Warning: huge spoilers ahead for the Season 6 premiere of Arrow, called "Fallout." If you're not ready to know who lived and who died, feel free to check out some of our spoiler-free articles.
Arrow has officially returned to the small screen after a long hiatus with the Season 6 premiere, and fans finally learned which characters lived and which characters died in that killer Season 5 cliffhanger. There were some major surprises and some not-so-surprising twists, and a number of characters will never be the same after the explosion on Lian Yu that closed out Season 5. The show set the stage for Season 6 with some serious tragedy in the premiere, and only time will tell how the surviving characters move on. For now, read on for our breakdown of who lived and who died!
Character Who Died
Alas, poor Samantha. We didn't know her well, but she played a pivotal part in the series as the mother of Oliver's secret lovechild. For as long Arrow wanted to have Oliver as a dad without actually needing to keep a kid around full-time, Samantha was probably safe. Now that Arrow seems keen to explore Oliver as full-time single dad, Samantha is no longer needed, and so the Season 6 premiere revealed that she fell victim to the explosion on Lian Yu, living only long enough to die in Oliver's arms. R.I.P. Samantha, and R.I.P. Arrow on which Oliver didn't have a kid around.
Characters Who Lived
Luckily for those of us who spent the last several months waiting on the edges of our seats to find out what happened to all the characters who were stuck on Lian Yu during the explosion, the Season 6 premiere gave away most of the survivors within the first five minutes. Diggle, Wild Dog, and Curtis were out in the field with Oliver. Dinah wasn't with the boys, but I doubt any fans were worried about Dinah's future on the series anyway, as she was one of the few characters whose survival was confirmed by promotion for Season 6.
Felicity strolled into the Arrow bunker shortly after Oliver and Co. made it back, carrying some bags of Big Belly Burger and proving that she had not died. Quentin turned up in a bar a little bit later to chat with Dinah and confirm his own survival. Even Black Siren dropped in shortly thereafter to blow up the Star City Police precinct to show that she still shrieks among the living. Given that Dinah and Quentin had claimed that Black Siren died on Lian Yu, her appearance came as a big surprise to everybody on Team Arrow. Slade also survived.
Characters Who Were Injured
The first significant tragedy other than Samantha that we learned about in "Fallout" was Thea, who was seen via flashback running after Samantha on Lian Yu to try and stop her from getting herself blown up searching for William. The episode held back on revealing Thea's fate, although Slade appeared in the aftermath of the explosion to tell Oliver that Thea hadn't been safe from the effects of the blast in the plane with Felicity, Quentin, and the others. The majority of the episode played up the mystery of what happened to Thea, and we could guess that she was at least injured, if not dead. When Oliver finally found her on the island, she looked... well, super dead. It came as a relief when Oliver dropped by the hospital to visit Thea, who is in a coma. A coma isn't exactly great, but it's better than being dead.
The second major character to suffer an injury was one who initially seemed just fine. Diggle was in action with Oliver on the streets as Spartan, and he was kicking ass and taking names as awesomely as ever. Then, the fighting members of Team Arrow got into a sticky situation on a bridge, and we learned that not all was as well with Digg as it seemed. When attempting to make a shot, Digg was unable to pull the trigger accurately, which resulted in a grave injury to Wild Dog as he fell and punctured a lung. Digg may be up and about, but he's not all the way back to his old self, which makes sense given some of David Ramsey's comments over the summer.
We still don't know what happened to either of the al Ghul sisters, but hopefully we won't have to wait too terribly long to find out the truth. That insane twist in the final moments means big changes are probably in store for the whole Arrow-verse. New episodes of Arrow air on Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on The CW. For your other superhero viewing options, check out our fall TV guide.
