It seems like only yesterday that we saw billionaire Oliver Queen light up a flaming arrow and call for a rescue after spending "five years in hell" forging himself into a weapon. Arrow has taken Stephen Amell's Emerald Archer through a violent and brutal journey over the course of the last five years, and that journey will culminate when the DC series' fifth series comes to an end next month. To mark the occasion, it seems that Arrow's Season 5 finale will directly tie into those opening moments of the pilot episode. Executive producer Wendy Mericle explained:
We've managed to hopefully stick the landing on it in a cool way that allows us to see both some of the moments right before we first met Oliver in the pilot, where he launched that flaming arrow and it lit up that signal fire, and also maybe a little bit after as well, some of the more emotional moments that we never got to see in the pilot.
Wendy Mericle's recent comments to EW about the conclusion of Arrow Season 5 seem to bode well for those of you with a taste for continuity. Based on what she had to say about the end of this season, it appears that we will get to see quite a bit more of Oliver Queen's rescue from Lian Yu, including the moments that directly preceded and followed the cold open of the pilot episode. The first five years of Arrow have really been building towards this moment, so it seems like a perfect way to bring Oliver Queen's journey full circle.
Of course, this fidelity to the pilot episode of Arrow is going to raise its own set of continuity issues that will eventually need to be addressed. Chief among them is the overwhelming question of how Oliver Queen's hair and beard will somehow grow to full blown castaway length by the time Season 5 comes to an end. He has been rocking a shaggy (albeit somewhat maintained) mop in the flashbacks, but it still is nothing compared to the unkempt hairdo that he sported when we first saw him rescued from Lian Yu back in 2012.
The pilot episode is not the only aspect of Arrow's lore that will be acknowledged towards the end of Season 5. In the last remaining episodes of this season, we will see classic characters like Nyssa Al Ghul, Yao Fei, and Slade Wilson return to help properly send off Oliver's five-year arc. This is clearly going to be a finale for the history books.
Arrow will return to cap off its final episodes of Season 5 this Wednesday at 8 p.m. EST on The CW. Check out our midseason TV premiere guide and our summer TV premiere schedule to discover all your other viewing options now and in the coming weeks.
