Arrow Showrunner Says Season 7 Closer Was Treated Like A Series Finale

Arrow reaches the end of its seventh season tonight with episode 7×22 “You Have Saved This City.” The good news is, though, that it’s not the last we’ll see of the show as it’s due to return later this fall for its eighth season. The bad news is that season 8 will mark the end of the series that kicked off the Arrowverse back in 2012. The shortened run of 10 episodes is expected to lead into the big multi-part crossover “Crisis on Infinite Earths.”

The season 7 closer still represents the end of an era, then, especially as it’ll also see the final appearance of Emily Bett Rickards as Felicity Smoak, who announced she was leaving Arrow at the end of the current season back in March. All of this conspired to mean that showrunner Beth Schwartz treated the episode as if it was the series finale itself, as she told ComicBook.com:

“We actually did approach it that way in terms of, ‘This might be the last time we see this.’ So we definitely had that in mind when we were breaking the episode, because Emily’s leaving and, yeah, next season is a little different, so we definitely did approach it in that way.”

According to the synopsis, “You Have Saved This City” is set to see the battle between the Emerald Archer and his equally-skilled half-sister Emiko Queen come “to a boiling point.” At the same time, some old faces will return – watch out for Michael Jai White back as Bronze Tiger – while others will be left “in dire jeopardy.”

Set photos have also revealed that LaMonica Garrett will appear in a cameo as Mar Novu, previously seen in “Elseworlds.” Seeing as Ollie made a secret bargain with the cosmic entity last time they met, we’d expect the episode to sow the seeds for “Crisis” as well. With all this going on, no wonder Schwartz says it was approached as Arrow‘s series finale.