Arrow has been a wild ride in Season 6, and the show heading into the finale is almost unrecognizable from the show back in the season premiere. Big bad Ricardo Diaz came on the scene to take Star City during a very inopportune time for the good guys. Team Arrow split into Original Team Arrow and an entirely separate team comprised of Dinah, Curtis, and Rene. The split has only gotten wider with the departure of John Diggle from the Arrow Bunker. Emily Bett Rickards, who plays the formidable Felicity Smoak, spoke with CinemaBlend about how the finale will call back to some of what fans saw back in the beginning. When I asked if fans could expect some elements from the premiere to return in the finale, she said this:
We have such a divide in our show this year between the two teams, and it felt like I wasn't working on the same show as Juliana [Harkavy}. I'd only see her some of the time. I rarely got to work with Paul Blackthorne. I didn't see, like, Echo [Kellum] at all this year! There can be rifts and severs in teams and in relationships and such, but I think learning that being together is always stronger is hopefully what we're teaching on our show and we are one world, that kind of thing... By the end of filming the last three episodes, I was like, 'Juliana! I feel like I haven't seen you! Do we even work on the same show?'
As we saw in last week's episode, the confrontation between the good guys and Ricardo Diaz's forces has become an all-hands-on-deck situation. The end of that episode saw Original Team Arrow allied once more with the three newer vigilantes, with even Lyla in the mix. Still, they weren't enough to score a win over on Diaz that would have given them an edge. Felicity and Oliver had to race to safety before a file that could have taken out Diaz could be decrypted, and Diaz managed to survive a huge explosion that should have killed him. All the heroes of Star City will need to work together to take him down, just as they were working together in the beginning of the season.
That said, the divide between the two teams was so severe and lasted for so long that we probably shouldn't expect them to be ready to join together for good with all issues resolved by the end of the episode. Of course, we do already know that the show will never be the same after the Season 6 finale, and Emily Bett Rickards already revealed that the finale will go out with "a bang to the heart" rather than a literal bang, so we should prepare ourselves for an emotional hour of television. Rickards went on in our chat to tease how Arrow will try to bring everything full circle in the finale:
I wonder if there's any golden nuggets for the fans. I mean, I'm sure there is, there always are. There's a couple I can think of. It's a learning experience for us as audience members, as actors, as writers and storytellers and listeners, and I think hopefully we'll be able to bring that all together because that's what you want to do. You want to get a premiere and a finale that seem at all together and streamlined through to make a good story.
Judging by Emily Bett Rickards' comments, fans will want to keep an eye out for details that may connect back to episodes (or perhaps even seasons) past. All things considered, it sounds like the Arrow Season 6 finale will be an intense hour of television. Between Ricardo Diaz and his forces, the teams finally working together again, Samanda Watson in the mix with Oliver's confession about his secret identity, and somebody winding up in the hospital, a lot is bound to happen.
Be sure to tune in to The CW at 9 p.m. ET to catch the Season 6 finale of Arrow. Interestingly, this will be the last new episode of Arrow to air on Thursdays for the foreseeable future. Arrow is moving to Mondays at 9 p.m. ET for the 2018-2019 TV season when it picks back up in the fall. For more schedule changes in the Arrow-verse, check out our rundown of The CW's 2018-2019 fall schedule. The Arrow-verse will also introduce a character from Gotham City for the first time next season, so there's a lot to look forward to. For what you can watch in the meantime, check out our summer TV premiere guide.
