Arrow Deleted Scene Shows Oliver Confront Malcom About Thea in the Final Season

Arrow‘s final season premiere took things back to the beginning, as it were, with a twist when it saw Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) travel to Earth-2 where he got to relive his return from the “dead” by getting off of Lian Yu and returning to his family in the episode “Starling City”. The reality he returned to on this parallel Earth was just a little different with his mother Moira (Susanna Thompson) having married Malcolm Merlyn (John Barrowman) but even for the differences, some things remain the same and now, a deleted scene from that final season premiere shows Oliver confronting his new stepfather over Thea’s (Willa Holland) parentage.

In the clip, as shared by Entertainment Weekly Oliver reveals that he knows Malcolm was Thea’s biological father, something that both Malcolm and Moira are surprised to discover that the long-missing Oliver knows this secret and seems to be accepting of it.

“Well, you were together before when my father was alive,” Oliver says in the scene. “And Thea is… Thea was your daughter.”

On Arrow, it’s revealed in season two that Thea is the daughter of not Moira and Robert Queen, but of Moira and Malcolm. It’s devastating news for Thea — and, to an extent, for Oliver — at the time but something that they both ultimately come to peace with over the years. Referencing it, even in a deleted scene from the final season premiere, along with the returns of Moira, Malcolm, and Tommy (Colin Donnell) is part of what made the premiere and its return to the beginning, albeit on an alternate Earth, something of a “love letter” to the popular Arrowverse series.

“It’s a love letter to the show; it really is,” Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim said ahead of the final season last year. “I was telling Beth [Schwartz], it felt a lot like the series finale, not the season premiere, in the best possible way, almost to the point where we’re kind of like ‘what are we going to do for the series finale?’ I mean, we know, obviously, but it has that kind of resonance to it, and that’s exciting.”

The deleted scene, as well as other special features including a bonus disc with all five parts of the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover are included on Arrow: The Eighth and Final Season Blu-Ray/DVD which goes on sale April 28.