Next Week’s Arrow Sees Oliver Facing Erasure
by Erik Amaya
As it turns out, Level 2 of Slabside is home to a very unconventional corrections philosophy. And as this preview of next week’s Arrow indicates, Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) faces the death of his personality. Not that he’ll go quietly, mind you.
But one thing which remains to be seen is whether or not the operation on Level 2 has anything to do with Ricardo Diaz (Kirk Acevedo). At the moment, it seems Diaz, the prison and the mysterious real estate developer buying up the Glades are three separate antagonistic forces. If that proves to be the case, it makes things a lot more interesting. Particularly considering the flash-forward and the implication that the Glades eventually became a paradise of sorts while Star City finally fell.
The circumstances still feel like the future the Legends glimpsed in their first season with a broken Star City, an abandoned Smoak Technologies building and Diggle’s (David Ramsey) son J.J. as the Green Arrow. But new wrinkles like Dinah (Juliana Harkavy) operating as part of a vigilante underground suggests we’re still sometime before the 2040s. Also, considering Laurel’s (Katie Cassidy) mention of the Earth-2 Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards), it is still possible the flash-forward is also flashing sideways to Earth-2’s future.
Which also introduces one more suspect for the new Green Arrow: Robert Queen (Jamey Sheridan), the Green Arrow of Earth-2? It’s no crazier a theory than William (Ben Lewis) or J.J. coming back from the future to prevent their dark timeline. But considering The Flash is already doing something like that, an alternate Queen under the hood may be the most logical way to play things out. Provided, of course, Earth-2 Robert augmented himself somehow, because the new Green Arrow scurried up that wall in a manner which suggests metahuman abilities.
Arrow airs Mondays on The CW.