This week saw ARROW return to greatness with a quite brilliant season finale, Lian Yu. In both the present and flashback stories, Oliver found himself on his own island hell fighting for his life. 5 years ago Oliver raced to get free of Kovar and his men in time to catch the attention of the passing ship that had beens set up to pass by the island at just the right time to see his beacon. If he missed it, then he'd be stranded. It was slightly odd as we knew he would get off the island, but there was no guarantee it would be exactly there and then. After killing a group of Kovar's men and taking down Kovar's helicopter with a stolen machine gun, Oliver ended up having to take the man mountain that is Dolph Lundgren as Konstantin Kovar one on one, finally snapping his neck and making a mad dash to light the beacon and finally reenact the opening of ARROW's pliot episode. A tearful phone call to this mother that he had been found alive and was returning home finally, FINALLY, bringing the “five years in hell” story to a close. The show runners have said that there will still be flashbacks in season 6, but we'll have to see how that goes because for now, they've been brought to a fulfilling conclusion. Extra credit needs to go to the show's creators for once again playing around with the dual narratives by way of showing a dead body much earlier in the episode, whose identity as Kovar that would only be revealed later.
Figuring out quickly that he could trust Slade Wilson, as the mind warping Mirakuru had worn off long ago, Oliver offered to free and help Slade find his son if he helped him save his from Chase, even knocking out a poor ARGUS red shirt posted to guard him. With Merlyn, Nyssa, Deathstroke and even Digger Harkness aka Captain Boomerang now at his side, a sort of cobbled together DCTV Suicide Squad, Oliver set off into the island's interior to find his friends and missing son, but only after a RPG blew up his plane meaning if they wanted off the island, they'd have to find the plane Chase flew there. It wasn't long before Harkness revealed he'd already been made an offer to join the “real” bad guys side when he pulled a gun on Oliver and co shortly after they found Thea, Curtis, Felicity and Oliver's son's mother Samantha trapped in cages in the middle of the woods. When Talia and Evelyn showed up all looked lost, with the baddies extending their offer to Deathstroke who seemed willing to turn on Oliver on a dime but he instead saved his life and helped fight off the assault and free Oliver's friends. Talia and Harkness made their escape and poor Evelyn was locked up in one of the cages and left for now, on the promise that Oliver would come back for her once all this was over. “When all this is over,” she retorted, “You'll be dead.”
With Diggle, Rene, Dinah and Quentin still unaccounted for, Oliver sent the others accompanied by Merlyn to find Chase's plane and get off the island. There was a brief moment between Oliver and Felicity, the looming threat or sweet promise depending on your stance on Olicity, that once all this was over they could talk about this thing between them and maybe get back together again, which honestly felt felt more natural, more organic than most Olicity exchanges in the past.
Merlyn tried to reconcile with Thea, but was once again pushed away, mostly because of his being a murdering sociopath, but when Thea inadvertently stepped on an old landmine, Merlyn didn't hesitate to push her off and take her place. Thea declared he didn't need to prove anything to her but with Harkness leading a cadre of Talia's League rejects toward their position, Merlyn told them to run, somewhat sanguine with his fate. As Harkness drew near wondering why the great Malcolm Merlyn was just standing out in the open, Merlyn seemingly got the drop a foe for the last time, the mine going off and presumably killing both. Though we didn't see exactly what happened as we only saw the blast from Thea's perspective through the forest as she and the others fled. Maybe “the magician” managed had one last trick up his sleeve.
Making their way to the prison facility at the heart of the island, Oliver was once again betrayed by Deathstroke, this time being thrown into the same lock up as his friends. Before I could even ask the question it was pointed out that Dinah's sonic cry didn't work in that place because of a sonic dampening device. But Oliver had come prepared. Hidden on him was the sonic collar Curtis had made to help focus Dinah's power, to the point where it would overcome any sonic dampening. Using her cry to break them all free, they set to escape as Nyssa and Deathstroke, who once again hadn't really betrayed Oliver as getting him and the collar into the cells was all part of their plan, helped battle their way out.
