Arrow Episode 100 Brings Back Two Surprising Characters From The Past
Arrow starts production on its one hundredth episode this week, one of those benchmarks that means [...]
Arrow starts production on its one hundredth episode this week, one of those benchmarks that means your show is an unassailable hit since so few ever reach that point.
And, as he often does when key episodes are coming up, Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim took to social media to pull back the curtain a little bit, giving fans a chance to see who's hanging out at the table read for the centennial celebration.
Among the familiar faces is Jamey Sheridan, who played Oliver's father Robert Queen in the pilot and has done so periodically in flashbacks since. There wasn't much else for him to do, obviously, since Robert died by his own hand in the pilot, a desperate bid to save his son's life.
Before he died, he confessed to Oliver that he had not been an altogether good person, and that he was in fact part of a nefarious cabal who were doing no good for their hometown of Star(ling) City. He had a list of names of other members of the conspiracy, and that list was a major storytelling driver for Oliver in the first season: he used it to decide whom he should kill in his pre-superhero days as The Hood (later The Arrow).
So with Sheridan in the episode, one would assume that the flashbacks to "Island Oliver" -- who is no longer on the island and hasn't been consistently for a few years now, but work with us here -- or pre-Island Oliver would be a major part of the episode.
You would be wrong, according to Guggenheim, who teased that Sheridan's appearance isn't a flashback, and has nothing to do with Flashpoint, the alternate universe created at the end of The Flash season two and featuring into the first part of season three.
Arrow 100th Episode Table Read. No Flashpoint. No flashbacks. pic.twitter.com/bs4KXiPVNx
— Marc Guggenheim (@mguggenheim) September 23, 2016
That leaves a number of options, including an alternate reality version of Robert Queen, the unlikely possibility that he's somehow still alive out there (some fans have speculated that he would somehow be Prometheus, the season's as-yet-anonymous big bad), or the possibility that he will appear in something like a video message provided to his children.
In season three, Oliver had been recruited into ARGUS during the flashbacks and ended up coming across Queen Consolidated files that included posthumous messages from his father, recorded and meant to be delivered to Oliver and Thea. Oliver watched his own but, as far as we know, Thea hasn't seen hers yet.
While the video message might sound an awful lot like a flashback, that kind of very cautious language has been employed in the past when Guggenheim wanted to misdirect spoiler-hungry fans. Last year, he posted a photo of Oliver and Felicity getting married, tweeting that it wasn't a dream sequence or an alternate universe. Instead, of course, it was all part of an elaborate ploy to trap a villain who was obsessed with Oliver and trying to kill Felicity.
While it's been easy to focus on Sheridan, who is both a pretty important character in the history of the show and also in the photo itself, we noticed something else pretty interesting: In front of the empty chair on the other side of Stephen Amell sits a script watermarked with the name of an actor who Arrow fans will also remember from season one:
That would be Alex Zahara's script for the episode. Zahara, longtime viewers may remember, played Ahthony Venza in the season one episode "Vendetta."
Venza was a drug dealer, and an associate of Frank Bertinelli. His name appeared on Robert Queen's list. Oliver had just decided to stop killing indiscriminately and so convinced Bertinelli's daughter Helena (The Huntress) to spare Venza's life and turn him over to the police.
Venza, then, could theoretically appear in the modern day. It's possible he might even be a messenger of Robert's somehow, although that seems like a stretch. Either way, it seems like as the flashback sequences in Arrow barrel toward season one's start, the list will become a bigger factor in driving some of that story.
Arrow airs Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. New episodes return on Wednesday, October 4 on The CW.
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