Spoilers ahead for Arrow’s seventh season finale!
Arrow’s seventh season finale, “You Have Saved This City,” confirmed a major fan theory in its last few minutes: Oliver Queen is going to die during next season’s Arrowverse crossover event “Crisis on Infinite Earths.”
The episode saw Team Arrow saving the city. This was followed by Felicity and Oliver going into hiding so they could have their daughter and live in peace. Their tranquility was shattered when The Monitor, who appeared in this past season’s crossover, “Elseworlds,” came to collect Oliver.
During the crossover, Oliver made a deal with The Monitor to save the lives of Supergirl and The Flash. At the time it wasn’t revealed what he had traded, but fans speculated it was his life.
In the season finale, it was finally revealed exactly what Oliver’s deal with The Monitor entailed. It turns out, he’d agreed to do whatever the Multiverse required. Still, The Monitor revealed that he’d seen Oliver’s future and he would die in the next crisis.
The flash-forwards seemed to confirm The Monitor’s words, as Felicity met with her adult children in 2040 by Oliver’s grave, which showed his year of death as 2019.
Then, something unexpected happened. Felicity said good-bye to her children and claimed that she wouldn’t see them again. Then, on an abandoned road, she met with The Monitor. After implying that she’d waited a long time to see Oliver again, he opened a breach and they both stepped through and disappeared.
The ending indicates that while it seemed like Oliver dies in our world, he may be alive somewhere in the multiverse, although it’s someplace where he can’t leave.
The episode also solved the mystery of how Emily Bett Rickards’ Felicity would exit the series. In the present timeline, she’s gone into hiding with her daughter. In the future timeline, she’s gone to see Oliver somewhere in the multiverse — and The Monitor makes it clear that it’s a one-way trip.
So what does it all mean for the last 10 episodes of Arrow that will be the series’ upcoming eighth season? It appears that Oliver will be off attempting to stop the upcoming Multiverse Crisis. Before Oliver and Felicity went into hiding, Team Arrow had disbanded and it’s now unclear how or even if they’ll factor into the upcoming final season.
So even with the answers, Arrow’s seventh season finale gave us, it opened up far more questions. We’ll have to wait and see what happens when Arrow’s eighth season debuts in the fall.