Spoilers for the Arrow episode “Left Behind” are ahead. You have been warned!
In the last 2014 episode of Arrow, viewers watched as Oliver Queen was stabbed by Ra’s al Ghul and kicked off the cliff where they held the trial by combat. Despite the cast and crew playing coy with fans over Oliver’s fate during the hiatus, it was a given that the show’s lead character would somehow be revived. This isn’t Game of Thrones, and while plenty of characters have been killed off and will be killed off in the future, their titular vigilante won’t be following suit. Tonight, we learned how Oliver made it back to the land of the living, and it was thanks to the help of an old friend.
While past Oliver was securing the Alpha device for Amanda Waller, present day Oliver was…well, doing nothing. He did not fall into the ravine below as Ra’s and Malcolm Merlyn assumed, and his body was laying on a mountain overhang for four days. Eventually a man found him and carried his body away to a building in another snowy part of the area. We learn that this man is Maseo Yamashiro, a.k.a. Sarab, and he told the person who opened the door that he needed their help reviving Oliver. In the last minutes of the episode, we see Oliver waking up and seeing that the person who nursed him back to life is Tatsu Yamashiro, better known in the comics as Katana, who up to this point has only been seen in the Season 3 flashbacks.
While it hasn’t been revealed yet what Tatsu used to revive Oliver, we can scratch one restorative off the list: the Lazarus Pit. Earlier this week, Stephen Amell stated that the miracle chemicals would not be used on him, although we will see the Pit on Arrow at some point. It’s likely that we’ll learn what Tatsu used in either next week’s episode or the following one. I suspect it might involve those healing plants that Oliver has used in the past; but either way, standard medical practices were not on display.
Although the events of what led Maseo to join the League of Assassins are still a mystery, the episode did answer why he tried to talk Oliver out of dueling Ra’s in “The Climb”, and why he later secured his body. In the flashbacks, during the mission to secure the Alpha device, Oliver allowed one of the Triad men to escape unharmed. Maseo, knowing that Amanda Waller wouldn’t approve a mission to rescue Tatsu from China White, is frustrated that Oliver allowed the man to live, but Oliver revealed that he put the Alpha tracker on the man to lead them to Tatsu's location. Touched, Maseo told Oliver that he will be in his debt forever, and recovering his body from a snowy mountain definitely falls under this category.
Oliver may be alive, but things won’t be going back to normal anytime soon. While he is gone, Diggle, Felicity, Roy and Laurel )(who is now the Black Canary) will be dealing with Danny Brickwell, a.k.a Brick, as he attempts to take over the Glades with his new crew. So Oliver needs to heal fast and return to Starling City. Team Arrow proved in this episode that they can be effective on their own, but they need their Emerald Archer.
