Fighting is the name of the game in the Arrowverse. In Central City, Team Flash relies on Barry Allen’s incredible abilities to do a lot of the heavy lifting, but at least once a season, his enemies find a way to slow him down. At that point, the fists start flying, so it’s a good thing that The Flash spends plenty of time training with his good buddy Oliver Queen, easily the Arrowverse’s greatest fighter. Oliver spends five years on a remote island in the North China Sea before returning home and using his vast resources for good, becoming the vigilante known as the Arrow. However, trying to rid the world of evil comes at a cost.
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Oliver takes his fair share of beatings in the first couple of seasons of Arrow. Every time he gets knocked down, though, he gets right back up, even when his old friend Slade Wilson shows up in Starling City all hopped up on Mirakuru. It takes until Season 3 for Oliver to really look death in the face, and when he does, the show that he leads sets out on a new path, one that features its fair share of out-of-this-world moments.
The Arrow Meets His Match in “The Climb”
Once Slade enters his cell on Lian Yu, life is good in Starling City – well, as good as it can be in a city that prides itself on raising criminals. Oliver is back on the streets, and he has his “ex” Sara Lance by his side. But the good times don’t last forever because Sara takes a few arrows in the chest one night, shocking all of Team Arrow. As the gang tries to figure out who’s behind the attack, another party shows up on the scene and wants answers: the League of Assassins. Of course, Sara had been romantically involved with Nyssa al Ghul, and trained killers usually don’t take kindly to their partners dying on their watch.
On his daughter’s behalf, Ra’s al Ghul, the leader of the League, requests that Team Arrow hand over Sara’s killer, unless they want bad things to start happening. Without another choice, Oliver decides to face off against Ra’s himself, hoping to put an end to the threat. The two meet at the top of a mountain in “The Climb” and get it done. While Oliver puts up a decent fight at first, he eventually loses all the momentum and takes a blade to the stomach. Ra’s pushes him off the edge of the cliff, leaving the hero for dead. With the show being called Arrow, obviously, Oliver doesn’t die, but the twist changes everything.
Arrow Is Never the Same After Oliver’s Fight With Ra’s al Ghul
Once a show does a fake-out with its main character, the gloves usually come off. In Arrow‘s case, it takes the oppurtunity to embrace its comic book roots by introducing the Lazarus Pit, a body of water that can bring people back from the dead, and other mystical parts of the League of Assassins. Season 4 ups the ante in the most significant way, bringing Damien Darhk, a character with full-blown magical powers, into the fold and having the titular character link up with heroes like Vixen and Constantine. Now, Arrow‘s fourth season isn’t anything to write home about, but it does set the stage for major things down the line, including an unbelievable final outing.
By pitting Oliver against a character with as much history as Ra’s, the Arrowverse allows its flagship show to take as many swings as it wants. It all culminates in Season 8, which sees Oliver travel throughout the multiverse on a mission for the Monitor. By the end of his journey, the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” event kicks off, and the Anti-Monitor’s forces get the better of the franchise’s greatest hero. Instead of just sitting on the sidelines, Oliver embraces his role as the Spectre, helps defeat the Anti-Monitor, and creates a new multiverse for his friends to protect. In a way, Ra’s is responsible for the Arrowverse really hitting its stride, even if he wasn’t around for more than a single season.
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Image courtesy of Netflix -
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Image courtesy of Bethesda
