Arrow is one of the best reviewed shows on the CW and arguably the crown jewel in DC’s live action collection. The series has already been renewed for a third season. However, the show has come under some fire from fans who are upset that they take so many mini-breaks between new episodes. Now the show’s titular archer, Stephen Amell, is digging into his quiver to fire back about the production delays. Although, Amell hasn’t been too hard on his fans. The actor has been teasing the upcoming season finale by leaking some behind the scenes photos.

The CW’s Arrow has been getting and better, each and every week. However, it’s when they take a week off that the fans start to get upset. Now Stephen Amell has taken the backlash personality, mostly because they have been lashing out at him personally. Amell took to Facebook to defend himself, writing:

“1. I don’t run the network, or the studio. I’m not involved in post-production or any type of special effects. I don’t score the episodes, or color correct them. Which is to say, I have no effect on them, once principal photography is finished. Stephen Amell, Teases, Renewed, Arrow, Season, Finale, Episode, Break,Spoilers,
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2. I hate breaks AS MUCH AS EVERYONE ELSE. My favorite thing about the latter seasons of 24 and Lost? They’d start later in the year and air uninterrupted until the finale. Love that strategy. If I had any input on the show beyond reciting my lines and doing as many crunches as possible, I’d advocate that strategy. So… knowing all of this, instead of complaining–legitimately or lightheartedly–about the number of mini breaks the show takes, why don’t we just all go on living our lives.”

To be fair the show might take a few one-week-long breaks, but most other series take fewer but longer hiatuses. By comparison, Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. has aired a total of seven new episodes this year, where Arrow has aired nine. Despite the fact that S.H.I.E.L.D. got a one week head start, took longer breaks, being off the air for around three to four weeks at a time. This is likely to do with the show’s change in direction and it’ tie-in to the Captain America 2.

Stephen Amell has promised that Arrow will run straight until the season finale starting next week’s all new episode.

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“Arrow” Season 2 is inching toward its finale, and information about that last episode is slowly beginning to leak out. And it looks like the season finale will be “Unthinkable.”

That’s the title of the episode anyway.

As announced by GreenArrowTV on Tuesday (April 8) an image of the title page clearly shows that the finale is called “Unthinkable.” It was written by “Arrow” show runners and executive producers Marc Guggenheim and Andrew Kreisberg, while John Behring will be the director.

Alas, there isn’t much more news about the finale as of yet. That’s fair, considering the episode is being made in the same week. It does sound like a doozy though. Star Stephen Amell posted a couple of updates to his Facebook page about the episode:

“This afternoon we have the table read for the season finale. I’m flabbergasted,” Amell wrote early on Monday (April 7). A few hours later, there was an update: “Finales are like the playoffs. I’m out.”

It takes a lot to wear out Amell, so this could be big.

Fans will find out when the “Arrow” Season 2 finale airs Wednesday, May 14 at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.

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There’s no new Arrow tonight. Those who tune into the CW tonight at 8:00 expecting to see Oliver and Deathstroke face off will be disappointed to find “Time of Death” airing instead. But I mean, in terms of reruns, that was a pretty great episode so before you start chucking stuff at your television, flash back to the memory of Felicity being adorably loopy on “aspirin.” And whatever you do, don’t blame Stephen Amell for this break between episodes.

The actor went on record recently to address complaints about the gaps between new episodes, telling his Facebook followers:

I hate breaks AS MUCH AS EVERYONE ELSE. My favorite thing about the latter seasons of 24 and Lost? They’d start later in the year and air uninterrupted until the finale. Love that strategy. If I had any input on the show beyond reciting my lines and doing as many crunches as possible, I’d advocate that strategy.

So… knowing all of this, instead of complaining – legitimately or lightheartedly – about the number of mini breaks the show takes, why don’t we just all go on living our lives.

Complaining to me is like yelling at Rogers for the Blue Jays being terrible. Actually… bad example. We should blame Rogers consistently and with all of our hearts.

But do you see what I mean? I’m sure you do.

Ok?… OK!! (xoxoxoxo cyber hug)

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Although Stephen Amell was cast as a superhero, it wasn’t necessarily the one he would’ve picked. Asked Saturday at Seattle’s Emerald City Comicon which superhero he’d play if it were entirely his choice, the “Arrow” star name-dropped the Main Man.

“I’m gonna go with Lobo,” the Toronto-born Amell told a packed convention hall at the noon panel. “Lobo was my favorite comic as a kid. I loved Lobo. I was way too young to read it.”

In its first season, which began in 2012, “Arrow” returned Oliver Queen (Amell) to his native Starling City after five years on a Pacific island. He reappeared with a cut physique, deadly skills with a bow and a list of upper-crust ne’er-do-wells that needed killing. In the current, second season, Oliver has attempted to renounce deadly force, squaring him more with the nonlethal stunt archer of comics history.

The show’s success precedes several new DC Comics TV adaptations, which had threatened to go dormant with the end of “Smallville” in 2011. Now the CW action-drama has wedged open the door for “The Flash,” to air this fall on The CW, and “Gotham,” slated for Fox.

The show hinges on the remarkably physical Amell, 32, who arrived at the panel after shooting until 4:30 a.m. in nearby Vancouver, British Columbia, and then putting in a full morning autograph session for fans.

