Muses Of Fire: Geoff Johns & Andrew Kreisberg Talk About The Huntress On Arrow

Tonight at 8PM (ET) on The CW, Arrow will feature the first appearance of Jessica De Gouw as Helena Bertinelli, a young woman who, like Oliver Queen, has a vigilante alter ego. Also like Oliver Queen, Helena is a character from the pages of DC Comics, and DC’s Geoff Johns is on board as a co-writer for tonight’s show, which is called “Muse Of Fire.”

In October, right before Arrow’s premiere, Executive Producers Marc Guggenheim and Andrew Kreisberg were joined by “Oliver Queen” himself, Stephen Amell, as well as Geoff Johns, at the DC Entertainment offices in Burbank, California. You can read some of the other things they had to say here. But for tonight, here is what Andrew Kreisberg and Geoff Johns told us about the coming of Helena Bertinelli to Arrow’s world…

“The Huntress is played by Jessica de Gouw, who we think is going to be a huge breakout star. We’re really excited about her,” Kreisberg told a conference room full of reporter. “I think a lot of the secondary characters came about when Geoff and I were sitting on set and freezing our butts off in Vancouver in the middle of the winter, saying ‘wouldn’t it be cool if we did this?’ and ‘wouldn’t it be cool if we did that?’ Especially for Deadshot and the Huntress, they’re people who haven’t really been  seen before. They’re very popular, iconic DC Comics characters who have never really been given their proper due in other mediums other than the comics, so for us as writers and creators, and as fans, what was most exciting for us was to take some of these lesser known characters and put the ‘Arrow spin’ on them,” he explained.

“For the most part, I think characters who are going to make the transition from the comic books to this show are the ones that have a very grounded reality. You won’t be seeing a lot of characters who are aliens, or people who have super powers. People like Deadshot and the Huntress, they have very grounded backstories, and very emotional backstories. At the heart of the show, it’s a drama. You take away all the trappings of uniforms and arrows and super-villains and whatnot, and it’s really about people. So for somebody like Deadshot, he’s a very scary villain, so that sort of malevolence is cool to see Oliver face. For the Huntress, they’ve got a very similar back story, because both of their crusades were born out of pain and loss,” he continued.

Getting a character like the Huntress on Arrow was not done as a gimmick. “As far as other DC Comics characters, or any character that we bring into the show, it’s always about ‘well, how does this affect Oliver, and why are we doing it this week?’ The whole reason for bringing the Huntress on, it isn’t so we can just throw in a new DC Comics character, even though she’s very cool. It’s really about having an emotional effect on Oliver, because when we meet him in that storyline, he’s lonely and he’s feeling a little lost, and then in comes to his life this girl who’s sort of the darker version of him who he thinks he can save. It’s really Oliver’s story, moreso than it is hers, and I think that’s what makes it very cool.”

Geoff Johns agreed. “The Huntress was chosen because of the emotional resonance she has with Oliver Queen. That’s why I like all of the characters that are in the show. They all have connected to him in some way.”

You can see how The Huntress on Arrow works out tonight at 8PM on The CW – we’re almost there!

Come talk about “Muse Of Fire” on our forum!