Dinah came face to face with Earth-2 Laurel as we got to see the battle between Black Siren and Black Canary. Both knocked over by the other's sonic cry we didn't get a final answer as to who was better as Quentin bashed the evil version of his daughter over the head, knocking her out. Dinah, realising how difficult it must have been for Quentin to do that pointed out he didn't need to do that. Quentin, exorcising some demons pointed out that he really did. Nyssa came up against her sister Talia and the daughters Al Ghul went one on one with a lot of bad blood between them. Nyssa bested Talia, who she hated for abandoning her with their frankly cruel and abusive father, but didn't bring herself to kill her despite Talia trying to goad her into doing so. Instead she just left her older sister knocked out on the cold floor of Lian Yu prison.
Oliver took on Chase as his friends took out the rest of his Rent-a- Ninja's provided by Talia. With Chase seemingly beaten by Oliver, he dropped the bombshell that Oliver's son William was already dead and that all this effort to save him had been for naught. The fact that we hadn't seen William at all the entire episode made this moment fall heavy – had ARROW really given us the Seven “What's in the box?” ending? Oliver however, refused to believe Chase and said that even if William was dead, he would never give Chase what he wanted, killing him and proving him right.
Chase slipped away thanks to one of a pesky ninja smoke bombs and Oliver gave chase telling the others to meet with Felicity and co and get off the damn island. There was just one problem they hadn't counted on. The plane Chase had used to get to the island has been sabotaged and couldn't be used to fly away. And on top of that, Curtis discovered a C4 bomb buried not to far from the landing strip. Using her magic tablet given to her by Oliver, Felicity realised that the entire island was covered in hundreds of these C4 bombs, all linked to go off together, all connected to a dead man's switch, hooked up to Chase. If Oliver had killed Chase the whole island would have gone up.
Oliver pursued Chase to a jetty where he was trying to escape on a small boat, Oliver leaping on board at the last second. This is where Adrian Chase aka Simon Morrison aka Prometheus aka The Throwing Star Killer proved himself to be the greatest ARROW villain of all time. On board this boat he had William, still alive though not exactly well and as the boat chugged out into the same waters that Oliver found himself shipwrecked in 10 years ago he offered Oliver his final choice. Either kill him to save William, which would blow up the island and everyone on it, including Felicity, including William's mother, or stay his hand and watch him snap William's neck. Everything that had come before had been leading to this moment. “See you on the boat,” he had said. This was his final play the whole damn time. In anguish over choosing between the lives of his friends or the life of his son, Oliver in true heroic fashion found a third option as when he feigned to lower his bow, he shot Chase in the leg, taking him out, allowing William to pull free of his grasp. “Don't you come near him. Don't you even look at him.” Oliver yelled, his nightmare finally over.
Except it wasn't. Chase had even planned for the third option. He reminded Oliver that these were the waters that his father, Robert Queen, had taken his own life. He pointed out that William would likely be ok because being younger he would have more time to process and deal with what happened, unlike Oliver and Chase did with the respective deaths of their fathers, but that it may be a difficult future for them without Felicity or without William's mother Samantha. He then pulled a gun, the same type that Robert Queen used 10 years ago no less and in front of Oliver and William, blew his brains out.
And with that, Lian Yu, Oliver Queen's own personal hell exploded in a fiery eruption as Oliver watched on helpless. Chase really had been 10 steps ahead the whole time.
Unlike last year's season finale which felt an absolute mess this finale, which almost could've acted as a show finale ,was amazing, with every character getting some resolution to their arc either throughout the season, or even the show as a whole. I just wish ARROW could've been this good all of the time, but it was a brilliant way for these five years to end. What the future holds for Oliver Queen? We shall have to wait and see in the fall.
Written by Nick Whitney, ARROW Beat Writer -- Click to read Nick's posts
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