‘Arrow’ Season 6 Will Slowly Reveal Season 5 Finale Deaths

After Arrow Season Five’s explosive finale, there’s a big question about which characters from team Arrow survived. Leading into Season Six, producers told fans that they would quickly learn the truth of who survived Lian Yu, but now they’re telling a different story.

While doing the fall TV preview with TV Guide, Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim revealed that it’s not quite so simple. “It’s a slow reveal,” Guggenheim said. “We’re going to intercut between the present, which is five months after the finale, and flashbacks that take us to the minutes right before and right after the finale.”

That quote ties back into earlier teases from producers that Arrow Season Six would be changing up the format of the flashback sequences, but it also presents a big reversal on what we were previously led to believe as well as a potential danger for the new season.

Secrets and Lies

As you can see in the video below, we here at ComicBook.com had a chance to speak to Arrow producer Wendy Mericle at SDCC 2017. She had a very different sell for the Season Six storyline, telling us that the reveals of Lian Yu would come a lot quicker: 

“We will get answers. You’ll know by the end of the premiere who made it and who didn’t, and you’ll see Oliver mourning. You’ll definitely see him going through a grieving process.”

That’s kind of a spin on what Guggenheim is now saying, as we will indeed see Oliver grieving over the loss of someone close while also getting a general idea of who made it off the island intact. What we probably won’t get to see is who is truly dead and gone, or simply left after the events of Lian Yu, setting up a longer seasonal mystery much like when Laurel’s death was teased for months before we actually saw it play out in Season Four. 

That approach is likely to frustrate some fans, who will undoubtedly slam Arrow for falling into some repetitive — and not all that enjoyable — patterns. 

Survivors Club

Even though we’ll be teased with some mysterious deaths when Arrow Season Six begins, we do already know with certainty that some characters made it off of Lian Yu: 

• Oliver – Obviously, he was on the boat killing Adrian Chase and saving his son William when Lian Yu exploded. 
• Diggle – Diggle’s storyline for Season Six has already been teased extensively, so we know he made it.
• Slade Wilson – Manu Bennett has already hyped Deathstroke’s return in the new season, so clearly he made it. 
• Dinah Drake – We’ve also gotten extensive teases of Dinah’s evolution into the new Black Canary,and a badass costume reveal, so we know she made it. 

That leaves characters like Felicity, Thea, Curtis, Rene, and Quentin Lance with their heads on the chopping block. Rene and Curtis would be easy sacrifices, relatively speaking, but the other three characters have been with Arrow since its first season, and would be hard losses for the team to recover from. 

Supergirl will premiere on October 9th at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW, followed by The Flash in the same timeslot on October 10th. DC’s Legends of Tomorrow will follow The Flash this season, airing at 9 p.m. on Tuesdays. Arrow has moved to 9 p.m. on Thursdays.