As the originator of the Arrowverse, there’s a lot that the CW-based superhero shows (and plenty of other comic book-related TV projects that came out in the 2010s) owe toArrow. Seeking to capitalize on Green Arrow’s popularity followingJustin Hartley’s portrayal of the character inSmallville,Arrowrevived the Emerald Archer withStephen Amellin the leading role, taking the DC Comics legend to new heights and even darker lows. Though the show ran for eight seasons (and 170 episodes), it dragged on in its later years.Admittedly,Arrowshould’ve ended sooner than it decided to, and if we were to decide on when exactly that might’ve worked best, there’s no doubt it would be after Season 5.
When presumed-dead billionaire playboy Oliver Queen returns home to Starling City after five years stranded on a remote island in the Pacific, he hides the changes the experience had on him, while secretly seeking reconciliation with his ex, Laurel. By day he picks up where he left off, playing the carefree philanderer he used to be, but at night he dons the alter ego of Arrow and works to right the wrongs of his family and restore the city to its former glory. Complicating his mission is Laurel’s father, Detective Quentin Lance, who is determined to put the vigilante behind bars.
WhenArrowfirst started, it did so as a reimagining of the Green Arrow mythos that turned the archer into a darker Batman-ish character with no qualms about killing whoever was on his infamous List. Going at first by “the Hood” rather than his later monikers “the Arrow” and Green Arrow, it took Oliver Queen a while to lean into his traditional identity as a superhero, and even after leaving the List behind, he could never fully escape his past.Season 5 effectively brought Oliver full circle, forcing him to confront his Season 1 failures and move forward into a new era. If only it had ended there.
Operating alongside a new version of Team Arrow, Oliver spends much of the fifth season confronting a new sort of adversary, a man named Prometheus (a character who has a complicated history with Green Arrow in the comics). As it turns out, this new dark archer is none other than Star City’s District Attorney,Adrian Chase, whose real name is Simon Morrison (Josh Segarra). Morrison is the illegitimate son of one of Oliver’s victims from the first season (a man whose name was on the infamous List), and uses Season 5 to enact his revenge on the Emerald Archer, correctly deducing that Green Arrow is the same masked vigilante as Season 1’s “the Hood.” In many ways,Prometheus acts as a warped mirror that reveals who Oliver could have easily beenhad he continued in his murderous ways. Thankfully, he grew and developed, and even after deciding to kill again, it was only done sparingly (as if that justifies anything).
Instead, Oliver pushes back on Prometheus, and in turn, reveals himself to be a hero after all. A tortured, flawed, and often distrusting hero, but a hero nevertheless. Oliver and everything he stands for is put to the test, and aside from the horrible gun control PSA episode “Spectre of the Gun,” there isn’t a bad episode in the bunch. Having trained sidekicks previously, Oliver now takes it upon himself to help train an entirely new generation of heroes who might one day take his place. What’s even more compelling is that he does all this while simultaneously acting as the Mayor of the newly renamed Star City, hoping to save his hometown both with and without a mask. No doubt, Season 5 grows Oliver in ways that he wouldn’t again until the show’s eighth season (and even that is largely due to the impending “Crisis on Infinite Earths”), which only further emphasizes the fifth year asArrow’s highest point.
Season 5 of ‘Arrow’ Set Itself Up to Be the End From the Very Beginning
From the pilot,Arrowenvisioned itself as a five-season show. The first episode begins where Oliver’s flashbacks eventually end, with our hero escaping off the island of Lian Yu and returning to his “real life” in Starling City,completely changed into something new. Along the way, we learn that Oliver didn’t spend all his time on the island, and his actions while globetrotting and training around the world often have a direct impact on that season’s respective plot. So, whenSeason 5 challenged Oliver in the present, putting him on trial for his actions in Season 1, it only felt natural that the flashbacks too would set up the first season of the series, bringing both versions of the character, past and present, to a beautiful close.
What wouldArrowbecome without the flashbacks? Well, later seasons attempted to fill the void by flashing back to the time of the show’s early years (no doubt, attempting to recapture that initial magic), other character’s traumatic pasts (such asManu Bennett’s Slade Wilson), and the future of 2040, where Team Arrow’s future children have taken up their quest to save their city. While some of these ideas are interesting and even compelling, they’re proof thatArrowwas trying to find a life for itself outside the world of Oliver Queen, the results of which were very hit-or-miss.
