Previously on ARROW…
The fate of Star City is not a pleasant one, and this episode takes place almost entirely in the flash forward timeline. William and Mia, the children of Oliver Queen, are searching for the missing Felicity Smoak, as a plot to destroy Star City to build up the Glades is about to be enacted.
While William and Mia are disregarding Felicity’s orders and searching her out, Roy, Dinah and Zoe are working to find the bombs. They end up all in the same place – Galaxy headquarters, the front company for the Eden Corps. They’ve enlisted the former Wild Dog, now the Mayor of the Glades, to help with their plan to blow Star City to hell, but Rene has a change of heart and lets the former Team Arrow know the plan. He helps them in to an Independence Day party where the head of the Eden Corps are going to set off the bombs, and the team manages to disable them and save the future.
Are they possibly setting up a future spin-off for the Canary crew as they battle the Eden Corps? That’s what this episode felt like to me, a back door pilot for a spin-off where half the main cast are wearing ridiculous make-up to make them look older. Seriously, Rene’s hair looks terrible.
The network recently announced that ARROW would be back next season for 10 final episodes to end the series. While the end of the show is on the horizon, this episode lets us know that Oliver Queen’s story probably does not end happily. While he’s mentioned a few times this episode, we have no idea where he is or what happened to him. The most we get is a mention that what happened to Oliver was Felicity’s fault, as the show runs back to the present for its final scene.
I thought that maybe they would use this opportunity to set up the story of how the Eden Corps killed Ollie in the comic books back in 1995. There’s no Hal Jordan here to bring him back to life, though, so maybe that’s for the best.
We also get Mia’s origin story this episode, with her (very bloodless) birth in a nice house outside of Star City (the only time we see Oliver this episode) and her training with Nyssa al Ghul as Felicity watches on, right up to the night Mia leaves Felicity to go into Star City. It was a real pilot episode feel the whole way through. I don’t know how successful it was, though, as the story felt lacking without Oliver and Diggle.
We return to the present next week, though, and maybe we’ll figure out where the show’s penultimate season is heading.