Production on Arrow‘s highly-anticipated third season has officially begun! Filming for the premiere episode, “The Calm,” started yesterday, and thanks to Zap2It, we now have an official synopsis. It does contain a mild spoiler though, so proceed with caution:
“In the aftermath of this victory, Season 3 opens with Arrow now a hero to the citizens of Starling. Crime is down, people feel safer, and Captain Lance even calls off the Anti-Vigilante Task Force. Basking in his success, Oliver believes he can finally have a private life and asks Felicity out on a date. But the second Oliver takes his eye off the ball, a deadly villain reappears in Starling, forcing Oliver to realize that he can never be Oliver Queen — not as long as the city needs The Arrow.”
This synopsis comes fresh off the heels of several major casting announcements that trickled in over the last few weeks. For one, we now know that the “deadly villain” Oliver faces in the premiere is none other than the new Count Vertigo, played by Peter Stormare. Also joining the cast are Brandon Routh and Devon Aoki, who will play Ray Palmer a.k.a The Atom, and Tatsu Yamashiro a.k.a Katana, respectively.
The mild spoiler here is that Detective Lance has survived the season two finale. When last we saw him, he had collapsed due to some pretty bad internal injuries sustained while fighting some of Deathstroke’s goons. Perhaps there’s a bit of a time jump between seasons, as Lance has apparently recovered from his injuries and gotten a promotion.
Then, of course, there’s the hint at a romance between Oliver Queen and Felicity Smoak. We saw a bit of that tension last season, followed by the great “I love you” fake out that fooled Deathstroke into kidnapping Felicity. We all guessed that Oliver may have meant some of those words, and I’m sure that the premiere will pay tribute to some of those “Olicity” shippers out there. But don’t get your hopes up just yet, because from the sound of it, Oliver will be whisked away and donning the green hood before their appetizers even arrive.
The big takeaway here is that Oliver Queen’s alter-ego will be making further strides to becoming a full-fledged superhero, and not just the street-prowling vigilante many have seen him as thus far. He’s already gone from being called “The Vigilante” to “The Hood” and finally just “Arrow.” This season will he finally pass the threshold and become “Green Arrow?”
We’ll just have to wait until Arrow returns on Wednesday, October 8th, to find out.