Shortly after Smallville concluded on The CW, the network launched its next superhero TV series in 2012 with Arrow. Stephen Amell was cast as Green Arrow and, as the years passed, his show spawned several spin-offs and a shared DC Universe later dubbed the "Arrowverse."
The show's achievements are undeniable but it had a lot of "CW-isms." Among them was giving Green Arrow a geeky female sidekick in Emily Bett Rickards' Felicity Smoak, the spiritual successor to Smallville's Chloe Sullivan.
Felicity was soon established as Oliver Queen's true love, a decision that upset those eager to see his romance with Black Canary fully explored.
Doing the rounds to promote her new movie, Queen of the Ring, Rickards - who plays wrestling legend Mildred Burke in the biopic - reflected on needing a thick skin in response to the criticisms.
"When I was on Arrow, I quickly realized how passionate comic book fans can be," she told TV Insider. "At one point, I had to have a really long talk with my therapist, asking, 'Okay, so what is all this energy? I don’t really understand it.'"
Explaining that she developed "skin like a rhino" and a "heart like a rose," Rickards added, "I think that criticism is passion, and all that passion is good...As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized how special that is. Like, aren’t we allowed to get passionate about these things that we care about?"
Rickards received a fair bit of hate online from fans and, in a recent interview, Amell also talked about having to take a step back from social media.
"There used to be a lot of hypercritical people, specifically with 'Arrow.' I would see it and almost try to police it," Amell recalled. "Social media has become a zero-sum game - there is no winning. I learned the hard way. The internet’s not the real world."
"The first two or three years of 'Arrow,' I was gripping so tight. I was white-knuckling it," he continued. "The hours were long. By the time we got to the fifth episode of the first season, I’d worked more on that show than I’d ever worked on anything in my life."
"I was never a monster. I was never disrespectful - but I had a short fuse. And you learn as you go," Amell concluded.
There were once plans for an R-Rated Green Arrow movie called Supermax. It was set to follow Oliver Queen as he attempted to escape from a prison full of iconic DC Comics supervillains. Amell was never attached to that and the project failed to get off the ground.
As for what the hero's DCU future looks like, James Gunn has said he's a Green Arrow fan and we'd bet on him recasting the role somewhere down the line (Amell, meanwhile, has traded a superhero costume for a suit in Suits L.A.).