"My name is Oliver Queen. After five years in hell, I returned home with only one goal — to save my city. For eight years, I fought alongside brave men and women striving for justice, but then the Crisis came and I had to become someone else. I had to become something else. I made the ultimate sacrifice, which helped birth an entirely new universe. Now my friends and family will have to go on without me and although I have become a Spectre, there is a part of me that will always be the Green Arrow."
The epilogue for the story of the Green Arrow, as Oliver Queen's friends and family return to say goodbye.
Tropes
- Ambiguous Situation:
- Felicity's "afterlife" where she is reunited with Oliver; as Oliver's soul was destroyed in the Crisis heaven is denied to him, so it's unclear whether Felicity's actually with him or if she's Ascended to a Higher Plane of Existence with an effigy of him. The opening narration suggests he's still the Spectre, which would mean that he's not as destroyed as the Crisis implied.This was later clarified in The Flash (2014), where Oliver was revealed to still exist as the Spectre but (mostly) unable to interact with the living.
- Was the Monitor restored along with most of the multiverse, or is this a younger version of him time-traveling?
- Oliver didn't bring back his father, since he didn't want to disrupt the timeline that would cause him to never become Green Arrow. But does that also mean Emiko still didn't warn Robert about Malcolm Merlyn's sabotage of the Queen's Gambit (due to Robert still rejecting her), like in the original timeline?
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Averted. Tommy isn't particularly thrown by Laurel being from another Earth, since he recently found out about a previous reality where he was dead.
- Back for the Finale: A lot of characters long absent make their return for the finale.
- Anatoly, Curtis, Moira, Tommy, Talia, Thea, Quentin, Emiko, Felicity, Nyssa, Rory, and teenage William reappear. Slade also makes an uncredited appearance in a flashback.
- Sara and Barry, both of whom have their own shows after debuting on Arrow.
- Also, Marcia Pedowitz, director of the documentary Emerald Archer.
- And don't forget the salmon ladder.
- Back from the Dead:
- As with Zoe Ramirez, the Post-Crisis rebooted reality features an alive Emiko, Moira, Quentin, and Tommy. In fact, Oliver altered the timeline specifically so they could be brought back.
- Averted for Robert Queen, Original!Laurel, and Oliver himself, the only three people whose resurrections would have prevented the new universe's creation. Robert because his death was so formative for Oliver, Laurel because her resurrection would displace Black Siren for some reason, and Oliver because if he never died, he never would have become the Spectre and therefore never would have rebooted the universe.
- Birds of a Feather: A non-romantic example. Rory speculates that Rene and Oliver had their fair share of arguments during his time away because the two of them were so similar to one another.
- Book Ends: This show began with Oliver coming home to his family and friends after being Legally Dead for five years and readjusting his life with them. It ends with Oliver's funeral after he was Killed Off for Real and his family and friends readjusting their lives without him.
- But Now I Must Go: To Rene's sadness, both John and Dinah leave Star City after Oliver's funeral. John because Lyla got a promotion in Metropolis, Dinah to continue working as a vigilante in places that need it (now that Star City is free of crime).
- Call-Back: Earth-90's Flash remarked that Diggle had a ring on his Earth. His final scene seems to allude to said ring.
- The Cameo: Along with many others, Kara makes her sole appearance on Arrow proper (i.e, outside the annual crossovers) at Oliver's funeral.
- Character Death: As revealed in the Season 7 finale, Felicity Smoak's heading to a form of "afterlife" essentially means her death.
- Control Freak: A somewhat positive example, as Felicity implanted a tracking device in William's arm, which helps the team locate him.
- Cosmic Retcon: As part of rebooting reality, Oliver altered things so that Tommy, Moira, Emiko, and Quentin never died.
- Death Seeker: John Byrne incites Mia to kill him instead of taking him to prison again, but she doesn't do it.
- Destination Defenestration: John Byrne, the guy who kidnaps William, plans to throw him off the roof of the place where Oliver stopped his crimes eight years earlier.
- Distant Finale: In 2040, Felicity goes to the afterlife to live with Oliver.
- Double-Meaning Title: "Fadeout" refers to both the anatomy of a longbow (specifically the area where the grip tapers into the risers and limbs of the bow) and the series "fading out" with one final episode.
- Drowning My Sorrows: Laurel intends to cope with the double-whammy of Oliver's death and her Survivor Guilt over her Earth-1 self still being dead by, in her own words, getting "as drunk as humanly possible".
- Due to the Dead: The current Team Arrow members gather to toast Oliver in the bunker at the start of the episode. Near the end, all past and present members, as well as Oliver's other friends and loved ones, gather at his gravesite to remember and honor him.
- Earn Your Happy Ending:
- Oliver altered reality to the point that several of his loved ones never died. And in 2040, the Monitor meets Felicity and takes her to reunite with Oliver for eternity in the afterlife.
- Roy and Thea finally decide to get engaged to be married, after nearly eight years of mutual anguish. This also undoes their future Downer Ending in Season 7.
