The Flash season 8 has kicked off in stellar form with a five-part crossover event titled “Armageddon,” which has seen various Arrowverse heroes drop by Central City week by week. In previous episodes, the likes of Brandon Routh’s Atom, Cress Williams’ Black Lightning, and Javicia Leslie’s Batwoman have appeared, but this week’s finale will include a character not seen since their canceled spinoff. Namely, Mia Queen, as played by Kat McNamara, would-be star of Green Arrow and the Canaries.
Following her role in “Crisis on Infinite Earths”, Mia starred in the penultimate episode of Arrow season 8, which was a backdoor pilot for her own spinoff. As well as establishing Mia deciding to take on her father’s mantle in the Star City of 2040, the episode ended on a huge cliffhanger as Mia’s brother William was kidnapped by unknown forces.
This was supposed to have been resolved in the spinoff, but it sounds like we might get some answers to the mystery in “Armageddon: Part Five.” When previewing the episode to Entertainment Weekly, McNamara teased that “a lot of things” draw Mia to travel back to 2021, including her guilt over her missing brother and feelings of letting down her dad’s legacy.
“There are many, many unanswered questions that we set up at the end of [the] “Green Arrow and The Canaries” [backdoor pilot], and one of those is William [Ben Lewis],” McNamara says. “William has been kidnapped. Mia made a promise to Oliver [Stephen Amell] on his death bed that she would protect her brother and take care of the city and her family, and she is at a point where she feels as though she hasn’t done that, and a large part of that is William. As we know with Mia, when she gets an idea in her head, she’s like a dog with a bone and will not let it go. She has become obsessed with finding William, and that has been her sole driving force, and as with any good Green Arrow, she’s coming to that precipice where she’s beginning to have to face the question, “What am I willing to sacrifice and compromise in order to accomplish my goals?”
The backdoor pilot also saw Mia regaining memories of her pre-Crisis life, making her a merger of the tough warrior trained by Nyssa al Ghul and the carefree socialite she was post-Crisis. According to McNamara, the pressures of continuing Oliver’s mantle has led her to revert to her pre-Crisis self in “Armageddon.” But maybe Mia’s Uncle Flash can help her out.
“Now, at the point we find her at, she has let a lot of the new Mia go by the wayside, because she’s gone rogue in a way and become very vulnerable and very open to some darker forces and some darker influences, because she feels as though she failed not only the city and William, but her father and the legacy that has been placed upon her,” McNamara continued. “At the point where Mia had Green Arrow thrust upon her, she didn’t necessarily feel as though she was ready or worthy for it because she had had so little experience and was just barely beginning to understand why Oliver made the choices he did and what brought him to that place. But now more than ever in this episode, whether or not she realizes that, we see her becoming a Green Arrow that her parents wanted her to be, all with the help of Uncle Barry [Grant Gustin] and Aunt Iris [Candice Patton].”
But it’s not all about Mia’s return in “Armageddon: Part Five,” as there’s still the dual-threat of Despero and Reverse-Flash to deal with, too. Find out how the event concludes as The Flash season 8 reaches its mid-season finale tonight (Dec. 14) on The CW.
