Arrow Season 8, Episode 10: "Fadeout" (SERIES FINALE; MAJOR SPOILERS)

[LL2K2]

This is it, folks. The mothership of the Arrowverse is departing.

STEPHEN AMELL SIGNS OFF AS THE GREEN ARROW; EMILY BETT RICKARDS RETURNS FOR THE SERIES FINALE OF “ARROW” – After eight seasons, and the launch of countless superheroes, the series wraps up the story of the Green Arrow (Stephen Amell). Emily Bett Rickards returns as Felicity. James Bamford directed the episode written by Marc Guggenheim & Beth Schwartz (#810). Original airdate 1/28/2020.


The finale will be preceded by a special called “Hitting The Bullseye” and you can read about that here:


A CELEBRATORY EPISODE – Get ready for the finale with cast interviews from Stephen Amell and the cast of “Arrow,” and executive producers Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim and Beth Schwartz. Original airdate 1/28/2020.

 

[SV Fan]

Does anybody know why Rickards didn't bother working this year? You figure this could have been her last decent payday for awhile. Personally I am glad she didn't want to participate this season, I found the show better without her(although the constant unneeded Felicity mentions on most episodes was a bit annoying(yes I get that her kids were part of this season but their was many times they just brought her up for no reason at all beyond Ollie talking to his kids about their life))

 

[Dark Raven]

Is the Monitor still likely to show up to whisk Felicity away like he did in 2040? Or will that never happen now? Is his role in the rest of the season and in the Flash over now?

 

[Primal Slayer]

So Moira is alive, Emiko is alive....if Laurel isnt a merged Laurel and still E2 Laurel....and here's hoping that she isnt overlooked as she is still the first lady of Arrow regardless of everything that's happened.

Does anybody know why Rickards didn't bother working this year? You figure this could have been her last decent payday for awhile. Personally I am glad she didn't want to participate this season, I found the show better without her(although the constant unneeded Felicity mentions on most episodes was a bit annoying(yes I get that her kids were part of this season but their was many times they just brought her up for no reason at all beyond Ollie talking to his kids about their life))

She did a Play, something she wouldnt have been able to do had she signed on for another season....and she was tired of playing Felicity. She's made plenty of connections that this wont be her last major role.

 

[Dark Raven]

Given the funeral setting and the context of the final episode, it looks like it's inevitable we'll be seeing more of EBR's melodramatic overacting for serious scenes, and quivering voice.

 

[Fincher]

So Moira is alive, Emiko is alive....if Laurel isnt a merged Laurel and still E2 Laurel....and here's hoping that she isnt overlooked as she is still the first lady of Arrow regardless of everything that's happened.

I'm firmly anti-merging (if everyone in the Arrowverse was merged, that would ruin the whole show for me), although if it was just Laurel I could deal. The alternatives would be that they both exist somehow, just E2 Laurel exists, just E1 Laurel exists...I don't really see the show wiping original Laurel from existence if basically everyone else gets a happy ending, but I prefer E2 Laurel (at least what I've seen having watched through Season 6), so I guess I'm hoping for some probably convoluted double survival.

 

[Primal Slayer]

I'm firmly anti-merging (if everyone in the Arrowverse was merged, that would ruin the whole show for me), although if it was just Laurel I could deal. The alternatives would be that they both exist somehow, just E2 Laurel exists, just E1 Laurel exists...I don't really see the show wiping original Laurel from existence if basically everyone else gets a happy ending, but I prefer E2 Laurel (at least what I've seen having watched through Season 6), so I guess I'm hoping for some probably convoluted double survival.

I'm the opposite....we're living in a post Crisis world where several Earths have been merged...having all these doppelgangers running around on E-P lessons the impact of the event. Everyone should see some type of change.

 

[Fincher]

I'm not arguing that there should be two or three of everyone running around; I'm arguing that there should be one of everyone, but unmerged, and everyone else no longer exists, and the characters on the show are the ones we know. To me, if you take two people and merge them together, what you get is a third person who's neither of them, so the first two people are gone. So if you do that with everyone on Earth 1, then the ending of Arrow is that everyone who's ever been on the show is made to have never existed, but here's some people who are basically just like them, and they're doing great! That's an awful ending. Like, the worst ending.

