Here’s everything that happened in ‘Arrow’ season 8

Arrow has wrapped its eight-season run on Tuesday, Jan. 28. With the series finale of the progenitor of the CW’s “Arrowverse”, we have to tip our metaphorical hats for how Arrow changed the course of superhero series on television and bringing forth a truly shared television universe for the various series that made it up. 

While, originally, series star Stephen Amell wanted the show to take its bow with the seventh season, we’re glad that he and those involved decided to stay on for the eighth season. Standing at 10-episodes (though one is the Crisis episode and the other the backdoor pilot to Green Arrow and the Canaries), we see Oliver Queen wrestle with his impending death and his legacy as he heads to Crisis on Infinite Earths. 

If you didn’t watch season eight of Arrow, then here is basically what happened in the final season. 

Oliver’s Monitor missions

If you’re wondering if the Monitor (LaMonica Garrett) is just as frustratingly annoying in comics as he was on television, then the answer is yes, yes he is. We have to give it to Garrett, he did fantastic in his portrayal of the character. Either way, he’s still just such a. . .ugh. Anyway, Oliver is drafted by the Monitor to run missions for him for reasons.

Joined by Digg (David Ramsey) and Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy-Rodgers) for the majority of these missions, Oliver goes to Earth-2 (which gets destroyed by the anti-matter wave), Hong Kong, Nanda Parbat, Star City, Russia, and, of course, Lian Yu in order to gather what the Monitor needs along with wrestling with his impending Crisis death. 

The Monitor and whether or not his intentions are good drive a lot of this season’s drama and action. Oliver has to have faith that his sacrifice will be worth it, but falters in that faith as well. When he falters, the Monitor turns to others such as Laurel (who refuses to betray Oliver again) and Lyla (Audrey Marie Anderson), who agrees to work for the Monitor. 

The missions pretty much led to Lyla getting her powers as Harbinger (which backfired big time as the Anti-Monitor got stronger in Crisis). 

That’s not even getting into when Oliver meets the grown-up versions of William (Ben Lewis) and Mia (Katherine McNamara) of Pre-Crisis Star City 2040. 

Pre-Crisis 2040 got a whole lot worse

Though this timeline did not last, we have to be real and say that the Star City of 2040 was the worst possible timeline. Riddled with crime, guys in Deathstroke costumes running about, corruption, and anti-vigilante laws, the Team Arrow of 2040 is trying their best to keep things on the level. It gets more complicated when the team goes up against Connor Hawke’s (Joseph David Jones) adopted brother, J.J. Diggle (Charlie Barnett) aka the Head of the Deathstrokes. 

Why was J.J. head of the Deathstrokes? Um…something about how Digg and Lyla loved Connor more than him? It was something that made no sense given what we know about the couple. But, yeah, it boiled down to daddy issues essentially. 

We still don’t know what the plans Pre-Crisis J.J. had for Star City of 2040. The Monitor brought forth William, Mia, and Connor after J.J. killed Zoe Ramirez (Andrea Sixtos) to 2019 to help with the coming Crisis.

Family Reunions

Meeting your future children in the present day, you think that Team Flash or the Legends would establish a support group for time travel shenanigans gone wrong. Either way, Oliver and Digg meet their future children to varying degrees of excitement and acceptance on both sides. 

While Digg and Connor, after some hiccups and J.J. related angst, get along pretty well and William is excited to have this time with his dad. (There’s such a sweet scene where William comes out to Oliver that will have you in tears.) The lion’s share of the attention is on Mia and Oliver.

Our love for Katherine McNamara aside, you will spend most of your time yelling at the television screen telling Mia not to waste the opportunity she’s given by being angry at Oliver. We understand the anger of course. Mia felt like Oliver choose the world over her and Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards), but still.

It did eventually have the father and daughter making peace with each other, Oliver training Mia, and he passed on the title of Green Arrow to Mia during the first part of Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Speaking of Crisis on Infinite Earths. . .

Oh dear sweet Lord, where to even start. We’re obviously not going to recap the entirety of Crisis. It’s all over the Internet. So we’ll just focus on the Arrow related content, okay?

Oliver dies in “Part One” of Crisis fighting the Shadow Demon Dementor things while Earth-38 is being evacuated. He even tases the Monitor in order to fight to the last. According to the Monitor, Oliver saved a billion of the three billion lives saved from Earth-38 with that sacrifice. In his dying breaths, he said his goodbyes, telling Barry (Grant Gustin) and Kara (Melissa Benoist) to be “the ones to save us now”, comforting Sara (Caity Lotz), and telling Mia to keep him in her heart.

Of course in “Part Two”, Barry and Mia enlist John Constantine (Matt Ryan) and Sara to get them a Lazarus Pit that they can use to bring Oliver back. Due to the deterioration of magic, while they get Oliver’s body back his soul is another story. It takes Constantine, Mia, and Digg going to Earth-666 in “Part Three” and meeting Lucifer (Tom Ellis) to go get Oliver’s soul from Purgatory.

But do they really? While they are able to meet Oliver, they’re stopped by Jim Corrigan (Stephen Lobo) who tells Oliver that essentially it’s time for him to become the Spectre. So Oliver does. 