- End of an Age: As acknowledged by Diggle, who notes that the shutting down of the Arrow bunker is "the end of the line".
- Fate Worse than Death: What John Byrne considers prison to be.
- The Fellowship Has Ended: With Oliver's death and the crime rate in Star City brought down to zero, the remains of Team Arrow go their separate ways.
- Flashback: To the Season 1 days, with Oliver apprehending another individual on the list named John Byrne.
- For Want Of A Nail:
- Sara warns Mia specifically to avoid revealing too much about the future when she brings her back to 2020 to avoid this sort of situation.
- Post-reboot, Oliver managed to escape his bonds and prevent Slade from killing Moira by simply having a pocket knife on hand.
- Gargle Blaster: Most of Team Arrow finds Oliver's vodka intolerable. Laurel not only doesn't mind, she pours herself another shot immediately after the first. On the other hand, quality may be of less importance than potency when aiming to get "as drunk as humanly possible".
- Grand Finale: Made a full night event by the CW, preceded by a retrospective special titled Arrow: Hitting the Bullseye, which unlike Jane the Virgin “Chapter Ninety-Nine”, is not considered an episode. The series that started the Arrowverse ends at eight seasons and 170 episodes.
- Happily Ever After:
- After a very tumultuous eight years, the Will They or Won't They? with Roy and Thea pays off with them getting engaged.
- Felicity and Oliver are reunited in the afterlife.
- The Heart: In the flashbacks, Diggle manages to convince Oliver to lower his bodycount.
- Heel–Face Return: Emiko is a much better person after her resurrection.
- Heteronormative Crusader: Talia shows some hints of this, claiming that, in forcing her to marry Oliver, Ra's wanted Nyssa to have a "normal" life. Nyssa hits back that she's lived a more normal life in spite of Ra's than she ever did because of him.
- In Spite of a Nail:
- Despite managing to bring back Emiko, Moira, Quentin, and Tommy, Oliver didn't bring back his father or Earth-1 Laurel. The former because it would disrupt the timeline causing him to never become the Green Arrow, and the latter because Earth-2 Laurel is already there.
- Much like his pre-Crisis Earth-90 counterpart, Diggle finds what appears to be a Lantern ring.
- Despite Oliver rewriting reality, Roy's right arm remained amputated.
- Also, despite the future being re-written, Felicity meets up with Oliver the exact same way as at the end of the previous season.
- Internal Reveal: Everyone who was brought back by the Cosmic Retcon has been made aware of the previous reality. Most notably, of course, Felicity gets to know the adult Mia.
- Irony: Tommy, the first to die between Earth-1 Laurel and Oliver in the original events, ends up being the Sole Survivor in this new reality.
- Last Episode, New Character: John Byrne, a man who kidnaps William as revenge for Oliver sending him to jail eight years prior.
- Moral Myopia:
- John Byrne tries to kill William because Oliver sent him to prison for human trafficking. As Mia points out, Oliver could have easily just killed Byrne instead, but showed him mercy (though Byrne considers death a better deal than eight years in Slabside).
- Talia treats the forced marriage between Nyssa and Oliver as a Pet the Dog moment from Ra's, believing that he wanted Nyssa to have a "normal" life. Nyssa, a gay woman, is not amused, seeing it as little more than a joke.
- Mythology Gag:
- The episode's antagonist is named after DC Comics creator John Byrne.
- Thea and Roy are seen leaping over the rooftop of Van Wayne Industries, likely a reference to obscure Batman character Vanderveer "Van" Wayne, most recently featured in the short-lived NBC sitcom Powerless.
- No Body Left Behind: Much like her husband, Felicity leaves no body behind when she leaves the living world to enter the afterlife.
- Nostalgia Heaven: Felicity's heaven is Queen Consolidated, specifically the time during her and Oliver's first meeting.
- The Oner: There are several long scenes with no cuts when Oliver fights Byrne and his goons in the flashback.
- One True Love:
- Despite the years that have passed and both of them moving on with their lives, Nyssa introduces Sara to Talia as her beloved.
- Oliver and Felicity are reunited in the afterlife, never to be separated again.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Moira, due to being alive again.
- Paradox Person: Even though the Earth she came from no longer exists (and, post-Crisis, never did), Laurel is still the same one we've been following since Season Five.
- Present Absence: The episode is Oliver's funeral, and is filled with people talking about him.
- Remember the New Guy?: The final Villain of the Week John Byrne (and another guy named Jimmy Tarallo who got Killed Offscreen) is said to be reprimanded by Oliver eight years prior, yet is absent in Season 1. However, this is justified due to the several Cosmic Retcons since then, along with the fact that many of Oliver's capers early on were offscreen. It was a similar case with Justin Claybourne.
- The Reveal:
- In the revised timeline of Earth-Prime, Tommy and Laurel were married before her death.
- We get to see where Felicity wound up after leaving with the Monitor at the end of Season 7: in a form of heaven with Oliver, set up as the moment he first saw her, while working for Queen Consolidated. This is also likely the reason why she was not at Mia's graduation party in the previous episode.