I don't care about post-Crisis, because I'd have been perfectly happy to have never had any of these crossovers. My concern is with the ending of this show I'm a fan of and not ruining the show in the process of bringing a comic book event that means nothing to me to life. So, in other words, f*** merging.

 

[Fincher]

To be clear, I meant double survival for just the two Laurels.

 

[vantheman77]

I'm surprised both Ray Palmer and Nyssa Al Ghul are not in the finale considering they played big parts throughout the show's run.

I wonder what will happen to Team Arrow once this show ends? I'd like to see them in either Flash, Black Lightning, and/or Legends of Tomorrow.

Thanks to both Batwoman and Supergirl, along with tonight's Black Lightning, it looks like the Earths didn't either completely merged or we have survivors of the old Multiverse. They don't know that the new Multiverse exists.

 

[Primal Slayer]

I'm not arguing that there should be two or three of everyone running around; I'm arguing that there should be one of everyone, but unmerged, and everyone else no longer exists, and the characters on the show are the ones we know. To me, if you take two people and merge them together, what you get is a third person who's neither of them, so the first two people are gone. So if you do that with everyone on Earth 1, then the ending of Arrow is that everyone who's ever been on the show is made to have never existed, but here's some people who are basically just like them, and they're doing great! That's an awful ending. Like, the worst ending.

I don't care about post-Crisis, because I'd have been perfectly happy to have never had any of these crossovers. My concern is with the ending of this show I'm a fan of and not ruining the show in the process of bringing a comic book event that means nothing to me to life. So, in other words, f*** merging.

So then how does the universe decide which person survives? Earth Prime is a merged Earth with a new history. Bruce existed on E1/38, so which Bruce got to live on?

 

[Dark Raven]

So then how does the universe decide which person survives? Earth Prime is a merged Earth with a new history. Bruce existed on E1/38, so which Bruce got to live on?

Maybe Thanos snaps some out of existence.

 

[Fincher]

So then how does the universe decide which person survives? Earth Prime is a merged Earth with a new history. Bruce existed on E1/38, so which Bruce got to live on?

I don't know, the will of the people who restored the multiverse?

 

[Primal Slayer]

I don't know, the will of the people who restored the multiverse?

Oliver restored it, and only 2 Earths were represented as Paragons so screw everyone else?

 

[Fincher]

Oliver restored it, and only 2 Earths were represented as Paragons so screw everyone else?

The lack of Paragon...diversity would seem to a separate issue that's there regardless of how they handle this.

So okay, Oliver wants to bring everyone back, but for some reason he can't, which seems like it must be true in some sense because these two Earths were merged. So maybe he also had a desire to see everyone he cared about alive and together, so The Book of Destiny, the Spectre powers, whatever killed two birds with one stone by taking everyone Oliver knew well between Earth 1 and Earth 38 and everyone those people knew well and sticking them in one universe together with only one of every person. But eliminating the equivalent of one universe full of people between those two worlds was either not enough lives discarded for the resources it had to work with or more than it needed to, so it took another world, Earth 2, and refashioned it. But then they made an exception in Laurel's case because Oliver had a significant relationship with two of them. So Black Siren is just sort of dropped into Earth Prime from nowhere.

 

[Dark Raven]

The lack of Paragon...diversity would seem to a separate issue that's there regardless of how they handle this.

So okay, Oliver wants to bring everyone back, but for some reason he can't, which seems like it must be true in some sense because these two Earths were merged. So maybe he also had a desire to see everyone he cared about alive and together, so The Book of Destiny, the Spectre powers, whatever killed two birds with one stone by taking everyone Oliver knew well between Earth 1 and Earth 38 and everyone those people knew well and sticking them in one universe together with only one of every person. But eliminating the equivalent of one universe full of people between those two worlds was either not enough lives discarded for the resources it had to work with or more than it needed to, so it took another world, Earth 2, and refashioned it. But then they made an exception in Laurel's case because Oliver had a significant relationship with two of them. So Black Siren is just sort of dropped into Earth Prime from nowhere.

So what about Black Lightning? Oliver didn't care about him. He didn't even know him and never met him before. How come his earth was restored and merged with Earth 1?

 

[Fincher]

So what about Black Lightning? Oliver didn't care about him. He didn't even know him and never met him before. How come his earth was restored and merged with Earth 1?

