Stephen Amell Says He Hated ‘Peacemaker’ Making Fun of ‘Arrow’: “I didn’t f—ing appreciate that at all…”

Before we had DCEU and DCU we had Arrowverse, a long-running franchise on CW focusing on a selected group of DC superheroes. While entertaining, many shows that fell under CW’s banner were often treated like a memes, and were considered low-quality compared to other productions.

Many CW superhero shows had melodramatic and often cheesy dialogue, which sometimes led to unintentional humor. The shows embraced a more lighthearted, soap-opera-esque tone that made them easier to parody.

While impressive for TV at the time, the CGI and action sequences often fell short compared to big-budget superhero films. This disparity, especially in an era dominated by high-quality effects in MCU and DCEU movies, made certain scenes from CW shows easy targets for memes.

Despite these criticisms, the CW’s superhero shows were still beloved by many fans for their heart, character development, and willingness to embrace comic book lore in a way that hadn’t been done on network TV before.

Unfortunately, Gunn’s ‘Peacemaker’ made fun of ‘Arrow’ as well, and this is something that Stephen Amell, who played the titular character recently commented on.

Peacemaker makes fun of ‘Arrow’ in Season 1, Episode 5 of ‘Peacemaker,’ titled “Monkey Dory.” In this episode, Peacemaker, played by John Cena, insults several superheroes, including Green Arrow. During a conversation, Peacemaker says:

“Green Arrow? That dude goes to Brony conventions dressed as the back half of Twilight Sparkle with a four-inch-wide butthole drilled in the costume.“

Amell did not appreciate that jab as he admitted on a recent Chris Van Vliet podcast.

That was a little unnecessary.I didn’t f—ing appreciate that at all….Okay. I am just going to come right out and say this. There was just such…between the movies and Peacemaker a little bit, our show was kind of treated like s–t. I get it, we’re on The CW, I get it, it’s TV.

But I also get the fact that when people think about the most recent iteration of DC, they don’t think about the Snyder Cut – they think about the Arrowverse. We got crapped on for years, and years, and years, and this just seemed excessive. I’m not actually mad, but I just remember hearing that and just being like, ‘F–k those guys,’ like seriously. I’m up here. I’m working just as hard as anyone else. Do you know how hard it is to play a superhero with no superpowers for 23 episodes a year? It’s really, really, really hard, and I’m not looking for a prize, but, like, maybe don’t s–t on our show.

Amell also admitted that he likes John Cena and doesn’t hold the joke against him:

I’ve met John a handful of times, and there couldn’t be a nicer, more genuine person.If I should be mad at anyone, it should be James Gunn for writing that in the first place. But [John Cena] could not be a nicer guy. It’s not a personal vendetta against [Cena].

The sad part is, Amell is correct in that people came to associate DCU (what they’ve seen of it) with CW due to low-quality costumes that were shown to the fans via set leaks while Superman was filming. I guess what goes around comes around.

Do you think that ‘Peacemaker’ joke was funny? Let us know in the comments below!

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