Part of the mystery behindArrow’s earliest years was how everything in the present connected to Oliver’s past “five years in hell.” Love them or hate them, the flashbacks had real purpose throughoutArrow’s first five years, with each new installment pointing to some new connections, allies, enemies, or plot devices that would show up again in the present day. All the while, the show was actively reminding us of who Oliver Queen was before he returned to Starling City while juxtaposing that truth with the hero he has since become. It’s a brilliant way to frame a series about a troubled hero, and an especially thought-out take on Green Arrow’s origin story.For many, when Oliver’s past met up with the show’s present (Season 1 present, anyway),Arrowhad effectively come to a close, successfully chronicling ten years of Oliver Queen’s life story.
‘Arrow’ Began to Lose the Magic That First Made It Great
The longer any show continues, the more of a caricature of itself it can become. This is especially true when it comes to genre shows, and if they don’t evolve in a compelling way, they are likely to become stale and predictable. Cast members begin to leave, long-running arcs are ruined, and previous bits of continuity are soon contradicted for the sake of whatever the current story holds. Perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that all of these same things happened toArrowthe more seasons it added to its quiver. Between Thea’s (Willa Holland) exit in Season 6,the surprising death of Quentin Lance(Paul Blackthorne), and Felicity’s (Emily Bett Rickards) departure after Season 7 — not to mention all the drama between Oliver and Diggle in those years —one can’t help but wish the show had ended on a higher note.
Of course, the eighth season attempted to rectify some of this with a shortened final curtain, not to mention revisiting the show’s past and setting up the impending “Crisis On Infinite Earths.” And while Season 8 has been criticized for being too “Crisis” heavy rather than feeling like a traditional season ofArrow, the final season is generally adored by fans, and it really does bring the Emerald Archer full circle following Seasons 6 and 7.However,the absence of Felicity Smoak, the occasional strangeness surrounding Oliver’s final arc, and the fact that the show’s title character isn’t even in the penultimate episode of the series (death or not, that’s weird) is all a bit off-putting.A good final season is allArrowfans could’ve asked for, but it didn’t erase the suddenand obvious drop in quality that was the previous two.
What drew fans toArrowin the first place was the conflicted portrayal of Oliver Queen and his work alongside the original Team Arrow members. This eventually progressed in later years with the advent ofthe rest of the Arrowverse, butthe show never escaped the shadow of its earliest (and best) years. The first two seasons ofArrowespecially are considered the show’s finest hours, in part due to the conflicted relationship between Oliver Queen and Slade Wilson in both the flashbacks and the present, which comes to a head in the second season finale. After that, Season 5 is the closest the show ever came to returning to its roots (with Slade even returning inthe season finale “Lian Yu”) while continuing the character development that turned Oliver into a genuine hero during the third and fourth seasons. In many ways, Season 5 was that final bang that the show should’ve gone out on, and if “Lian Yu” had been tweaked just a little, it could’ve been a suitable series finale.
There’s no denying that there are elements inArrow’s final three seasons that are both significant and satisfying. Oliver and Felicity’s marriage duringthe “Crisis on Earth-X” crossoverwas a landmark event in the show’s sixth season, and Earth-2 Laurel Lance got a solid redemption arc from Black Siren to a hero more akin to the comic book Black Canary. Even the return of characters likeRoy Harper (Colton Haynes)and all those who came back in the revised timeline of the series finale “Fadeout” were exciting to see, but many of the arcs inArrow’s last three years just weren’t as gripping as what came before.
Nevertheless, hadArrowopted to end after Season 5 by re-working that cliffhanger ending into something more definite (not unlike what the show did previously with Season 3’s “My Name Is Oliver Queen”),it wouldn’t have meant the end for Team Arrow in the Arrowverse. The cancelation of previous Arrowverse shows likeBatwomanand the unproduced spin-offGreen Arrow and the Canariesdidn’t stop those respective characters from appearing again later on in the franchise, andOliver Queen himself returned for the last Arrowverse crossover"It’s My Part and I’ll Die If I Want To" during the final season ofThe Flash. This episode reunited Oliver with John Diggle and Barry Allen (Grant Gustin) before the franchise officially came to a close, which was incredibly satisfying after “Crisis on Infinite Earths.” Oliver’s return felt so natural that it makes one wonder ifArrowhad ended after Season 5 how different these crossovers would’ve even looked.
While many were thankful for the extended time we had with Green Arrow and his allies (getting to eight seasons is no small feat),the truth is that the show just wasn’t the same after its fifth season.Oliver’s flashbacks had come full circle, and, in many respects, so had he. His greatest enemies had been conquered, and, disregarding the cliffhanger ending, Season 5 really sets itself up to be the end. But one thing is clear, despite continuing for an additional three years,Arrowremains an exceptional series that helped launch the modern wave of superhero television that we’re still enjoying today.
