“It’s only when the monster becomes someone else — something else — that you’re free to be Oliver Queen”

That’s the message Talia Head, the daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, had for Oliver after she rescued him from seemingly certain death at the hands of the Bratva, and it’s obviously one that will stick with him in the years to come.

Ever since producers revealed that Talia was coming to Arrow, fans have wondered exactly what her relationship with Oliver would be. As her appearance neared, it became increasingly clear that she would be Oliver’s final trainer in the months leading up to his return to Starling City in the show’s pilot.

This week, that came to pass, with Talia showing up and taking Oliver under her wing — whether he liked it or not.

But why?

Well, it’s simple: she seems to believe in the mission that his father laid out for her, to make Starling City a better place. She knows about that because she read the book, and she read the book after she found him…because she was the teacher of Yao Fei, the father of Shado and Oliver’s first teacher. That he wears Yao Fei’s hood means something to her.

Talia lays out for him his mission statement, telling him that he has to embrace the monster inside of him instead of running for it. She tells him everything she knows about his recent antics, including the fact that she knows he tried and failed to go home once. She chastises him for chasing villains of convenience rather than cleaning up his hometown as his father had wanted.

(Yeah, you can see that she has daddy issues and, as her sister Nyssa did when she first appeared back in season 2, she mentions her family obliquely rather than name-dropping that she’s the daughter of Ra’s al Ghul.)

Besides the fact that she gave Oliver the idea to suit up as the Hood, this episode also seemingly gives us a plausible answer for “why the hell would he be back on Lian Yu in the pilot?”

It seems entirely likely that Talia sends him back there at the end of his training and arranges for him to be “found” so that he can have the fresh start that his father intended for him. It would tie into the season’s theme of second chances and fresh starts, and it would dovetail nicely into the fresh start the show will get in season 6 with the flashbacks behind it and a new weekly structure looming.

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Arrow airs Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.