ARROW ended its fifth season with a cliffhanger: Oliver and his son watched all of Team Arrow trapped on Lian Yu while the island exploded. The big question for the summer revolved around which characters survived.
So what was the answer?
ARROW didn’t really leaving us hanging as we flashed forward to five months later. Back in Star City, the Arrow was fighting crime like the good old days. By his side was Diggle, Curtis and Rene. Felicity survived as well, arriving back at the Arrow lair with some burgers and fries after their mission. At home, Oliver struggled to connect with his son, who was very distant.
Dinah survived as well and was back at work at the police station, while Quentin was still struggling with losing his daughter and the appearance of her evil doppelganger. Meanwhile, said evil Doppelganger was having some fun breaking criminals out of the police station. Later Black Canary and Black Siren went toe-to-toe with each other as the whole team tried to capture evil Lauren.
William also made it clear that he believed Oliver was the “bad man” who haunted his dreams, leaving a chasm between father and son. As the team mounted another attempt to capture Black Siren, she broke into their lair and confronted Diggle. Fortunately, Oliver and the rest of the team arrived in time to save Diggle and got round 2 with Black Siren.
While Black Siren escaped again, all hope was not lost. Oliver told Rene he got him another custody hearing so that he could try to get his daughter back.
Throughout the episode we flashed back to the events on the island itself just before the explosion to figure out exactly how people survived. Thea ran off after Samantha, who was desperate to save her son, while the rest ran for their lives. Later that night,Oliver and William arrived back on the burning island as Oliver tried to find his friends. He came across Slade first, while Dinah and Quentin arrived back at the monastery. There they met Black Siren and when she tried to kill Dinah Quentin shot her. All this time he had been convinced he had killed his daughter’s evil alter ego.
Slade led Oliver to Thea’s unconscious body, while Samantha came stumbling across them and died after learning that William was alright. Much later we learned that Black Siren awoke on the island and was greeted by a mysterious man who arrived via a helicopter. As for the fates of Nyssa, Talia and Evelyn? We’ll just have to wait and see.
At the end of the episode we saw Oliver enter a room in the hospital and learned that Thea was alive, but in a coma. Slade stopped by to announce he was heading out to find his son and he told Oliver he would one day have to make a choice between being a hero and being a father.
Back at the bunker we learned what Black Siren came to the lair to take — one of Curtis’ T-spheres. Why? Perhaps that answer came moments later, because soon after Felicity called Oliver to tell him to turn on his television. The big news story was a photo of Oliver — with his face clearly visible — dressed in the Green Arrow’s outfit.
In other words, his secret was out.
ARROW airs Thursdays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on The CW.