For one last time lets have some thoughts about Arrow, a show that started out clearly inspired by Batman Begins that became something else and birthed a universe.
1. Juxtaposition
“Fadeout” attempts to take stock of a series that ran for 8 seasons, it isn’t an easy task and as an episode of television not entirely successful. Some of the little jumps to and for in the time stream felt a little rough. That said it made for wonderful juxtaposition and follows a structure similar to season 5 episode 9 “What We Leave Behind” aka the Adrian Chase origin episode. In both cases the progress Oliver has made in the present is contrasted with his earlier, more Vorhees like methods. As disjointed these juxtapositions were at times the flashbacks helped to show both how much Oliver did change and how much of that change was spurred on by opening up to people like Diggle. That was Arrow in a nutshell, a show about learning to be vulnerable and excepting help from other people.
2. Exquisite Corpse
I am not a huge fan of continuity, or at least clean continuity, for the most part. It’s too restricting to what the medium of comics and variety of writers and artists who work in superhero books can do with these properties. It is also why I never really like but am fascinated by the meta narrative-historiography subgenre that is embedded within DC as writers/fans constantly try to make all the pieces fit. Try as they have through their various Crisis, and meta narratives about the Crisis, meant to smooth out and cohere their narrative body have made their continuity an exquisite corpse. I love the incongruity of it all and never thought Arrow, a show that played with key tropes within DC storytelling from the start, would be a place to see such a corpse be made.
Coming out of COIE things are topsy turvy in the DCWverse. The general public in the weeks following it seem to be mildly aware of a Crisis reboot having occurred, Moira and Tommy are both BACK and aware that there was a reality where they died. But in last weeks episode of Arrow no one seems to really remember it, certainly not Mia. On Batwoman Beth and Alice seem fated to have a Highlander battle, while the same physical reaction did not occur with doppelgangers on
Supergirl. This is not meant to decry a lack of continuity and shared rules between the shows, like comics they just aren’t made that way, but to revel and recognize the disjunctive nature of continuity in the DCWverse two weeks after Oliver and Company put it all back together and all the storytelling possibilities that brings.
3. Tragedy or Comedy
I would never have imagined this being the end Arrow got to when Team Arrow stopped the undertaking in season 1. Sure, Ollie being dead made a certain amount of sense but not a triumphal death that places him at the center of the cosmology for the new DCWverse. I always imagined something a bit more tragic, there is this whiff of tragedy to the Dark Knight Trilogy which was the key source in the early years of the show. Ollie in the first three seasons wasn’t a great guy, he was a mass murderer something this episode and the character and series struggled with on how to recognize and articulate its past as it got progressively closer towards the light.
“Fadeout” dose not end this series on a tragic not, in fact there is a whiff of (Shakespearean) comedy to it with Roy and Thea getting engaged. That turn, and the fact that turn was emotionally effective, is a sign of how much this show changed and how those changes work.
4. The Friends We Made Along the Way; or the moments that made me cry
I’m not the weepy type, but seeing everyone at his funeral made me tear up a little bit. There is another version of the episode that is just built around following little conversations between people as they talk about how they all got there, or were resurrected. The stuff that went down is inconceivable and trying to explain it misses the point, what’s more interesting is seeing these characters deal with it on an emotional level. Getting to see Talia and Nyssa bicker like sisters over what Ra’s wanted was delightful, as was the reunion between Nyssa and Sara. People decry the inherent Team function of the DCWverse shows when that is just the best way to make a television show work.
Continued belowThese little moments give supporting characters a moment to shine and also let the entire crew be recognized for the parts they played in this 8 season show that helped spawn half of the current schedule for a television network over the course of a near decade.
5. They Did the Thing
John Byrne being the villain of the week seems like a weird reference to make, he doesn’t have any ties to the Green Arrow property. Evidently Guggenheim is just a fan and had been wanting to reference him for ages. It was a classic Arrow sort of refrence to make.
Oh, right, they did that other thing to! So maybe John Diggle’s middle name is Stewart after all. Now by the montage at the end of COIE, Earth-Green Lantern is listed as #12. Berlanti Prods will be doing a Green Lantern show for HBOMax, I doubt David Ramsey will be the lead and that it will take place on Earth-12. The footage for Earth-12 was from the ill-conceived Green Lantern film, the disastrous project that led to WB giving Berlanti and Guggenheim their choice of properties for TV as a make good. That said come next year when they need to do a crossover maybe Diggle shows up in a nice green uniform and some friends.