In an hour of genial give-and-take, Amell told fans that “Arrow,” with cooperative interaction from DC Entertainment, has grown beyond its original premise to deliver superhero action without the benefit of superpowers. That should be clear from this season’s guest shot from Barry Allen (Grant Gustin), originally intended as a backdoor pilot for the “Flash” show.

“When I sat down with the executive producers after the first season, they said, ‘You know that no-power rule?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ ‘Well, we’re not gonna stick with that anymore.’”

Also gone, apparently, for the time being: Oliver Queen’s repeated condemnation, “You have failed this city!”

“I miss saying that line,” Amell said. “I do. I’m bugging the producers. We’re hopefully gonna find a way to work it into the show sometime in the next season.”

Amell’s physique, and the workout showcased in “Arrow’s” credits on what one fan called “the bar chin-up lift thingy” (it’s actually a salmon ladder), were the subject of several questions. Many fans wanted to know how he maintains his fitness.

“First, you have to be faced with the prospect of being shirtless in front of millions of people on television,” he said. “It’s a very particular and paralyzing type of fear. So that in and of itself works up your metabolism.

“Secondarily,” said the new father, “I get to carry around an infant all the time. Good for arms. Really good for arms.”

He also tries to ensure that in those workout montages, it’s all Amell, all the time.

“Every once in a while, they’ll want it not to be me, and so my workaround there is, ‘Well, I’m gonna do it shirtless.’ They have a stunt double, but not a body double, right? ’Cause, how could they?”

After the “Arrow” pilot won the show a series greenlight, Amell buried himself in multiple comics interpretations of Green Arrow, including Andy Diggle’s “Green Arrow: Year One” and Mike Grell’s “The Longbow Hunters” miniseries and “Green Arrow” monthly series. He sought to be fully aware of the universe Oliver Queen inhabits.

“You don’t want to be too measured and look like you’re telegraphing something,” he said, “but at the same time you want to know what’s out there in the world and what’s existing.”

With movement in the DC film franchises toward a “Justice League” adaptation, Amell has let it be known he’d like to again embody Green Arrow on the big screen — even as he remains dedicated to his weekly show.

“I’m completely overly competitive,” he admitted. “And the thought of somebody else playing Oliver Queen makes me want to smash that head through that table. But for the time being, it’s very difficult for me to look past filming our 22nd episode of the season right now.”

But if approached, he said, “I would definitely be open. And I appreciate all the support.”

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Placed behind a read more, so don’t read if you don’t want to be potentially spoiled!

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Anne Rice’s announcement that she was bringing back smooth-talking sexy vampire Lestat in Prince Lestat sparked a legion of casting suggestions should the book—or another in the Vampire Chronicles series—head to the big screen.

Rice’s Facebook page, fans have called for everyone from Jared Leto and Tom Hiddleston to Rupert Friend and Hugh Dancy to play the bisexual bloodsucker, portrayed by Tom Cruise in 1994?s Interview with a Vampire and Stuart Townsend in 2002?s Queen of the Damned.

But the famed author had some casting choices of her own—two, in fact, that show she’s very up on her genre movies and TV. “I love all the Lestats you’re posting on the page, the handsome actors and charmers,” she posted. “But let us not forget Chris Hemsworth who has Lestat’s square face, cheerful eyes, and voice. And let us not forget Stephen Amell either, who also greatly resembles Lestat and has the body and face of a god.”

We can’t argue with you there, Anne.

But Rice’s picks are beefier than we’re used to imagining the Brat Prince: Hemsworth bulked up to play Thor in The Avengers and his two spinoff movies, and Amell is seriously cut as Oliver Queen in the CW’s Arrow. Rice also suggested Crossroads actor Anson Mount, who, she wrote “seemed at times to be Lestat prowling the frontier in [AMC's Western series] Hell on Wheels.”

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I’ve added quite a few magazine scans from last year to the gallery. Arrow updates coming soon!

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The CW’s ‘Arrow‘ will finally return from its Olympic slumber next Wednesday with the tick-tock of Oliver’s “Time of Death,” introducing ‘Prison Break’ baddie Robert Knepper as the infamous DC villain. Before the clock strikes however, we’ve got the full set of photos and a new preview for next week’s ‘Arrow’ return.
While we’ve seen plenty of photos of the villain himself, William Tockman (Knepper) has nothing on the terror of the Lance’s full family reunion, following Sara (Caity Lotz)’s big reveal from prior installment “Heir to the Demon.” Oliver attempts to smooth the transition, but knowing Laurel, the booze will be flowing heartily. Elsewhere, what’s got Felicity into such damning trouble with our DC villain?

Here’s what The CW had to say of next week’s “Time of Death”:

ROBERT KNEPPER AND ALEX KINGSTON GUEST STAR — Oliver (Stephen Amell) brings Sara (Caity Lotz) into the Arrow team. Watching Oliver and Diggle (David Ramsey) spar with Sara and talk old scars, Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) starts to feel left out.

The team is investigating a villain named William Tockman, a.k.a. The Clock King (guest star Robert Knepper), who is a brilliant thief armed with technology that can open any bank vault in Starling City. After The Clock King infiltrates the computer systems in the lair, Felicity feels pressure to prove her worth. When she gets a lead on Tockman’s whereabouts, she heads out without the team, putting her in peril.

Meanwhile, Oliver throws Sara a welcome home party, but Laurel (Katie Cassidy) refuses to attend. After Lance (Paul Blackthrone) makes his case for a family dinner, Laurel acquiesces, but when Oliver shows up with Sara, she loses her temper on both of them.

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