In its later years, Smallville freshened up its formula with cameos by DC characters.

With Arrow getting set to debut on the CW later this year and many fans believing they’ve seen a familiar DC character in the trailer, you may be wondering if we’ll see other DC characters make a cameo.

Writer Marc Guggenheim says yes and no.  While he confirms we will see Deathstroke, whose mask is in the trailer, in the show, we won’t necessarily see a different DC character making a cameo each week.  Guggenheim says he and the writing staff are working to keep the show a bit more “grounded” than Smallville was.

“I would encourage people to watch the show, particularly watch future episodes. This is a brand new take,” he says. “Smallville was an amazing show, it was an incredible vision of Superman and a lot of other DC superheroes including Green Arrow. This is a different take. This is taking Green Arrow from the ground up and making him the center of a show and we have to change the tone to fit the character. [The show] will be much more grounded, more realistic because he’s a more realistic superhero than Superman, he doesn’t fly, he doesn’t have x-ray vision, he doesn’t have super powers and our show reflects that.”