Executive producers from Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow discuss the consequences of the two-part Arrow/Flash crossover.
In Arrow season 4, episode 8, “Legends of Yesterday,”, the good guys tried to protect Kendra and Carter from Vandal Savage. While hiding out on a farm, the team came up with a plan for defeating Vandal. During this time, however, Oliver learned that he is a father. When he tried to hide it from Felicity, the two had a major fight, which put Oliver off his game in the fight with Vandal. With Oliver distracted and Kendra unable to access her Hawkgirl powers, Vandal defeated the heroes, killing everyone but Barry, who ran fast enough to travel back in time.
Oliver and Barry used this second chance to redo what went wrong and they eventually defeated Vandal, though Malcolm gathered up his ashes, likely to revive him. While Kendra and Carter left to do some hero-ing of their own, Oliver kept his parenthood a secret from Felicity.
Executive producers from Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow discuss how everything ties together and what viewers can look forward to in the respective series.
Olicity and Oliver’s paternity
Arrow EP Wendy Mericle tells Variety the fact that Oliver is hiding his son from Felicity in the new timeline will “come to a head in the middle of the season.” She adds, “We can’t tell you how that’s gonna happen. … [T]rue to what we’ve done on the show, if there’s a secret somewhere, it’s going to come out and it’s going to have some serious consequences.”
On a related note, Andrew Kreisberg explains that the decision not to make this paternity storyline about Connor Hawke was to “give us the leeway to still have Connor Hawke be part of the universe without [being too young].”
And, it’s worth noting that an incarnation of Connor Hawke will be appearing on Legends of Tomorrow at some point.
Issues of time travel
As for the potential fallout of Barry traveling back in time to defeat Vandal Savage, Marc Guggenheim simply says, “I think you’re gonna have to watch upcoming episodes of Arrow.”
However, just because Barry and co. used time travel to avert mass death against Savage doesn’t mean time travel will replace the Lazarus Pit as a convenient way to resurrect any character who dies. Guggenheim teases, “Legends will explain basically why time travel can’t be used in a deus ex machina kind of way, not just with respect to death, but with respect to any plot contrivance.
“It’s like, ‘Why can’t we just go back to episode X and do that episode differently?’ We’re going to answer that question very definitively. It’ll be part of the rules of time travel that are a part of Legends.”
Kreisberg adds that consequences are essential when exploring death and potential resurrection. “When Sara was brought back, when Thea was brought back, last year when Barry changed the timeline, this year when Barry changes the timeline, any of these things that feel like the right thing to do, there’s always a price to be paid, and whether or not that price gets paid immediately … or whether that price gets paid later on in ways that you don’t foresee, it always comes back to haunt you.
“We always talk about, on Legends, Vandal is the Big Bad, but truly the Big Bad is time itself. Time wants to go in one direction, and I think that ethos… When people die, the universe wants them to stay dead. Anything you do to change that is going to have a cost. And that’s what these shows are, these characters constantly paying that price. For as much as these powers and abilities and technologies that they have, there’s always a price to be paid for using them.”
Future crossovers
Meanwhile, Greg Berlanti says, “[O]nce Legends is born in January, there’s really no intersection [with it] on the other shows. Legends is kind of its own wacky, crazy kind of thing that allows for some fun surprises in terms of who may visit and how because they’re flying through the timeline and you’ll start to see more of that. But not on Arrow or Flash.”
The Flash airs on Tuesdays and Arrow airs on Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. ET on The CW.