5 Things We Hope To See in the Arrow Finale
Everybody's city is in danger, except for Oliver Queen.Starling is relatively safe this season, [...]
Everybody's city is in danger, except for Oliver Queen.
Starling is relatively safe this season, with no army of enhanced lunatics trying to tear it apart for the first time in recent memory. Instead, Oliver had to take the fight somewhere else: to Lian Yu, an enchanted island where Oliver had been stranded for a while, before bopping around the world and returning to Lian Yu in time to be rescued.
As the show's fifth season finishes up on Wednesday, its complex plot leaves relatively little to be resolved, at least relative to the huge number of dangling plot threads hanging over Supergirl and The Flash.
Instead, this time around it's very personal and character-driven, with questions about whether any of Oliver's loved ones will die and whether Black Siren will ever come around to the idea that it's SUPER MESSED UP to be terrorizing the Earth-1 doppelganger of her father.
That doesn't mean there isn't plenty to discuss, though: here's our wish list for some of the things we'd most like to see in the finale.
THE END FOR PROMETHEUS
While Prometheus has been an undeniably great villain, it's probably time to either kill him, or basically end his threat for good.
If he's so good that in order to beat him, Oliver has to call in favors from Deathstroke, any future seasons that would use him again would likely require "nerfing" him in order to make the story work, and that's something that fans intuitively dislike.
That said, he's also a huge threat, and now that Oliver is the mayor, he is more vulnerable than ever to threats of somebody outing his secret identity.
This is a character who kind of feels like he has to die, but obviously Oliver's kill-crazy first season is what made Prometheus the man he is.
Is there a satisfying conclusion to a story like that?
RESOLUTION FOR DEATHSTROKE
This storyline really begs for Deathstroke and Oliver to have a real conversation -- one that seemed like it would have come at the end of season 2.
Slade Wilson on Arrow is a tragic figure, and while it sounds insane to think that Prometheus has spent four years plotting Oliver's downfall, remember that Slade spent five LITERALLY WALKING UNDER THE OCEAN to get back to make Oliver's life a living hell.
His plan was less sophisticated, but that's because he was in constant, agonizing physical pain for most of the time before he got back into Oliver's life.
So when he says "I'm glad you came back here," we want to know just what he is thinking, and how the hell they're going to explain him just being like "oh, you think this guy's really dangerous? Cool, I'm on board."
Also: what could they possibly offer Deathstroke to help them? What would motivate him to do it, and not to run or betray Oliver at a key moment?
WILLIAM
This is a story that felt wrapped up, but the writers have picked at the scab and now we kind of need to know where to go next.
Honestly, once the William story ended last season we half-figured we would just never hear from this character again -- and we were cool with that. Making him a constant potential-hostage didn't seem fair to a kid who doesn't even get to enjoy having his dad in his life in exchange for it all.
That said, it made sense to bring him -- and the plot point -- back this season. Between the 100th episode, and "Missing," there have been two episodes this year already that have essentially drawn from every point in the show's history to make the fifth-year aspect of Oliver's "five years in Hell" a satisfying emotional journey.
Now that he's back in it, though, we're right back where we were last season: what do we do with him? Now that we've seen that people can find William even without Felicity and Oliver becoming aware of it, the idea of sending him back into hiding seems doomed. Bringing him back to Star City would mean that Oliver and his mother would be thrust upon Team Arrow, who likely wouldn't be as excited as Oliver to deal with that regularly.
Like so much of what Arrow has going on right now, it feels like a no-win situation, which makes it intriguing...
THEA
Let's figure out what Thea's role is, huh?
After annoying most fans in the first season, she slowly became a valuable member of Team Arrow and one of the most interesting characters on the show, only to have all that turned around this season, as she's been largely absent.
That said, she's got plot armor, with EP Marc Guggenheim having said that he'll never kill Thea becuase at this point he feels like killing her would not tell a new story after Oliver having slowly lost every other part of his family and already feeling pretty isolated and alone.
So what's in store for her?
SET UP NEXT SEASON
This season, we've been told that the finale will end on an "explosive" cliffhanger and the the new status quo won't be known until the fall -- which is certainly a legitimate way to go, but we hope there's at least a taste of what's coming up next for the characters in the finale.
This is largely becuase, now that we're at the end of the five-year journey for Oliver, season 6 is wide open: it can be basically anything, whih is part of why we're hoping that even if we don't know exactly what's up, who lives and dies, etc., that we get a little sense for what's in Oliver's head going forward.
It's going to be a little more difficult than usual to do that -- in Star City, you can tease who the next bad guy will be, show off some stuff, whatever. On Lian Yu, it would be difficult to do that, unless your villain is going to have ties back to Lian Yu -- which in this case makes sense because of the season 5 "back to the beginning" thing but would make significantly less sense next year unless we learn something really epic this week.
...Which isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility either.
MORE ARROW
After a violent shipwreck, billionaire playboy Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) was missing and presumed dead for five years before being discovered alive on a remote island in the North China Sea.
He returned home to Star City, bent on righting the wrongs done by his family and fighting injustice. As the Green Arrow, he protects his city with the help of former soldier John Diggle (David Ramsey), computer-science expert Felicity Smoak (Emily Bett Rickards), his vigilante-trained sister Thea Queen (Willa Holland), Deputy Mayor Quentin Lance (Paul Blackthorne), brilliant inventor Curtis Holt (Echo Kellum), and his new recruits, street-savvy Rene Ramirez (Rick Gonzalez) and meta-human Dinah Drake (Juliana Harkavy).
Oliver has finally solidified and strengthened his crime-fighting team only to have it threatened when unexpected enemies from his past return to Star City, forcing Oliver to rethink his relationship with each member of his "family".
Based on the characters from DC, Arrow is from Bonanza Productions Inc. in association with Berlanti Productions and Warner Bros. Television, with executive producers Greg Berlanti ("The Flash," "Supergirl"), Marc Guggenheim ("DC's Legends of Tomorrow," "Eli Stone"), Wendy Mericle ("Desperate Housewives," "Eli Stone"), Andrew Kreisberg ("The Flash," "Eli Stone," "Warehouse 13") and Sarah Schechter ("The Flash," "DC's Legends of Tomorrow").
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