When it comes to the Arrowverse and its timeline, there’s a proud history involving speedsters screwing up things. For the most part, it’s usually the Flash or his daughter, XS, who are the culprits. Well, you could argue the Legends of Tomorrow cast have made similar mistakes more than once, but theirs have been pretty much contained to their own show.
The reason I’m bringing this up is because we’ve long expected for the Scarlet Speedster to vanish during a Crisis ever since a future newspaper headline first shown during The Flash‘s pilot episode told us as much. But like I said, the timeline is malleable, and let’s not forget about how Arrow season 7’s finale revealed Oliver Queen is fated to die during the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” crossover event – perhaps even in Barry Allen’s place.
Throwing a curveball at us now is Stephen Amell himself, who dropped this bombshell while speaking with Entertainment Weekly about his character’s sendoff:
“Because he’s a superhero with no superpowers, I always felt he should die — but he may also not die. I cried as [Marc Guggenheim] was telling me [Oliver’s final scene]. There are a lot of hurdles to get over to make that final scene.”
Having read that, I truly don’t know what to expect going forward. One possibility occurring to me is that Ollie won’t actually die but will instead disappear for some reason yet to be revealed to we the viewers. Maybe he’ll be endowed with some new cosmic purpose. Don’t forget, Felicity Smoak’s own sendoff showed her supposedly being reunited with her beloved in 2040 – and how could she meet up with a dead man?
Either way, there’ll be a lot to look forward to such as returning guest stars and even a new costume for the titular hero himself. I was actually hoping the latter would happen, so it’s rewarding to be given confirmation on that front.
Arrow returns for its eighth and final season on Tuesday, October 15th on The CW.