Arrow S08E10 Review: I Am Oliver Queen

Arrow, Season 8, Episode 10: Fadeout

After eight seasons, many villains and many questionable decisions, after many ups and downs, Arrow is finally over with this episode -- and standing at 117 episodes long, make no mistake... Arrow's not a great show. Its quality wavers and is very inconsistent, and there sure are several low points in its run, including an insistence on prioritizing plot twists and original characters at times. But despite all that... you don't spend eight years following a show without developing a huge amount of love for Oliver Queen and the rest of the eclectic cast of this show. It has gone... a long, long way since the very first season, where Arrow started off as a well-executed but relatively bland "dark n' edgy" superhero adaptation was a poor man's Batman. And honestly, I'll go on record on saying that as much as the showmakers tried, Oliver's death during Crisis was bogged down by trying to make it as huge and cosmically large yet also making it kind of abrupt and nowhere the huge culmination of character history that I had expected.

And "Fadeout" is... it's more of a memorial to both the character and the show more than anything, but after the funeral scene in Crisis on Infinite Earths and a couple of extra scenes last episode with Mia talking about legacy and stuff. And after season eight has been all about what Oliver Queen has learned and what Oliver Queen meant to everyone, it's kind of hard to really think of anything new. Not that the show didn't try, mind you. The deliveries that Quentin and Diggle and Laurel and Sara and Felicity had as part of their respective eulogies are amazing and will bring a tear to the side of your eyes... but at the same time, it just feels like 'the last episode' instead of the huge, far more impactful endings of Oliver's actual death, or the end of Arrow's seventh season. It's a necessary episode, but one that feels like it's going through the motions. (And part of it might be because I personally don't find Oliver's death in Crisis to be super-emotional or narratively-driven either).

It's just that the episode itself felt very, very safe. Again, it's pretty emotional, but at this point it's honestly nothing we haven't seen before even in this season of Arrow. It's a sufficient enough of a goodbye. We even have a flashback for good times' sake, this time centering around some random member of Oliver Queen's list, and it's apparently the point where John Diggle manages to convince Oliver to not kill and actually spare some of the people on his list and give them the chance to change. And random list-man doesn't change, and goes off to kidnap William in 2020, but at least Oliver gave him the chance to change, and it's his fault that he doesn't change. Or something.

There's an attempt to tie this to Mia Queen, which is actually pretty effective. Sara brings Mia back from 2040 into this episode, and coincidentally enough it's the Mia that's right after the events of the previous episode where she just saw William-of-2040 get kidnapped, and now she gets to help out William-of-2020 when he gets kidnapped. That's kind of a neat parallel. We get to see Mia interact with Felicity, with all of the glorious awkwardness that Felicity has, which is neat. We also get cameos from practically every member of Team Arrow, even freaking Ragman shows up with his rag powers! I genuinely forgot he existed in the Arrowverse!

It all basically boils down to Mia being inspired to finally take over the mantle as the new Green Arrow, and William being rescued and the whole "Oliver Queen was the first and he inspired us all" speech as they unveiled the statue. It's pretty cool, but at the same time also nothing we haven't heard before on this show.

There is also a rapid-fire attempt to really lay down the law about just what has changed in Oliver's new rebooted universe. Oliver saves Moira from Slade in Earth-Prime's version of season two. Tommy Merlyn manages to survive eight seasons of Arrow, marry Laurel somewhere down the line, and also Laurel-Prime also dies because Oliver can't fix everything*? Quentin also lives through eight seasons, yay! Not-Laurel is still around, despite Earth-2 being gone. Emiko shows up and reaches out to Thea and Moira at the end of this episode. Oh, and Roy and Thea finally shack it up and get together this episode. It's the sort of epilogue that sort of check-lists the endings for everyone, y'know? Oh, John and family goes off to Metropolis, but not before stumbling upon a Green Lantern ring, Rene becomes mayor or something, blah blah blah.

*Trying to think too hard about the changes that Oliver may have made or may not have made is going down a dangerous rabbit hole, and I don't like the implication that Oliver is personally responsible for all of the changes in Earth-Prime. 

We also have the tie-in to season seven's final scene, where the Monitor brings Felicity to... heaven or something, I guess, where heaven is apparently Oliver and Felicity hanging out in a facsimile of Queen Consolidated where they can be happy forever in heaven-land. It's a pretty satisfying conclusion in that regard, I suppose, even if, like everything else, it's an expected conclusion.

And... and that's it for Arrow, ending not quite with a bang, but certainly not with a whimper. While the show has certainly been a bit too long for its own good, Oliver Queen has grown as a character so long that watching his journey has been pretty fascinating, seeing him go from a borderline-psychotic vigilante to a proud leader of a team to finally a true hero who's truly motivated by justice and love. And... and in that regard, eight seasons of Arrow does really manage to turn Oliver Queen into someone else, into something else.  

Oh, yeah, and John Diggle found the goddamn Green Lantern ring at the end. I mean, sure, it's like on a weird glasses box instead of the dead corpse of Abin Sur, and... I dunno, I really do wish this is the crossover that we didn't get and yet I really want, instead of the random future cast? Boo.

Anyway... thank you for all of the action and all of the drama, Arrow. It's been a ride.

DC Easter Eggs Corner:

• John Diggle's final scene is finding a mysterious green object that fell from the sky, obviously alluding to the long-awaited fan theory that John Diggle is actually John Stewart, a.k.a. Green Lantern IV. This has been fueled many times in CW's history with John Diggle's stepfather being called Stewart, and Barry Allen of Earth-90 alluding to the fact that his Earth's John Diggle has a ring. Hooray for Green Lantern!
• Slade's appearance in the altered timeline isn't actually newly-shot footage for this season, it makes use of unused deleted footage in season two as part of a "what if" dream scenario where Oliver beat Slade and prevented Moira's death.
• The following former main cast members make a return in this episode, after being absent or only making single-episode appearances in season 8: Felicity Smoak, Moira Queen, Roy Harper/Arsenal, Thea Queen/Speedy, Quentin Lance, Curtis Holt/Mr. Terrific, Tommy Merlyn, Emiko Adachi, present-day William, Nyssa al Ghul, Talia al Ghul, Anatoly Knyazev and Rory Reagan/Ragman. In addition, Sara Lance, Barry Allen and Kara Danvers show up from their respective shows. 
• Showrunner Marc Guggenheim makes a cameo during the unveiling of the statue, standing behind Felicity and Dinah.