Wendy Mericle Reveals the Challenges of Season 4 of Arrow

Arrow producer Wendy Mericle spoke exclusively to Collider, on different topics regarding Arrow and its forth season. Mericle spoke on the female representation on the series, working on the crossovers, the challenge of getting John Constantine (Matt Ryan) on the series, , whether Diggle (David Ramsey) gets a code name with his new costume and much more.

This world keeps getting bigger, with Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow. How do you decide where a character starts and who gets to pick the version of the character that we see?
MERICLE: Because of the universes are so complex and, with the exception of Supergirl, we’re all very keyed into what the other is doing, we’ve actually cast certain writers with tracking. We actually get all of the episodes and we read all of the episodes. What’s really important, especially when you get to those cross-over episodes, is that you know where everybody is, not just on Arrow, but everybody in the universe, so that you can tell the right story. That’s when it gets complicated. Sometimes where Oliver needs to be may fight with where Barry is, and vice versa.

How long have you been working to get John Constantine onto Arrow, and was it a challenge to make that happen?
MERICLE: I wouldn’t say it was a challenge. It is tied to Sara Lance’s resurrection. We knew that Sara had died at the beginning of Season 3 and that she was going to be on Legends, so we had to find a way to bring her back. We were like, “How do you do that?,” and he was the most obvious character to do that. We feel honored and excited that we got him, and that Matt Ryan is available. He’s amazing.

Now that he has a suit, will Diggle also get a code name?
MERICLE: By necessity, he can’t be Diggle out in the field. I can’t tell you what the code name is, but he’s gonna have a fun, cool code name. He’ll start to embrace a little bit more of that dual identity conundrum that Oliver has been grappling with for three years now.

To read the full interview head over to Collider.com.