The Flash: Oliver Queen’s Return Explained

The Flash returned on Wednesday night and while fans of The CW series were excited for a new episode after a brief hiatus, there was another big reason DC fans were looking forward to the episode. “It’s My Party And I’ll Die If I Want To” saw the return of Stephen Amell’s Oliver Queen to the Arrowverse, giving fans one last team up between Flash and Green Arrow. But with Oliver having died three years ago in Crisis on Infinite Earths, there were a lot of questions about exactly how the hero would return. Now, we have the answer.

Warning: spoilers for this week’s episode of The Flash, “It’s My Party And I’ll Die If I Want To” beyond this point.

In the episode, Ramsey Rosso/Bloodwork (Sendhil Ramamurthy) crashes Barry’s birthday party, taking over Team Flash, and then manipulated Wally West/Kid Flash (Keiynan Lonsdale) into being a conduit to the new Multiverse so that he could infect it. To do this, Wally gets Barry out of the way by killing him which drops Barry on Lian Yu — or at least the afterlife version of it where encounters Oliver as the Spectre.

Oliver reveals the information about the Multiverse — as well as convinces Barry that he really does want to live — and because the Multiverse is in danger, there turns out there is a loophole of sorts for Oliver. Since the Multiverse is in danger, he’s able to come back, too. Oliver suits up as Green Arrow and Barry, as The Flash, takes on Bloodwork and the brainwashed Kid Flash. Diggle (David Ramsey) shows up to aid in the fight as Spartan and gets an unexpected reunion with his best friend in the process.

They defeat Bloodwork and the world — including the Multiverse — is saved, but Oliver’s time in the living world with his friends is limited. Turns out the rules of what he can and cannot do as the Spectre are very specific, but he does get to have touching moments of closure with both Diggle and Barry before it’s all said and done. For Amell, the episode is a perfect sendoff, not just for Oliver Queen, but the Arrowverse.

“To me, it was an absolutely perfect sendoff. I got to do all the things that I wanted to do. Coming back as the character I got to have scenes with the people I wanted to have scenes with,” Amell told ComicBook.com. “And also go up there and see a lot of the people that I knew from Flash that work in the production, that all were very much just… Frankly, incredibly generous in terms of being thankful that I came back and that we got to put a bow on it in a nice way. I think we landed the plane nicely.”

The Flash airs Wednesday at 8/7c on The CW.