As Team Arrow attempts to build a weapon to fight the Crisis, Oliver is confronted by some familiar faces.
Tropes
- Alternate Timeline: This episode confirms the possible flash forward future to be this. Roy loses his arm, Lyla becomes Harbinger, and Oliver plans to have Mia and Connor raised together (but this last one has yet to happen).
- An Arm and a Leg: What happens to Roy in the beginning of the episode.
- Anger Born of Worry: A great deal of Mia's anger at Oliver in this episode comes from her fear of losing her father so soon after finally getting to know him.
- Arbitrary Skepticism: Laurel is briefly skeptical of Fyers and his men coming back from the dead, which isn't the strangest thing to happen in the last few episodes, let alone the Arrowverse in general.
- Arrow Catch: This time, when Yao Fei shoots an arrow at Oliver, he catches it.
- Back from the Dead: Yao Fei, Fyers, and the latter's men (including Billy Wintergreen) are all resurrected by Lian Yu's energies.
- Book Ends: As one of the last episodes of the series, and the last “regular” episode, it heartens back to moments from the first season’s flashbacks and even from the pilot.
- But Now I Must Go: After becoming Harbinger, Lyla leaves through a portal, though she comes back shortly after to herald the Crisis.
- Call-Back:
- This episode is one to the Season 1 flashbacks, with Oliver confronting the villain and mentor from that storyline.
- In the Season 4 flashbacks, Constantine explained that Lian Yu is a nexus of mystic energy. Now, those energies are spiking, causing resurrections.
- Character Development: Mia actually listens when William tries to talk her out of running after Oliver half-cocked, and by the end of the episode, she starts to look past her own abandonment issues to recognise and respect her father as the hero he is.
- The Chosen One: Turns out Lyla survived all the way back in Afghanistan due to the Monitor's intervention, as she still had an important role to play. And later it is actually her presence that activates the sphere, not Oliver's.
- Cliffhanger: The episode ends as the skies turn red, Lyla announcing that the Crisis has arrived.
- Face Death with Dignity: Yao Fei is fine with returning to death, simply telling Oliver that "the dead are never really gone".
- Final Boss: Appropriately, Fyers is the last villain Oliver faces in the series before Crisis, as he was his original Starter Villain chronologically.
- Forgot About His Powers: Although Laurel's Canary Cry has been previously demonstrated to be able to move large masses, it is never posited as a way to free Roy from what is pinning him down.
- Also, she could have probably single-handedly dealt with the squadron of bad guys in the final fight if she'd used it when they were all neatly grouped together before the melee started.
- Guest-Star Party Member: Keeping with the season’s pattern, Yao Fei reunites with and aids Oliver.
- Handwave: Lian Yu is restored to normal, despite being blown up by Adrian Chase, due to an increase of mystical energy.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Oliver assures Mia that he believes that she'll have her own stories in the future; Mia is set to be one of the leads in the upcoming Green Arrow and the Canaries spin-off.
- His Story Repeats Itself: Oliver’s time on the island paralleling the present day has been a core part of the series through most of its run, but this episode takes it up to eleven. Oliver is quite literally facing his past for the final time this episode and by the end is at long last freed from his personal purgatory.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Lyla justifies allying with the Monitor by wanting to protect her family to John.
- Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy: Fyers and his men open fire on a group of people with absolutely no cover, at close range, with assault rifles and even heavy, mounted machine guns, and still don't manage to hit anybody.
- Internal Reveal: The rest of the team learns about the Monitor's true goals and about Oliver being fated to die.
- It's All About Me: Mia once again falls into this, lashing out at Oliver for being a hero first and a father second. Thankfully, she starts to overcome it, admitting that she knows she should be proud of her father and coming to terms with his impending death.
- It's All My Fault: John blames himself for Roy losing his arm due to picking him up in Hub City.
- Life-or-Limb Decision: After the plane is shot down, Roy's arm is pinned under a large heavy object. Unfortunately, the team doesn't have the luxury of time to try and remove it due to the high potential for an ensuing explosion from the remainder of the wreckage and the approach of Fyers' soldiers, so they are forced to amputate it so they can all escape with their lives.
- Motif: The recurring image of an archer facing a Deathstroke in the past, present, and future reappears with its progenitors Yao Fei and Billy Wintergreen during the Final Battle.
- Mythology Gag:
- Roy losing his arm happened in the comics.
- Lyla's new outfit at the end of the episode is based on her Harbinger costume in the comics.
- Never Got to Say Goodbye: As Oliver angsts about what to say to his children about his impending death, Yao Fei tells him to tell his children what he never got to say to Shado: goodbye.
- Only the Chosen May Wield: A technological variant, as the weapon is keyed to Lyla's DNA so that only she can activate it.
- Opening Narration: The first in Season 8. It is especially similar to Ollie’s Season 1 monologue.
- Red Oni, Blue Oni: Oliver, despite all of his Character Development, is still the impatient one compared to Yao Fei.
- Red Sky, Take Warning: The skies turn red as Crisis arrives.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: As has been suggested and discussed earlier in the season, this episode cements that the current present-day timeline is playing out significantly differently than the one which Future Team Arrow remembers.
- Seen It All: When Laurel tells Dinah that their attackers are enemies of Oliver who have been dead for 12 years, Dinah just lets out an exhausted "of course they are".
- Series Fauxnale: The episode has all the trappings of a series finale, with many a call-back to the show's beginning and emotional goodbyes between Oliver and those closest to him; there are still three episodes left in the series, but as one of them is part of the Crisis crossover, one is the Backdoor Pilot for Green Arrow & The Canaries, and the remaining episode serves as the series epilogue, this could then be construed as the final "regular" episode of Arrow.
- Stable Time Loop: Connor possibly creates one when he tells his parents that they’ll found Knightwatch, which they may do because he told them that. He quickly realizes his time-traveling blunder.
- Stock Footage: The Stinger with Nash Wells, first appearing in Batwoman (2019) is re-used once again.
- Tempting Fate:
- Dinah cracks a joke about landing a plane being the hardest part, then reports that they're in for a "relatively smooth" landing. The plane is shot down moments later.
- Fyers smugly brags that killing Oliver will be easy, since he showed up to face his enemies alone. Cue the arrival of the rest of Team Arrow.
- That Man Is Dead: Implied; when Oliver addresses Harbinger as Lyla, she replies "not anymore".
- Threshold Guardian: Fyers and his goons serve as the last obstacle before the heroes are ready to face the imminent Crisis
- Wham Shot: The sky turning red in the final scene; the Crisis has begun.
- What the Hell, Hero?: John calls out Lyla for allying with the Monitor.
- Where It All Began: The episode is set on Lian Yu.
- You Can't Fight Fate: Oliver's acceptance of his fate doesn't sit well with his loved ones, John and Mia especially. John spends most of the episode refusing to accept that the Monitor is good or that Oliver's death can't be averted, but Roy's Life-or-Limb Decision forces him to accept that there are some things that he just can't fight. For her part, Mia is enraged by her father's acceptance of fate, seeing it as "giving up" and abandoning his family again, but she manages to make her peace with it by the end of the episode.
- Zerg Rush: Fyers and his men eventually manage to overwhelm Oliver's friends by sheer numbers. Thankfully, Lyla sends them all back in time.
