Arrow S08E07 Review: Where It All Began

Arrow, Season 8, Episode 7: Purgatory

And finally, here we are with the final episode of Arrow before Crisis on Infinite Earths! It's a huge event that has had a fair amount of build-up in both Arrow and The Flash, and while it's not ideal, at this point in time there's a neat amount of build-up about the enigmatic Crisis that's about to come. We could've have stood to know more, of course, but all things considered it's a pretty decent seven episodes for the final season of Arrow as Oliver Queen puts his affairs in order and accepts that he needs to be the hero to help end the Crisis.

And this time around, fittingly, we return to where it all began -- both for the show and for the character. Arrow's big gimmick during its first season is moving back and forth between a present day storyline and an origin story flashback sequence, a gimmick that became increasingly convoluted and was variable in narrative success over the show's eight-season history, but was one that was the most memorable in its first two seasons where they clearly had an idea about what to do with it. Granted, this episode's way of literally conjuring up ghosts of the past to fight our current assembled Team Arrow is a bit hand-wavey, with something-something about ley lines, magic and a god-killing weapon resurrecting a bunch of familiar faces from Oliver Queen's first journey -- his first mentor Yao Fei (who gets a neat, brief team-up with Oliver mano-a-mano) and his first adversaries Edward Fyers and Billy Wintergreen.

Lyla, who's now fully embracing her Harbinger "herald of the Monitor" persona (as much as the change feels a little jarring and random), tells us and the assembled Team Arrow that they have a way to create some kind of super-weapon to use against the Crisis. Oliver's acceptance of his fate over "Reset" is something that doesn't sit well with either Diggle or Mia, which is actually a neat way to make "Reset" relevant. Sure, Oliver may have his character development, but it doesn't mean the guys around him are going to be as accepting. Again, it's got shades of this season's The Flash, but instead of a five-second flash-forward when Barry sees Central City dying, Oliver got an entire episode. And... okay, it's pretty poetic to end everything as the last regular episode of Arrow as Oliver Queen and friends muck around Lian Yu and literally fight a bunch of old ghosts, and everyone more or less gets to go through a variation of Oliver's acceptance journey. Not quite to the degree that Oliver has, but it's something that I guess is extra-poignant thanks to the show's eight-year-long history coming to an end... sometimes things ending are okay. Or something.

Sure, we get a big ol' shoot-out fighting scene in the end, but the episode's main moments of interest is definitely the emotional beats. Oliver and Diggle's short scene and Diggle's fear that his best buddy Oliver might have to take on this Crisis alone... Mia and Oliver's farewell near the end... William and Mia having a neat talk about how Mia needs to at least spend some time with Oliver despite their disagreements before it's too late... really, I can't elaborate on these scenes all that much other than the fact that they're pretty emotional.

Oh, and we get a couple of scenes that sort of hammer home that, hey, the 2040/2046 scenes we've seen in Arrow and Legends of Tomorrow isn't going to happen. Roy gets his arm pinned by some rubble and they have to amputate it to rescue Roy (which I guess is where Diggle learns about necessary sacrifices), while Oliver tells Diggle to make sure that prime-timeline William and Mia get to grow up together.

Anyway, this episode was a neat last hurrah for the little melancholic trip we've had throughout the show's history. And it's... it's solid? A lot of this season's episodes rely mostly on the emotions and feelings we have for these characters and the sheer strength of emotional farewells or whatever, and this episode is prime candidate for it. The themes of season 8 has been more about farewell and acceptance than the traditional superhero "fight fate to earn your happy ending" and it's pretty neat... but at the end of this episode, we've ran out of time for any sort of buildup or reminiscing, since the skies are red and Lyla's transformed into some sort of cosmic  demigod! Crisis time!

I'll reserve judgment on Arrow's final season as a whole until I've watched all of the Crisis episode to see how well-done of a tie-in this season is.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• Roy Harper losing his arms actually happened in the comics, too, with Prometheus being the one that sliced off his arm, which he replaced with a cybernetic one. 
• Lyla Michaels's costume is essentially her comic-book counterpart's Harbinger outfit, except it shows off a lot less skin. 
• Edward Fyers, Yao Fei and Billy Wintergreen reappear from Arrow's first-season flashback storylines, with Yao Fei in particular repeating his "Sheng Chun" credo.
• Hub City, home of DC comics superhero Question, is briefly mentioned in passing.