc Guggenheim added. “So the dilemma that we presented to our own selves was that we spoiled our own story. If Oliver dying isn’t the surprise, what is the surprise? The timing of him dying.We figured the audience is expecting that Oliver would die in the climax in the fifth hour, so if we went in the exact opposite direction and killed him off at the end of Hour One, we accomplish two things: We hopefully surprise the audience, and we also establish the stakes, that if Oliver Queen can die, then no one is safe.”

Legends of Tomorrow’s Keto Shimizu echoes Dries’ statement that this will affect characters from many shows. “It sets up really interesting stories and conflicts between all these characters — all these leads of these different shows — who have different ways of reacting to this tragedy,” she says. “You get to see them all grieve together in a really compelling way.”

We probably have not seen the last of Oliver Queen, even in Crisis, as — unless they were fake to throw us off — The CW has released photos of Stephen with David Ramsey from Hour Three, after all. But whatever it is the spectre of the future may bring, Oliver Queen went out like a hero.

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