If you’re confused about Ollie’s level of expertise, just remember that he’s basically Bruce Wayne with the serial numbers filed off.
Pretty good season finale last night!
A lot went down:
[ul]
[li]Roy is cured of the Mirakuru effects. [/li][li]Ollie and the gang defeat Slade and his goons, with the help of the cure and Nyssa and the League of Assassins. [/li][li]Nyssa kills Isabel. [/li][li]Diggle and Lyla enlist the Suicide Squad to help them persuade Amanda not to blow up Starling City. [/li][li]Thea impresses her father (Malcolm Merlyn) by trying to kill him. She discovers Roy’s secret weapon stash and decides to leave town with Malcolm.[/li][li]Sara leaves town with Nyssa. [/li][li]Slade is alive and left by Ollie in some kind of prison on the island.[/li][li]Detective Lance is seriously injured–it looks bad![/li][li]In the island flashbacks, we see Oliver and Slade fighting on the ship. Ollie decides not to use the Mirakuru cure on Slade and tries to kill him instead, with an arrow to the eye, but apparently it didn’t work and that’s why this is all Ollie’s fault.[/li][li]Still in the flashback, Ollie wakes up in Hong Kong and meets Amanda.[/li][/ul]
Argh–hit submit too soon.
How about that scene with Oliver and Felicity? I was surprised by his profession of love, but I got suckered in by it. Nice fakeout by Ollie. Or was it?! :dubious:
Total dick move if it was 
I liked it! I’m wondering what they are going to do with Thea and Malcolm. I’m guessing she will become an archer, trained by Malcolm, but will she turn evil like him?
So Ollie winds up in Hong Kong… Why would he go back to the island and get shipwrecked again? I guess we’ll see in flashbacks of Season 3
Funny thing is, I’ve been wondering since season 1 if Oliver was going to leave the island and return at some point. He kept having distinct information and skills that didn’t seem probable if he had been on the island.
I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of Slade, although I’m also curious about whether they’ll specifically repower him. I definitely hope that Brother Blood makes a comeback.
Wow, that was a really great episode. I totally bought it when Oliver revealed the one he truly loves. Fake out! Or was it? I hope not! Felicity and Oliver. It never really occured to me before but now I so want it to be true.
I’m glad Slade is still alive too. He’s a big cuddly ol’ evil bad guy. Everytime Slade calls Oliver “Kid” I want Oliver to call him “Pa.”
What is Roy’s deal? No powers. He can sort of shoot arrows. So does everyone else apparently. Thea and Laurel soon.
This show is maturing quick. I like it.
I’d bet we see flashbacks of Hong Kong throughout S3, and then [the Russian who ran the sub] will rescue him from danger there and he’ll spend S4 flashbacks in Siberia. S5, if there is one, will put him in a series of flashback adventures leaving him stranded on the island again.
I just wonder how tortured and strained the reasons for him not to escape, contact his family or at least get word to them will get. At some point it has to become voluntary on his part - possibly a mission/redemption arc that finally allows him to allow himself to go home?
I’m totally confused about the island timeline now. I need a flowchart or something.
It’s pretty simple except for the insistence up to this point that Oliver “spent five years on the island.” At first there was the implication that he did it alone, then with no more than a mentor, and now his island stay is clearly going to range over most of East Asia and involve a cast of dozens or more.
My question is: Where is Star[ling] City supposed to be, that a relatively casual trip in a yacht put them in Chinese islands?
How did he finally get home? Was he rescued from the island?
Yes, in the pilot. A ship passed by and he dramatically lit the signal fire with an arrow shot - it’s in some of the title/intro sequences.
The first season is on Netflix, if you haven’t caught it. I expect the second season will show up within a couple of months. Other than some tradtional bending to the venue needs, I have been consistently impressed with the show’s production values and development - and that’s saying something.
I keep seeing/hearing Bats mutter “God dammit, Oliver” from DKR. 
Yeah I remember that now. I thought that’s how he got rescued. I’ve seen the whole series, but I binge-watched the first season and frequently fast forwarded through boring relationship stuff, Thea’s whining, etc.
Cutting out Thea’s whining alone speeds up the first season by a third.
a little late to the finale party…
but i thoroughly enjoyed it! wrapped up the Slade storyline nicely, but opened a few can-o-worms for season 3.
Nobody mentioned that Waller also dropped the “Digglet” bomb. (trying to coin that for his and Lyla’s kid, not sure if it’ll take off…)
Speaking of tiny ones, who thinks Ollie’s kid will show up in season 3?
Oh, and for Waller… what do we think, Lap Band? Even the cartoons depict her with the correct, eh, proportions…
It’s the CW. Not only is she skinny, but she’s far, far too young for her position. Just like everyone and everything else on the network. Even Smallville, though on the same network, got Waller right when it cast Pam Grier.
I’m sure it has to do with Sarah. In the first season he seemed as sure that she was dead as everyone else was, which made the fact that she was on the island surprising. He must have been convinced that she died later since unlike everyone else he knew she didn’t die. I didn’t pay quite enough attention to the finale: did Sarah leave for Hong Kong too? If not, maybe he went back later to find her and found out she “died” then.
nevermind
After the freighter got torpedoed Sarah was sucked/blown out of the ship with a bunch of water. That was presumably the last time Ollie saw her, so he thought her dead. In fact, in the first season, they showed a flashback of Sarah being sucked out of a ship and seemingly drowning. I seem to remember they showed this when Ollie was explaining to someone that she was dead, as he seemed to believe. I (and probably everyone) just assumed the ship she on when she was killed was the Queens Gambit, but now it seems that it was the freighter. I’d be curious to go back and watch the flashback and see if it was the same we saw in the finale. But it clears up the confusion I had, wondering how Ollie (seemingly) thought she had died on the Gambit, but then later sees her on the island…
It seems that the writers of Arrow actually planned out what happened on the island before the series started. At least so far, they’ve been consistent in their history, and haven’t had to disavow anything. Unlike Lost, everything seems to have been planned out, at least roughly. Like we know Ollie speaks fluent Russian, we’ve seen who he learns it from (and gets his Russian mafia cred), but we haven’t seen it actually happen yet. I’m guessing this will happen when he gets back to the island (season 3? 4??), however that happens. But it shows that they actually had a lot of this planned back in season 1, when they had him speak Russian. Finally, someone realized that it’s actually in everyone’s best interest to have the backstory fully thought out before writing the damn series - it makes it a lot easier to keep things consistent! no glowing spines or four-toed statues…