Arrow begins its eighth and final season on Tuesday, October 15 at 9 pm ET after The Flash. This season will consist of only 10 episodes, including the crossover episode. In addition, one episode will serve as a sort of backdoor pilot for a Canaries spinoff show with Katherine McNamara (Mia Smoak), Katie Cassidy Rodgers (Black Siren), and Juliana Harkavy (Black Canary).
Cast changes: Emily Bett Rickards (Felicity Smoak) will no longer be a part of the show. Joseph David-Jones (Connor Hawke), Katherine McNamara (Mia Smoak) and Ben Lewis (William Clayton) have been promoted to main cast. Charlie Barnett will join the cast as adult John Diggle, Jr. S08E01: Starling City
SEASON PREMIERE - While trying to decipher The Monitor’s (guest star LaMonica Garrett) mission, Oliver returns to Starling City where he encounters familiar faces. Meanwhile, Mia and William’s team clash with a new foe.
Now that was a proper glimpse into what the Crisis will be like - the destruction of, not just any Earth, but an Earth with which we’re all familiar. Good-bye Harry Wells and Jesse Quick. Good-bye Detective Iris West-Allen and nebbish Barry Allen. It wasn’t a particularly pleasant alternate Earth (cf. Deathstorm and OG-Killer Frost) but it was the first alternate Earth we knew. Good-bye Earth-2.
I liked how we were just thrown into a familiar, yet different, milieu without much by way of preparation. It’s Batman’s, rather than Deathstroke’s, mask on a stick on Lian Yu. Moira is with Malcolm rather than Walter. Thea is dead, overdosed on vertigo. Tommy is the Dark Archer. There’s a Hood, but it’s Adrian Chase, and he’s working with Black Canary, and he’s calling her “pretty bird”. Our sense of disorientation at seeing the changes must mirror Oliver’s own.
Is this how it’s going to be? The Monitor sends Oliver to some alternate Earth, to retrieve an item unique to that universe, just before everything gets destroyed. Oliver’s like Pariah, except we know Tom Cavanaugh is going to play Pariah.
John Diggle is now a traveler of the multiverse. He better come out of the Crisis wearing a green costume and a ring.
I like how they’re setting the stakes high early. But all of these CW hero shows just have people doing stupid things. Queen and Diggle have a portal…how about evacuating as many people as possible thru it instead of just standing around with his thumb up his ass taking his own sweet time to evacuate. Is it that hard to write semi-intelligent characters who make semi-intelligent decisions? Must be, because every CW-DC show relies on dumb decision making far, far too often.
THE RETURN OF TATSU - Oliver, John, Laurel, and Tatsu (guest star Rila Fukushima) seek out an important person within The Monitor’s (guest star LaMonica Garrett) plan. Connor has a heart to heart with his brother (guest star Charlie Barnett).
Earth-2 has been utterly destroyed, so I’d say the Crisis is now upon us. I’ve created a separate thread where we can discuss Crisis-related topics, especially as pertains to the other Arrowverse shows: Crisis on Infinite Earths.
Holy shit! Lyla really is Harbinger. I thought we’d be getting a another doppelganger, but it seems Diggle’s wife been working for the Monitor all along.
WILLA HOLLAND GUEST STARS - Reunited with his sister, Oliver and Thea find themselves searching through a familiar maze of catacombs. Meanwhile, John and Lyla partner on a special ops mission.
Hey, Diggle, that’s Harbinger you’re dancing with. I think she can handle herself and doesn’t need any protection. Also, you both should spend more time with your son rather than galivanting off to eastern Europe. Maybe he won’t become a murderous crime boss in the future.
Great to see Thea again. Are we going to see her and her “League of Heroes” at the final fight?
Good God what cliffhanger. That was even more unexpected than the destruction of Earth-2. Does that mean the flash forwards are done?
ECHO KELLUM GUEST STARS - When a mysterious new Deathstroke appears in Star City, Oliver and Team Arrow insist on taking down this villain themselves. Meanwhile reeling from the loss of one of their own, the future Team Arrow figures out a new way to try and stop JJ.
And so the flash forwards suddenly and immediately become relevant. Not just the ones from this season, but all of them from last season as well. Did they actually change anything? How will they get back? Since we know there’s going to (probably) be a Canaries spinoff - and we saw the seeds of it already planted here - it looks like the future folks are going to be stuck in the past for a while. Too bad they don’t know anyone with a time machine or can just run really fast to the future - oh wait.
Some great interactions between Oliver and his kids, between Conner and Diggle, between Diggle and Rene. Way to tug on our heartstrings, showing us present kid Zoe when we just saw the death of future adult Zoe.
Good solid episode. I actually thought we’d get something mostly self-contained with a (relatively) happy and hopeful ending. Then the Monitor has to come and frack it all up. Or maybe that’s the Anti-Monitor?
I haven’t seen season 7, and Past Tense is the first episode I’ve seen of this season, but on Youtube I saw a clip collection of Mia where she pretty much follows the same relationship arc with Felicity: decrying her putting the mission ahead of family (meaning her), and eventually coming around. So I sort of rolled my eyes at her doing this again with Oliver.
As several characters remarked in this episode, she’s pretty much a female version of Oliver. Now he gets to experience what everyone else has in the past.
DON’T LET YOUR PAST DEFINE YOU - Upon learning the key to oppose The Monitor, Oliver and team return to Russia on a mission to gather the necessary materials. Diggle reunites with a figure from his past.
We interrupt our show about saving the multiverse for some father-daughter bonding involving arrows and tennis balls. Oh, and fisticuffs, lots and lots of fisticuffs. We find out that Mia is trying to live up to her image of her dad, as well as Oliver trying to maintain his own image to his kids. William really should have been smart enough to see through it, but I guess he’s too close to the action. It took some relative outsiders - Laurel and Anatoly - to point it all out.
Plot twist: Laurel didn’t turn. Bigger plot twist: Lyla’s been outed as an agent of the Monitor.
YOU CAN’T FIGHT YOUR FATE - After being double-crossed by Lyla, Oliver finds himself facing a life or death situation that seems very familiar. Laurel has the opportunity to make amends with the past. David Ramsey directed the episode
From the previews, I thought this episode and the preceding episode of The Flash would be similar but they’re really very different. While both were about testing their respective protagonists, The Flash was presented as a fever dream enticing Barry to join with the Big Bad, while Arrow was presented as a Groundhog Day- or Edge of Tomorrow-style time loop that turned out to be another one of the Monitor’s tests for Oliver. In Laurel’s case, it was a reward for passing the Monitor’s test, which was NOT betraying Oliver in the previous episode. Poor Diggle didn’t get anything; I guess slowly becoming greener and greener as the season progresses is reward enough.
One other difference I noticed: The Flash had a subplot involving Team Citizen investigating the abduction of Ultraviolet, probably as a setup for the back half of the season. Arrow had no subplot at all, since they don’t have any more episodes to worry about.
BYRON MANN GUEST STARS - Oliver’s mission takes him to Lian Yu where he tries to ignore the repercussions of the looming Crisis until he receives help from an old friend. Meanwhile, a united Team Arrow faces a recognizable villain.
Of all the episodes this season, this one was the most underwhelming. Lian Yu was just a giant MacGuffin. There was really no reason to go back to island aside from some mumbo-jumbo about it being an energy source. So Roy lost his arm, Oliver has said goodbye to literally everybody, and Lyla finally got her costume.
I’ll note that this final season has revisited all the previous seasons except for Season 4. The less said about Season 4 the better.