The Arrow flashbacks will end with season five, but what does that mean for the season five finale?
At this point, it's hard to imagine watching Arrow without the periodic sigh when the show cuts to a flashback the viewer (generally) doesn't care about. Though Dolph Lundgren has infused a new sense of danger and charisma into the flashback storytelling this year, I don't know any Arrow fan who isn't waiting with bated breath for the end of the flashbacks, set to come with the season five finale.
Though it was Stephen Amell who first hinted at the end of the flashback era to us at last summer's San Diego Comic Con, Arrow showrunner Marc Guggenheim is now starting to elaborate on what that will look like. Here's what he told TVLine about the season five finale, and the final flashback...
Originally, the show itself was meant to end with one of the first shots from the series: Oliver seeing that fishing boat float on by Lian Yu. Now that we know Arrow will be going past season six, where does that leave our "final" shot? At the end of the season five finale, says Guggenheim, adding:
It was really just a hope at that point [when the pilot aired] that the show would run five years, and we always thought that we would intercut the final moment of the series with the first moment of the series, that it would form one big Moebius strip ...
There’s still a part of me that wishes we could do that. But I wouldn’t want to artificially extend the flashbacks [beyond five seasons], and I also wouldn’t want to artificially cut the show short. It would’ve been a beautifully elegant thing, and Five Years Ago Me would’ve loved it. But things change, and I do think it’ll make the Season 5 finale pretty awesome.
What will the season five finale look like now that Arrow needs to not only wrap up the flashback structure (thank god), but also launch Arrow into a new chapter of its story that doesn't rely on Oliver's past in the same tangible way? Guggenheim teased:
Look, we have some incredibly clear plans for what we want to do in the Season 5 finale. At the same time, we always leave ourselves room to be like, ‘…and throw this cliffhanger in, throw that twist in.’ Usually the craziest ideas on this show tend to be the ones that the ideas sort of linger, and we never really quite set on them. Like, ‘Oh, maybe we’ll kill off Tommy?’ We don’t fully commit until we’re pretty much breaking the episode.
Maybe they'll focus on answering Amell's many questions. He told us at SDCC that he made a list of questions to be answered before the flashbacks end...
I made a list and I sent it to the producers. When does he make his bow? Why does he have his beard? Why is he dressed as a castaway? Why is he dressed as if it’s been him and a volleyball for the last five years?
Valid questions. Maybe the flashbacks in second half of season five will just be Oliver growing out his hair, keeping goats, and scrawling in his diary a la Robinson Crusoe? Frankly, I think this could be more interesting than other flashback choices this show has made.
