#arrow 2012

CW's DC TV Shows That Had A Proper Sendoff

Arrow (October 10, 2012 - January 28, 2020)

Supergirl (October 26, 2015 - November 9, 2021)

The Flash (October 7, 2014 - May 24, 2023)

Comic Oliver Queen: Wow Roy, how dare you do drugs, you are a disgusting junkie and I shall give you fuck all support while you spiral into a pit of suicidal ideation because you disgust me.

I think the whole thing would get leaked to ASIS and Slade would end up rushing to help Oliver because of course the kid would end up basically enslaved to A.R.G.U.S. but Slade would not be there in time so everything with the Yamashiros still happens.

Still not sure exactly how it would go, but it would be heavily hurt/comfort considering Oliver isnt as hardened as he by canon. Maybe Oliver ends up staying with Slade for the remaining years until start of s1 time? He did stay in Coast City away from his family in canon.

Because he hasn’t been snooping or pushing Moria to do better, Malcom gets away with it and Tommy lives, because he hadn’t been meddling. So, the season 1 cast is all there, just a year later and in a city filled with devastation.

Anatoli can see that Oliver is worried about his family, no matter how much he left them behind, so he offers Oliver to become the head of the Bratva in Starling. They want to use the chaos anyway and he trusts him, so it’s not a hardship to send him there.

So, Oliver finds himself in Starling under a new identity. He does his Bratva stuff, and they’re deep in the drug trade. He runs into Thea.

He runs into his baby sister buying drugs from the Russian mob with her friend – thankfully she lets the friend get her hands dirty while she waits in the car but she is still there – and they both see each other.

Oliver pretends not to recognize her then and Thea isn’t sure, but she becomes a little obsessed. She finds him and keeps trying to worm her way close to him and Oliver doesn’t want her to get hurt, so he keeps letting her, but he also keeps pretending like he doesn’t know her and has no clue who this brother is she talks about. He puts on a thick Russian accent and steals bits from Anatoli’s life to sell to her.

It’s this bittersweet thing, where he is so close to her, but he can’t confirm, has to keep her at a distance, but it’s so hard. Thea feels much the same, feeling she has her brother back, but he’s not him and she can’t tell anyone, because they’ll tell her to stop and get away from this criminal, but she can’t, because he’s giving her a piece of family back that she misses so desperately.

Meanwhile, Thea also gets a reputation as a Princess of Starling’s underworld and close to a Bratva Captain. This puts her in the crosshair of not only dangerous enemies the Bratva have made – Oliver especially – but Quentin too, who has been put on the Bratva case.

Current thought of the day is, I don't think Oliver ever willingly told anyone about how his father died. Now, I don't remember the show perfectly and more or less stopped actually watching about halfway through season 3 (though I was involved in fandom and some friends continued to relay plot info to me) so I might be wrong but it feels correct, and no I don't count the whole slabside thing.

But of all the five year lore that has been revealed to the people around him (plus those he met during the five years), I don't think Oliver would have ever spoken about his dad killing and committing suicide in order to let Oliver have the resources on the life raft (and how long was that period, because if there's one thing that drives me nuts it's trying to figure out how long the periods between flashbacks are).

I still cannot believe that this moment isn't discussed more because I think that most of Oliver's attitude can ultimately be traced back to that moment, and I think that it includes his keeping silent in his trauma, because maybe he told Shado and Slade but I don't think he would. They might figure it out based on context clues, maybe he lets it slip that his father was on the boat and made it to the life raft. Maybe he tells them where his father's grave is, so they know he didn't die directly from drowning.