It’s hardly surprising that popular culture is beginning to respond to the current global political climate with thinly veiled references to topics that are dominating the news. What’s perhaps surprising is that one show which appears to be leading the charge in that respect is Arrow, on The CW. Wasting no time at all in seizing on that which is on the minds of most of the western world, the DC superhero will soon be taking another deep, small-screen dive into his own Russian history.
The popular drama series has long been dropping hints about the ties between wealthy playboy businessman Oliver Queen and Russia, and has gone some way to explaining that these ties involve him trying to join a criminal organization named Bratva, in order to dispose of an influential Russian named Konstantin Kovar (played by Dolph Lundgren). Recently, executive producer Marc Guggenheim highlighted to ComicBook.com that an upcoming season 5 episode will centre entirely on this Russian storyline.
“Russia is very much in the zeitgeist these days, and coming into the back half of the year, we’re doing a lot more with Russia. We’re going to do a Russia-centric episode, a flashback-centric episode like we did in the first three years of the show. We’ll be doing that later on in the season and that will have Dolph Lundgren’s character, Konstantin Kovar, very much front and center.”
In the source material of the DC comic books, Konstantin Kovar is the father of the Russian superhero Red Star, who gained superhuman abilities when a spaceship he was investigating exploded. It seems that the Konstantin Kovar of Arrow is a more prominent villain than he is in the comic books, however – something which lends itself well to what could be construed as planned allusions to a certain high profile individual.
“In that episode, assuming the scheduling works out because we’re still writing this episode, the plan is for Konstantin to have a very key meeting with a corrupt, American multimillionaire businessman. Make of that what you will.”
We can almost certainly expect to see a lot more exploration of themes involving Russia and corruption across our airwaves, as the creators of current TV shows seek to relate their stories to current events. For its part, Arrow can next be seen on January 25th, 2017, at 8pm EST on The CW.