- Revenge by Proxy: With Oliver gone, John Byrne goes after his son instead for sending him to prison.
- Running Gag: In an extremely dark way, William constantly getting kidnapped, particularly how it's noted here that it "recently" happened to an adult William in 2040 as well.
- Sequel Hook: In addition to Mia returning to her time to start her own adventures in her spinoff, part of the closing montage shows Diggle discovering what appears to be a Green Lantern ring.
- Shrine to the Fallen: A statue is built in Oliver's honor.
- Sins of Our Fathers: There's one more Villain of the Week for the series: someone Oliver sent to jail eight years ago named John Byrne, who plans to take revenge by killing William.
- Special Edition Title: The intro shows all seven arrows from the past seasons, with seasons 1-3 being on the left, seasons 4-6 on the right, and a lighter green version for season 7 in the middle.
- Stable Time Loop:
- Thea wonders why Oliver didn't arrange for his father's life to be saved. Moira points out that if Robert Queen hadn't sacrificed himself, Oliver would never have started the path to become the hero he would eventually be.
- Mia donning the Green Arrow guise convinces the public that Oliver's death has inspired a new wave of heroes, which may not have happened if she didn't go back in time to her father's funeral.
- Mia's interaction with Dinah comes before the previous episode, "Green Arrow and the Canaries," for Dinah and comes after it for Mia, who knows Dinah is going to be mysteriously transported to 2040 soon. Mia tells Dinah that Sara gave her a speech about not revealing too much about the future.
- Stock Footage: The flashback scene in which Oliver frees himself and rescues his mother from Slade is from a cut Imagine Spot in the Season 2 finale.
- Surprise Difficulty: Inverted, in universe, for Diggle on the salmon ladder. The reason is lampshaded: he has arms like tree trunks.
- Survivor Guilt:
- Laurel confesses to Quentin why she's been depressed for the episode: Oliver's reboot of reality brought back many people formerly dead such as his mother, Tommy, and Quentin himself. But he didn't bring back Quentin's Earth-1 daughter, and she's certain it's because her presence prevented it.
- Barry also laments having failed to save Oliver.
- Thwarted Coup de Grâce: In the altered 2014, Oliver breaks out of his binds in time to stop Deathstroke from stabbing Moira.
- Title Drop: Mia mentions the part of the bow called "fadeout" to her brother's present self after showing him the skills their father taught her.
- Together in Death: Felicity is reunited with Oliver in the afterlife. In a way, Oliver is also with his father and Earth-1 Laurel in the afterlife.
- Took a Level in Kindness:
- Roy notes how much nicer Moira is to him, compared to her former self. This is also shown when she welcomes Emiko into her family, when she forced Robert to disown her pre-crisis. It's not revealed if she's made aware of how she originally treated her, which may had a hand in it.
- Presumably, Williams' maternal grandparents. They at least allow him to attend his father's funeral, knowing of his sacrifice.
- Unexplained Recovery: Rory mentions that it took a while for the rags to work again, so him losing his powers is still canon post-crisis, but how exactly he got them back isn't explained.
- The Unreveal:
- Dinah is last seen getting on her bike and leaving Star City, with no hint as to how she was taken 20 years into the future and had her existence Ret-Goned. Presumably, this was so that the mystery could be a major Story Arc in Green Arrow and the Canaries, which became an Aborted Arc after it was announced in January 2021 that the series wouldn't be picked up.
- We don't see how Sara Lance, who was a Paragon and thus remembers only the original timeline, reacted to the fact her father is alive again.
- It's not yet revealed what other changes were made or what remained the same, especially in the Arrow continuity, on Earth-Prime.
- Wham Shot:
- Something crashes in front of Diggle and when he investigates he finds a small box that holds something with a rather familiar green glow.
- The opening is seemingly a replay of Moira's death...and then Oliver breaks his bonds to tackle Slade which cuts to Moira in the present, still alive and talking of how Oliver saved her.
- What Could Have Been: In-universe, Marcia Pedowitz changes the idea of her documentary Emerald Archer from making analyses on vigilantism to be a memorial for Oliver Queen.
- What Measure Is a Mook?: In the flashbacks, while Oliver spares John Byrne himself, the same can't be said for his men.
- Where It All Began: Felicity's afterlife looks exactly like Moira's office, the place where Oliver first saw Felicity all these years ago (she still thought it was in the tech department).
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
- Dinah encourages Mia that her father would be proud of her when she feels that she can't live up to him.
- When Laurel confesses her Survivor Guilt, Quentin assures her that as far as he's concerned, she's not a mistake.
- You Are in Command Now:
- Though only briefly, with Diggle taking command of Team Arrow shortly before it disbands.
- After Quentin's term ends, Rene is elected Mayor of Star City.
- You Did Everything You Could: Felicity says this to Barry when the latter is blaming himself for Oliver's death.Felicity: You did everything you could.
Barry: How do you know that?
Felicity: Because I know you.
