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With that, the series adds back one of DC Comics' most beloved and badass villains, as well as a fan-favorite Arrow character and the big bad of season 2, often discussed as the high-water mark of the show.
(Whether it is, or is not, is actually a topic for a longer conversation — but given the divisive nature of Oliver's personal life and the supporting cast introduced in season 3 and beyond, it's safe to say that season 2 was the last time that all of Arrow's audience was on the same page, and enthusiasm was the order of the day.)
Of course, fans are never totally content. Give them the thing they've been asking for all this time, and they've just got another handful of items on their wishlist.
How do we know? Well, we're fans too, of course.
So here's our wish list for the upcoming season finale of Arrow.
Ever since producers announced that Katie Cassidy's Black Siren would come back as a series regular in the sixth season, we've been wondering what her deal is going to be.
Will she be the big bad? Is she on the road to reforming? Something else?
The season finale would be a great place to plant some of those seeds. Yes, it looks like it's going to be crazy and crowded, but let's face it: you can't very well argue with the idea that setting up whatever her status quo is going to be in the previous season would help take some of the burden off next season's premiere, and it's not like the Damien Darhk tease, where fans hadn't met the character yet.
Whatever is going on with Black Siren, we're intrigued. Let's get a little bit of that in the finale.
VIGILANTE, MAN!
Sorry, had to make a terrible pun about a Woody Guthrie song.
Anyway, Vigilante! We haven't seen the character since it was revealed that he was not, in fact, Adrian Chase (who instead turned out to be Prometheus and pitched Vigilante over a roof).
Producers have said that the mystery of Vigilante's identity won't actually be solved this season, but "won't be solved" and "you won't get a clue" are two totally different things.
Also, while he might have some issue with Oliver's approach, Vigilante seems to have the city's best interest at heart and a genuine disdain for people who kill others. We would be hard-pressed to believe that doesn't make him more a natural enemy of Prometheus than of Green Arrow.
ALL SUBPLOTS ACCOUNTED FOR
On the From Crisis to Crisis podcast, Superman super-fans Michael Bailey and Jeffrey Taylor look at the Superman titles published between 1986 and 2005.
During that era, Adrian Chase co-creator Marv Wolfman had a particular style of writing he used to employ in the Superman comics, and one of the things he often did -- and other writers would follow suit on for years -- was to spend a page or two catching fans up on all of the various characters and subplots who were important to the titles as a whole, but maybe not important to the story being told, and so maybe not addressed in this particular issue of the comic.
Bailey and Taylor used to jokingy refer to this writing style as "all subplots accounted for," and it's a style that Arrow could stand to bring on board in the finale, to be sure that we've checked in with the various supporting characters, subplots, and fan-favorites that haven't had a ton of screen time this season.
Thea, in particular, was so important in the early going that it seems they burned off most of Willa Holland's episodes in the first half of the season, and so her character has been essentially a non-entity as the stakes ratchet up. We absolutely hope she'll be part of the big fight at the end, but even if she isn't, let's at least get a sense for what's going on with one of the most important people in Oliver's life, huh?
ALL-STAR TEAM-UP
At this point, there have been quite a few members of Team Arrow -- either temporary or permanent -- and it would be really great to see as many of those people as possible make their way through Star City in the final days of Oliver's battle with Prometheus.
If he's desperate enough that he's going to turn to Talia al Ghul and Deathstroke as potential allies, then we should definitely a least hear a good reason as to why he doesn't ring up Nyssa or Arsenal on the phone along the way.
And, yes, we've lost Artemis to betrayal and other characters to injury or death...but how great would it be, even just for a single battle, to see ARGUS, Diggle, Felicity, Oliver, Wild Dog, Mr. Terrific, and characters like Roy, Thea, and Nyssa standing shoulder to shoulder against a threat?
OLICITY
Yes, we need to figure out what's going on with Oliver and Felicity's personal relationship.
Why? Because it's a major part of the show, and season 5 is, in many ways, the end of the first massive epic of the show's run.
Think of it as, basically, the Blackest Night portion of Geoff Johns's Green Lantern comics: it's not "the end," but it's definitely the end of an era and from here on out they will have to, in large part, build a new mythology.
Building new mythology has been a key part of what the writers and producers have done with Felicity from the word go.
Narratively, too, this makes sense, given the fact that down the stretch, the pair will be at loggerheads over how to deal with Chase. Felicity turning to another team outside of Team Arrow's sanction is going to cause some controversy in the ol' Arrowcave, and a big part of why she's so determined to do this with or without Oliver is the fact that Prometheus essentially manipulated him into killing her boyfriend (ouch). With a lot of raw emotion and Oliver and Felicity's semi-regular sparring over who's really the brains behind the team driving some episodes down the stretch, it would stand to reason that the biggest, clearest question marks hovering over the pair.
The relationship between the two has been one of the most divisive elements of the show: for some, it's the primary reason to watch, while for others it took up way too much screen time and focus in seasons 3 and 4.
Either way you look at it, this storyline deserves a clear and emotionally effective status quo, whether the pair end up together at the end of season 5 or not. The very nature of season 5 is that they have left the specific details of the breakup muddy and general, presumably so they could go and fill in some blanks and play with some specifics down the line.
...Well, c'mon, guys? At least a taste?
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