Arrow: The CW to Air a Retrospective Episode as Part of Final Season

The CW’s Arrow is headed towards a whole new chapter, as the show’s eighth and final season is set to debut this year. Although it will be quite a few months until that final storyline kicks off, it sounds like fans of the show can expect a trip down memory lane as well.

While speaking to reporters ahead of the network’s Upfronts presentation, The CW president Mark Pedowitz spoke about the show’s upcoming final batch of episodes. Not only did Pedowitz confirm the number of episodes in the final season, but he hinted that there will be some sort of additional special celebrating the show.

“Arrow is ten episodes, plus a retrospective to celebrate the eighth season,” Pedowitz revealed.

The CW has toyed with these sorts of specials in the past, with Arrow getting a “Year One” special in 2013 that recapped the show’s first season. Legends of Tomorrow also earned a sort of introductory special before the series debuted, which was titled “Their Time Is Now.”

Given the 150+ episodes that the show has aired on The CW, and the various plot points and threads that it’s pretty easy to see why the final season would get its own sort of special episode.

“This was a difficult decision to come to, but like every hard decision we’ve made for the past seven years, it was with the best interests of Arrow in mind,” producers Beth Schwartz, Greg Berlanti, and Marc Guggenheim said in a statement. “We’re heartened by the fact that Arrow has birthed an entire universe of shows that will continue on for many years to come. We’re excited about crafting a conclusion that honors the show, its characters and its legacy and are grateful to all the writers, producers, actors, and — more importantly — the incredible crew that has sustained us and the show for over seven years.”

And now that we know that Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) won’t be making it out of this year’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover alive, it’s safe to say that the special will take on a whole other connotation.

“The only thing that is left for him to do – and he doesn’t need to die to do this – is he needs to leave a legacy.” Amell said in an interview last year. “Because we have all these other shows that exist. So whether ‘Arrow’ continued on in the absence of Oliver Queen, or someone else took up the mantle of the Green Arrow… I think leaving a legacy is the last box left to tick for the character.”

Arrow will return for an eighth and final season at 9/8c on The CW, following new episodes of The Flash.