The nature of the Arrowverse’s reborn multiverse will be explored in the April 26 episode of The Flash, which sees Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) return for the first time since his apparent death in the Crisis on Infinite Earths event in 2020. During the Crisis, Oliver died at the hands of the Anti-Monitor’s Shadow Demons, only to find himself in an afterlife purgatory that closely resembled Lian Yu, the desert island where his journey as the Green Arrow began. There, he encountered Jim Corrigan (Stephen Lobo), who tapped Oliver to replace him as the cosmic entity known as The Spectre.
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It seems to be in that form that Oliver will return to The Flash, explaining the next crisis that the Arrowverse faces. You can see the trailer for the episode below.
As The Spectre, Oliver and a team of heroes faced off against the Anti-Monitor at the beginning of time and emerged victorious, giving Oliver a more epic send-off and suggesting that he used the last of his life-force as The Spectre to recreate the multiverse, and make some changes to the timestream (as seen a couple of weeks later in the Arrow series finale). In the Earth-Prime comic last year, Oliver was seen, seemingly alive and well as The Spectre again, and The Flash producers teased that aspects of the comics would pay off.
In the episode, which is directed by series star Danielle Panabaker, Bloodwork (Sendhil Ramamurthy) returns and seemingly crashes Barry’s (Grant Gustin) birthday party by poisoning all the guests, including returning guest stars John Diggle (David Ramsey) and Wally West (Keiynan Lonsdale).
From the look of the trailer, Oliver retains at least the knowledge, if not the powers, from his time as The Spectre. But when he’s fighting alongside Barry, he does it as the Green Arrow. Team Flash, meanwhile, all seem to be possessed by Bloodwork and need to be rescued or there will be hell to pay.
It’s handy, given the circumstances, that Diggle picked this occasion to give Barry a 30th birthday present from Oliver: his bow, which Gustin wielded when the two swapped bodies in the Elseworlds event. Maybe this episode will even give John a chance to get closure with his best friend, who died twice, but John didn’t get to say goodbye either time.
The Flash airs on Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.
