Here’s where we left things at the end of Arrow Season 2 Episode 18: 

Thea found out she’s a Merlyn; Mirakuru-filled Roy left town; Ollie learned Isabel is working with Slade and Laurel discovered - from Slade, of course - that Ollie and the Arrow are one in the same.

As all Arrow Fanatics can guess, Arrow Season 2 Episode 19, “The Man Under The Hood,” picks up where all those delicious nuggets left off - and TV Fanatic had a front row seat at a special screening at The CW offices yesterday to watch both this installment and Arrow Season 2 Episode 20, “Seeing Red.”

Arrow Photos from "The Man Under the Hood"

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As an added bonus, Executive Producer Andrew Kreisberg sat down to answer questions, so here are some high points of what you’ll see in Wednesday’s all-new episode and beyond.

• With Laurel finally knowing Ollie’s alter ego, she will definitely be a changed woman, which harkens back to another character finding out last season.

“It’s funny because it was sort of the same experience with Colin Donnell’s character,” Kreisberg explained, “where once he knew it changed his character so much. There was just so much more you could write for him and just the way he looked at everything in the world, every scene just became super charged, even if it was  small scene that didn’t have anything to do with the main plot.”

• Scenes moving forward with Ms. Lance will have a much different feel, he previewed.

“With Laurel, now that she knows, whatever she’s doing, whenever she’s in a scene with someone, her world view has shifted and it’s different and I think Katie [Cassidy] has really risen to it and it’s real exciting to see how it plays out in the last 3 episodes.”

• The Flash characters Caitlin and Cisco show up in this episode, as was previously announced, but play a very important part, Kreisberg teased.

“It was actually Keto Shimizu, one of our writers, who, when we were talking about the idea of the cure, said ‘What if Star Labs is the one who starts trying to figure out the cure?’ and it became Cisco and Caitlin coming to the show.

"It just felt like a fun way to bring up Barry, remember where he’s at and give a little taste of the show.” Kreisberg did confirm that this is the only time we’ll see Caitlin and Cisco on Arrow this season.

• Poor Thea. She’s been put through the ringer lately with Roy breaking up with her and the revelation of her true parentage so, without giving too much away, be warned that she’s not going to be in a good place anytime soon.

And, if you follow John Barrowman’s Twitter account, you already know that he is going to be back on the show as Malcolm Merlyn in the very near future.

• We now know that Isabel Rochev is working with Slade, so she’s definitely on the bad side of things. Did Kreisberg and the other writers always know that she was a baddie?

“Isabel was the one thing that we weren’t entirely sure about as we were developing the season,” Kreisberg admitted. “Truthfully, there was a very early iteration of the series where Sara started the season as Ravager and then we switched over..."

Kreisberg also explained why Ms. Rochev was off the canvas for a lot of the recent episodes.

“Part of the reason Isabel disappeared for awhile was we still weren’t sure which way to go whether she should be an ally or a villain and we’d kind of written it where it could turn out either way.”

Also, Kreisberg revealed that Summer Glau was very happy to find out Isabel was going to be on Team Slade so she could finally kick some rear end.

• Also, concerning Isabel, since she’s now essentially taken over Queen Consolidated, expect the Queen’s financial woes to be a big part of the story moving forward.

“That plays out in the last five episodes,” Kreisberg said. “And we’re going to start Season 3 with Oliver in very different circumstances than he’s been before, which, obviously, him being in different circumstances changes the circumstances of his paid bodyguard [Diggle] and his paid assistant [Felicity] since he can no longer pay them.”

• Kreisberg also said Arrow Season 3 will have a different feel than previous seasons, comparing it to classic series like Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel where you can now tune in for different seasons and see the varied feel and tone to them.

And, yes, he also mentioned there will be new sets in the third season, too.

• For those of you Arrow Fanatics wanting Oliver with Laurel in a romantic sense, don’t give up hope.

“It’s Oliver and Laurel! It’s Lois and Clark!” Kreisberg said to the question about their romantic future. “They can break up, get together, sleep together, break up, get married, get divorced, she forgets him…the one thing success has enabled us to do is to slow play some things and I think that we’ve really adopted this mantra of we give people what they need even if that’s not what they want.”

He added: “Having Oliver and Laurel get together in Season 1 was, I think, that’s what people needed then and then they needed to go on a break so Oliver could have his storyline with Sara for this season, which is what felt right to us.”

Of what the future holds for the former lovers, he would only tease: “Laurel is always going to be one of the closest people to him whether that’s romantic or not.”

• Kreisberg also said that the last episodes of Arrow Season 2 would be mostly in real time.
• And while we have a handful of episodes before the May 14 finale, Kreisberg did say that he’s seen dailies of the episode and practically giggled in delight when he said that the finale is “F***ing insane!”

Arrow airs Wednesday at 8pm on The CW. 

Jim Halterman is the West Coast Editor of TV Fanatic and the owner of JimHalterman.com. Follow him on Twitter.