While most fans prepare for the series finale of The CW’s long-running DC superhero show Arrow by simply setting their DVRs, one super-fan has launched multiple campaigns to honor the show’s memory with a statue of the Emerald Archer himself. Arrow will fires its parting shot in Tuesday’s highly-anticipated finale, which fans hope will wrap up any remaining plot threads, and give actor Stephen Amell’s version of the hero a happy-ish ending after an impressive eight-season run. The series, like many other CW shows, primarily used Vancouver as the filming location for scenes of the fictional Star City.
Arrow was an unquestionable hit for the network that helped redefine what a comic book television universe could look like, and spawned multiple spin-offs to build a cohesive continuity that’s been dubbed the “Arrowverse” by fans and the show’s producers. Oliver Queen was killed off in an episode of another of the CW DC-set shows that aired as part of a massive multi-show crossover event called “Crisis on Infinite Earths,” and the Arrow finale will feature a statue of Oliver Queen. The production has left a lasting impression on the city of Vancouver. Local fans love that their city serves as the on-screen version of Star City, and the production provided many Vancouver artists and crew with work over its eight-year run.
All of this helps give context to one fan’s personal mission to immortalize the show in an epic fashion. Ryan Sullivan, a British Columbia native, has started two campaigns to facilitate the iron statue (made for the finale) being permanently placed in Vancouver’s Crab Park. First, Sullivan created a Change.org petition to amass support from similarly-minded fans and locals, which racked up an impressive 7,000 signatures in two days.
The initial petition also caught the eye of Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim, who tweeted appreciation for the sentiment, but cautioned that the statue built for the show was no made to withstand “the harsh weather of Vancouver.” The following day, Sullivan launched a GoFundMe page to raise $5,000 to help the city pay for a new, more rugged version of the statue that could tolerate the test of time.
“I would like to try and raise money to get the city of Vancouver to build and forever immortalize a Iron Statue Replica of the Green Arrow from the show that started the entire birth of The Arrowverse,” Sullivan wrote on the campaign page. He believes that it would be a “great tribute” to both fans and Amell to have the statue find a perennial home in Crab Park. Beyond the initial 7,000 signatures, the momentum of the initial petition seems to have slowed down - and as of now the GoFundMe has failed to raise any money - so it remains to be seen if Sullivan’s dream of a giant iron statue of Green Arrow will become a reality. In the meantime, fans have one last opportunity to say goodbye to the series when the Arrow finale airs on Tuesday.
More: Arrow Series Finale Images Reveal Major Characters Return, Flash Crossover
Source: Change.org/GoFundMe/andypoondesign via Instagram