I don't know, maybe another world needed to be destroyed to conserve resources, and the Black Lightning characters didn't exist on Earth 1 or Earth 38, so they were just carried over. It's not like merging everyone explains everything. Why is Earth 2 different now? Why is Routh Superman now happy and presumably having Lois back? I think some sort of intelligent design shuffling everything around for the best available result, perhaps according to some vaguely defined wishes on Oliver's part, makes as much sense as anything.

 

[Dark Raven]

I don't know, maybe another world needed to be destroyed to conserve resources, and the Black Lightning characters didn't exist on Earth 1 or Earth 38, so they were just carried over. It's not like merging everyone explains everything. Why is Earth 2 different now? Why is Routh Superman now happy and presumably having Lois back? I think some sort of intelligent design shuffling everything around for the best available result, perhaps according to some vaguely defined wishes on Oliver's part, makes as much sense as anything.

If they really wanted to conserve resources, why not destroy the likes of Tobias Whale or Agent Odell? Or any other villains like Reverse Flash. Why bother bringing them back? And from BL it seems that there were equivalents of them on Earth 1 anyway, so why weren't they kept and the actual Black Lightning wiped out? Why did he and his family get to survive and not his Earth 1 counterparts?

 

[Legendver2]

The main idea to any "Crisis" event is that it's not supposed to make story sense. The original comic Crisis and now this TV Crisis were both created to streamline the company's confusing multiple universes and timelines created by different writers/shows/different networks. It was a company move, and not a story move. All the problems brought up here for this show could apply to the original comic Crisis as well. None of this stuff really makes sense if you think about it. As viewers, it's best to just go with it.

As far as what those promo images show, since this takes place post-canary backdoor pilot, I can totally see Mia going back in time after getting back her pre-Crisis memories to attend her dad's funeral. Time travel might just be a thing now sense we see an un-aged Laurel and Dinah in 2040 with Mia. What's interesting to note is that both Moira and Emiko are alive, meaning Ollie changed things for the better for those 2, but it still shows Roy with the prosthetic arm in costume. I do wonder if the major players who helped Ollie prepare for the Crisis (Thea, Roy, etc) and Felicity will be getting their pre-Crisis memories back as well.

 

[Dark Raven]

What if Roy had a prosthetic leg instead this time round? Or maybe a peg leg.

 

[Fincher]

If they really wanted to conserve resources, why not destroy the likes of Tobias Whale or Agent Odell? Or any other villains like Reverse Flash. Why bother bringing them back?

That's why it works better to think of it as the book fulfilling Oliver's general sentiments rather than Oliver being given the ability to carefully plot out the exact world he might want there to be. At least on short notice, Oliver might not have been able to contemplate a world without suffering or villainy.

No matter what outcome they go with, they're not going to explain everything perfectly, so there will always be questions that could be asked. Here's a question, if the people in this universe are a merger of more than one different person, shouldn't the paragons remember all of their past lives? Actually, why do they remember, anyway, other than that them remembering is convenient for telling the story?

And when people are given their memories, they should remember all of their past lives, too. That's the sort of thing that would make someone go insane. It's one thing to remember a previous existence and have to reconcile it with your memories of your current existence, but it's another thing to remember two or more previous existences that were happening at the same time because you used to be two or more different people. Multiply that by every character who gets their memories back, and you've got a whole lot of therapy sessions coming.

And the series finale is supposed to answer why the Laurel in the spinoff is the Laurel that she is, whether that's original Laurel, Black Siren, or a merger. So it stands to reason that the central characters will get their memories back in the finale. What kind of ending would that be for a show, that it's about the characters dealing with something that should completely floor them, and then the show just ends before they could possibly resolve their issues with it? I'm thinking this will be a happy ending with plenty of sentiment and honoring of Oliver, not, "What the f*** just happened to us, and how are we ever going to be okay?" This is where the value of simplicity comes in. Thea is the Thea we know just in a better life, Diggle is the Diggle we know just in a better life, Oliver saved them and brought back people they lost through vague Book of Destiny stuff, they'll miss him dearly, The End.

 

[vantheman77]

I wonder how much of the finale is Oliver going to be in.

 

[Primal Slayer]

I wonder how much of the finale is Oliver going to be in.

I think he'll be in it plenty. Probably a lot of (new) flashbacks.

 

[Primal Slayer]

Spoilers are out for the episode....not that surprising....

Spoiler

Everyone is alive BUT Laurel/Malcolm/Robert. Laurel/Tommy were married

 

[WhoMani]