This season on Arrow, Ricardo Diaz’s Longbow Hunters are presenting a new set of challenges for the former Team Arrow, but when it comes to Green Arrow comics the team of deadly assassins aren’t the only time the term “Longbow Hunters” has been used. It’s also an iconic storyline from the 1980s and one fan thinks it also may be factoring in to The CW show’s seventh season.
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A three-issue miniseries, 1987’s Green Arrow: The Longbow Hunters written and drawn by Mike Grell followed Oliver Queen as he relocated from Star City to Seattle. There he ends up hunting another archer — who turns out to be Shado — who has been killing people with a bow and arrow in the city. The story also involves Dinah Lance/Black Canary attempting to infiltrate a drug ring with possible ties to the wealthy shipping magnate, Kyle Mangor.
On the surface, it’s a story that doesn’t really seem to have too much in common with this season of Arrow, but Reddit user “amazo17” breaks it down in a pretty convincing way. For starters, while Oliver is in prison a new “Green Arrow” has appeared in Star City, taking down criminals with a bow and arrow, similarly to how the archer takes down people in Grell’s story. The theory posits that this new Green Arrow is the stand-in for Shado on the show. They also note that in the comics, Dinah is trying to take down a crime lord which is similar to Felicity’s determination to take down Diaz — especially with Felicity teaming up with the FBI to do so.
It’s an interesting theory, one that gets a little more interesting when paired with a popular fan theory that the new, mysterious Green Arrow on the show is actually Emiko Queen, the canonical daughter of Robert Queen and Shado in comics. If the mystery archer ends up being Emiko Queen, the idea of the character being a stand-in for Shado in a “The Longbow Hunters”-type story makes even more sense. However, if the new archer ends up being Emiko it also ties into the New 52 debut of the Longbow Hunters as a team as its Emiko who steps up against the team, declaring herself the new Green Arrow.
What do you think? Do you think that Arrow is following Grell’s iconic storyline this season? Is it coincidence? Who do you think the new Green Arrow is? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
Arrow airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.