While the multiverse ended in “Part Three” and the Paragons (plus Lex Luthor) begin “Part Four” at their lowest point, Oliver completes his Spectre training. Oliver has Barry take the remaining Paragons (plus Lex Luthor) depositing Kara, Lex (Jon Cryer), and Ryan Choi (Osric Chau) with every past version of pre-Monitor Mar Novu in order to stop him from creating the Anti-Monitor while the others go back to the Dawn of Time.

They get lost in Oliver’s memories, however, and Barry has to collect the others. The Paragons (plus Lex Luthor) and Oliver reunite at the Dawn of Time to fight the Anti-Monitor and his Shadow Demon Dementors. In the battle, Oliver was able to “light the spark” to restart the multiverse while the Paragons (plus Lex Luthor) “fanned the flames” by. . .staring really hard at it.

Oliver then died again with Sara and Barry by his side. He has them promise to watch after his family and tell Felicity to have William and Mia grow-up together. 

Due to Oliver’s sacrifice, Earth-1, Earth-38, and Black Lightning Earth combined into Earth-Prime in “Part Five”. We won’t go into all those changes because that’s another article for another day (and we’re still getting an idea of the scope of said changes), but everyone finishes off the Anti-Monitor and a giant Beebo (because this was the Legends part of the crossover). 

In the end, Barry takes Kara, Sara, Kate (Ruby Rose), Clark (Tyler Hoechlin), J’onn (David Harewood), and Jefferson (Cress Williams) to the site where they met for the Dominator Invasion of 2k16 to hang up Oliver’s costume and light an eternal flame. He then unveils a round table, which marks the beginning of Earth-Prime’s Justice League. Also Earth-Prime knows of Oliver’s sacrifice though from other series post-Crisis we’re not entirely sure how much the outside world knows about what happened during it. More on that in a minute. 

Post-Crisis Star City 2040

We’re seriously hoping that Green Arrow and the Canaries gets that series order at the CW because the backdoor pilot (episode nine) was awesome. We also get a good idea of the changes Post-Crisis to some of the timelines.

William and Mia grew up together. Mia lives in the Queen Mansion, graduated college, and is seen as kind of a party girl socialite. She and J.J. are dating and, at the start of “Green Arrow and the Canaries”, get engaged. 

When Laurel, who went to the future to stop Star City 2041 from going nuclear, and Dinah (Juliana Harkavy), who woke up in the future in a bar the day after Oliver’s funeral with no idea how she got there and her identity erased from the system, track Mia down and restore her memories of Pre-Crisis to help them. . .

Mia’s not happy, guys. She spends most of the episode wanting to protect the precious future in a safe Star City that her father gave her and the world. She eventually dons the Green Arrow costume and saves the day. Though the bad guy has the tattoo of Oliver’s hosin and, at the end of the episode, William is kidnapped.

Given how much William was kidnapped as a kid you think Felicity would have put him through kidnap training or something. 

Also J.J. gets his pre-Crisis memories back and no we don’t know how that will turn out. Zoe is also alive and well while Connor has been to rehab a couple of times and is a troublemaker. 

“Fadeout”

So how does Arrow end? Well it turns out that Moira (Susanna Thompson), Tommy (Colin Donnell), Quentin (Paul Blackthorne) have all been brought back to life due to Oliver restarting the universe. They are aware that, in the old timeline, they were dead. Given how people have been talking about in Arrow, people are aware of something happening and the timeline changing (but over on Supergirl J’onn said that restoring knowledge would literally explode people’s mind on a mass scale. . .we’re confused). 

Sara brings Mia back to the past to pay her respects to her father. Digg wrestles with Oliver really being gone and what to do next in his life. The final episode is honestly Digg’s hour, culminating in his eulogy to Oliver which will leave you weeping.

Other things Thea (Willa Holland) and Roy (Colton Haynes) get engaged. Roy has a robot arm. Felicity meets her adult daughter and is able to say her goodbyes to Oliver. Tommy and Earth-1 Laurel got married, but Earth-1 Laurel still died in the timeline. (Oliver couldn’t undo deaths like Robert Queen or Earth-1 Laurel because those losses were more important to his development as a person.) 

Rene (Rick Gonzalez) is well on his way to become Mayor of Star City. Kara and Barry went to Oliver’s funeral to say their goodbyes. Oliver’s body was never recovered so it was a casket of memorials that was buried. Digg accepts a job in Metropolis and Dinah heads off to the unknown. 

Digg also finds A GREEN LANTERN RING! So, you know, make him a regular on Superman and Lois and have Clark and Digg team up to fight crime, CW! 

How does it end?

Felicity steps through the portal in 2040 and enters Moira Queen’s office. The ponytail, the red pen, and the first place Oliver Queen really saw Felicity Smoak…

Oliver and Felicity kiss (and we cry) and they talk (and we cry more) and Oliver promises to tell Felicity absolutely everything because they have all the time in the world as we. . .fade out. 

And we cry a lot.

That’s what happen on season eight of Arrow.