My 1st photos of ARROW shooting season 2 in "The Glades" with several cast on hand

The Hood & his posse are BACK!

Filming got under way last week for season 2 of the hit Rookie action drama "Arrow". I caught up to them in an area used by many shows over the years near the Hastings Street overpass in East Vancouver.

The area, which is often popular with film crews because of its ghetto, living under a bridge feel was this time home to part of "The Glades".

After "failing the city" I find Oliver, his sidekick John Diggle & his lovestruck techie Felicity Smoak rolling thru the glades in 1 of Olivers cars.

There was not much to the scene & I am sure the purpose was more to show the devastation the man made earthquake that Malcolm Merlyn concocted did, than anything they were doing in the car.

After that scene, they went to lunch. I managed to get Stephen & David to sign some autographs on their way to lunch, but missed Emily sadly. Stephen seemed excited for this upcoming season, while David seemed more cautiously optimistic. Most shows seem to suffer "sophomore slumps" and David might be thinking cautiously for that reason. But lets face it, even if Arrow does have a slump, it will still be one of the CW networks top shows.

There was a LOT of work done by the art crew of the show to prep this area for the scene. Individual posters, even more specifically, individual messages were written out & posted all over the place. I always am amazed at the detail shows will put into things like this since we all know come the final cut, little to none of it will even make it to the camera & even less will get seen clearly enough to make out the details of it. I've posted a bunch of the photos of these pieces of work that someone put their time into making, up in this post, simply because someone should recognize them for their work.

 There was a lot of messages on these pieces of work. Most common ones were "Remember the 503" which will surely be a common message early in the season, as 503 will refer to the amount of casualties from the earthquake. Another was "Blood for Mayor". Who is "Blood"? Will he be good, or bad for the residents of Starling City?

In the category of not wasting any props. Arrow crew dragged out of retirement the Bishopmobile from "Fringe" to be an abandoned car in The Glades. This is the 2nd time I have seen a Fringe related item on an Arrow set, last season, a sign on top of a Starling City Cab to "Rewardwire" a thing from Fringe season 5 that they never bothered removing.

Later, after lunch, there was another scene being done in an alley that was too far away for me to get a good view of. Stephen Amell was back for these scenes, along with his stunt double Simon Burnett. I also saw Colton Haynes, who was serenaded a couple hours before his birthday by the entire crew & the cast on hand with a round of "Happy Birthday" before they brought in an ice cream cake.

The "wow" moment of the evening was seeing Detective...errr....OFFICER Quentin Lance on Set. Paul Blackthorne was there for scenes, not dressed as his typical self from season 1, but in an Officer uniform. Suggesting after the fallout of The Glades horror, he still is a Police Officer, but has been demoted.

I couldnt see much from the spot I was in, but they had a scene at 1 point where Simon Burnett did a jump up 50-60 feet in the air on a cable.

Here they are...my 1st photos of the season from the set of ARROW from last week.

EDIT - July 18, 10:10 PM
I have just read that "Caity Lotz" has been cast as "Black Canary" YES, you read the character name right.

Reason I am adding it to this blog is the 1st photo in this section of photos below that I, at the time was taking of Paul Blackthorne. When I got home that night I noticed a blonde woman with make up around her eyes that I first thought "that looks like a Black Canary type look".
I saw the girl on set, but never saw her close up enough to notice she had the eye make up on.
I cropped the photo with her in the background, in hopes SOMEONE would see it & maybe ask "is that supposed to be Black Canary" as it was my 1st guess....of course, since everyone assumed Katie Cassidy would be that character I guess no one considered that someone else could be her.

So, is this the 1st photo on set of THE BLACK CANARY?