The entirety of this season of Arrow, which in case you’ve forgotten is the final season, has been about the set up to Crisis and the aftermath. This week’s episode is no different.
With Oliver waking up in his apartment with memories of being betrayed by Lyla fresh in his mind, he meets Future Team Arrow, and learns he’s got a charity event to attend. He goes, and he sees John and Lyla, who say that the whole thing with the Monitor was a misunderstanding-yeah right- and from there he meets Rene, and then Quetin. Stephen Amell’s face at that particular scene is emmy worthy. Such a lot of emotion and character. They then learn there’s been a hostage situation in SCPD, cue Dinah joining the episode. Quentin goes in with Oliver and they manage to disarm the bad guys before the chief bad guy says ‘This isn’t over until you fix it, Oliver.’ An explosion then follows killing them all.
Oliver wakes up again, stops the bomb, but then something else happens and they die. And the cycle repeats itself, again and again, but this time with Laurel for company. This keeps happening until on roughly the fifth try, Laurel gets to say her goodbye to Quetin-something she was denied before- and accepts her fate and his fate. Laurel then disappears, and Lyla reveals that her test was to be able to accept saying goodbye to Quentin, but that Oliver’s test still needs to happen.
Oliver’s epiphany comes in the second to last repeat of this incident, where Quentin tells him that he’s accepted his fate, perhaps it’s time for Oliver to accept it as well. Quentin also tells Oliver that he started trusting him as the Green Arrow because his kids believed in him, and he believed in them. As this scene plays out you can see Oliver start to realise what he needs to do and what needs to be done.
This leads to a heartbreaking scene where in the final attempt at this, he meets Quentin, he talks to him and then lets him go off and die. The scene ends with Oliver meeting Lyla once more, and them discussing why all of this needed to happen and whether or not Oliver can change his fate. Hint, he can’t. Lyla then reveals that Oliver has one final task left for the Monitor before Crisis.
He wakes up, finds Laurel near him, and they move out of an army tent, to discover the kids and Diggle waiting for them, and the realisation hits that they are on Lian Yu, where it all began.
This episode was full of fireworks, and the scenes with Quentin Lance were both heartbreaking and filled with action. Stephen Amell, Paul Blackthorne and Katie Cassidy acted fantastically well, and I think that all of this has set things up quite nicely for Crisis.
It is hard to believe, but there are only four more episodes left for Arrow. The time has flown by.
Vivek Rajkhowa 
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