The CW’s vigilante action drama Arrow has just wrapped up its seventh — and penultimate — season with this week’s episode, “You Have Saved This City.”
In the present, we got the final confrontation between Oliver Queen’s Green Arrow and his half-sister, Emiko, who heads an ancient and secret terrorist organization. We also got a wrap-up to the future storyline, which has the original Team Arrow’s children taking on the mantles of defenders of Star City.
It was mostly straightforward, but fans might have a few lingering questions once the credits rolled. Here are some answers.
Where Was Future Oliver?
Fans who watch fellow Arrowverse series Legends of Tomorrow might remember the first-season episode “Star City 2046.” It had the hapless superteam traveling to a future version of Arrow‘s setting to see what would happen if they never defeated season baddie Vandal Savage.
While there, they meet a grim, future version of Oliver Queen, who has lost an arm (and gained a full beard) in his battle against evil. Since this episode takes place six years after the future segments in Arrow, fans might have wondered why this Emerald Archer was nowhere to be found.
The answer was simple: He didn’t exist anymore. The Legends took out Savage at the end of their season, and the version of 2046 they visited never happened. Even worse, we find out from that mysterious visitor and a tombstone at the end of “You Have Saved This City” that Oliver dies in 2019. But we’ll have more details on that later.
Who Was That Guy at the End?
After Oliver and Felicity say their goodbyes to their team, they retreat to a safe house to keep Felicity and their baby safe from the Ninth Circle terrorist group. This feels like the end of the series, but the episode has one more surprise for fans. A mysterious, cosmic visitor appears and tells Oliver he has a role in an upcoming “crisis.”
This character doesn’t really fit in with Arrow‘s brand of gritty realism. But we’ve seen him before. He’s the Monitor, who had an important role in this year’s crossover event with Supergirl and The Flash, “Elseworlds.” And he’s kind of a big deal.
In the comics, the Monitor is a custodian of sorts of the DC multiverse. He’s a carnation of the multiverse itself — specifically, the positive-matter universes contained within it. His opposite, the Anti-Monitor, embodies the negative-matter universes and wants to extend his rule to the Monitor’s turf. Their conflict, which involved almost all of DC’s heroes and villains, was called “Crisis on Infinite Earths.”
Where Did Felicity Go?
The last scene in “You Have Saved This City” takes place in 2040 and involves the Monitor taking Felicity to a place he says she can’t return from.
He opens a portal that will look familiar to Arrowverse fans: These blue, cloudy holes in the fabric of space-time show up all the time, especially in The Flash. Cisco Ramon uses them to teleport to different places and, more interestingly, between different versions of Earth.
Considering Felicity’s focus on her wedding ring and her statement that she’s been waiting to see “him” for a while, it’s safe to assume that the Monitor is taking her to a parallel Earth on which Oliver is still alive. That raises a bunch more questions, but it’s the most logical conclusion with the information we have right now.
What Will Happen in Season 8?
“You Have Saved This City” felt like a series finale for Arrow. We saw Oliver say goodbye to his team and take a break from being the Green Arrow. And the scenes set in the present basically caught up with the ones in the future, which had their own ending with the retirements of the older generation of heroes.
But Season 8 is coming, and its 10-episode run will be the actual end for Arrow. Considering Oliver leaves with the Monitor at the end of this installment, we don’t expect much, if any, of next year’s entries will have the Green Arrow facing new villains in Star City.
Instead, it looks like Oliver’s headed straight to the Crisis on Infinite Earths, where he’ll meet up with his friends from other shows. He may even meet other versions of himself, since the storyline involves the collision of every Earth in the multiverse.
The producers haven’t released many more details except that Emily Bett Rickards (Felicity) won’t be returning, and Smallville star Tom Welling will join the cast. It’s possible Welling could simply replace Felicity as Team Arrow’s tech support. But more hopeful fans see him reprising his role in the Crisis as his Earth’s Man of Steel.
