I re-watched the Arrow series finale with my brother last night. It was his first time watching it. So, I asked him what he thought and what he said really summed up my own issues with it.

He said, “I expected to cry the whole episode, but ended up not feeling anything”.

As much as I knew it would hurt, I wanted to feel upset. I wanted to see all the people in Oliver’s life express the emotions I was feeling about his death because, for me, he’d just died a week ago.

The only time I felt something was this scene right here:

I. don’t. even. like. this. couple. But it made me cry. Because it was so wonderful just to see him.

When someone dies, you rage. You ugly cry. You have a moment of pure shock before crushing despair kicks in. I wanted to see those moments play out onscreen. I understand they can’t spend extended amounts of time on grief every time a character dies, but this was the titular character. This was the Arrow. I don’t want to see them singing Kumbaya around his grave a month after they’ve grieved. I don’t want to hear how great life is. I don’t care that he “restarted the universe”. He shouldn’t have been part of that plotline, to begin with.

What I needed from the series finale was the relationships that I had spent so many hours invested in. Instead, I got nearly emotionless characters spouting exposition at me, a “Find Henry- *ahem* William” plotline, and flashbacks to a time when Oliver decided not to kill a human trafficker bc Diggle asked nicely. It made the series finale hollow. Oliver brought his mother back from the dead for goodness sakes. A woman whose entire arc was centered around the sacrifices she was willing to make for her children. I didn’t see so much as a single tear in her eye. And Thea, the sister who begged her brother not leave her again because losing him for 5 years had been so painful. Now he’s actually dead and she’s just what? Sullen and a little bit grumpy with Roy?

It’s this fact that underscores all the other issues in the episode. Nevermind that its problematic to bring a bunch of people back from the dead and rewrite their reality in the final chapter of the story. Especially when those deaths had a significant impact on Oliver’s trajectory. The truth is that Marc Guggenheim, showrunner and author of this episode, doesn’t understand the importance of character writing. He doesn’t know how to do it well and he tries to make up for it with more stuff. Rather than let the characters express emotions, they go on a mission. He filled the episode with things he knew would elicit emotions from the viewers that he couldn’t with the writing. Nostalgia, comic book character teases, a crazy fight scene, and lots and lots of guest appearances. If you take out the bizarre things that happened, the episode immediately falls flat. It has no substance. It’s all to distract the viewers from a chaotic attempt to wrap a story without its lead. Marc Guggenheim had a roadmap to follow. All he had to do was get from Point A to Point B, yet somehow, he ended up wandering off somewhere in the distance to Point D to get a sandwich right before the finish line. The sandwich is Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Gif by dailyolictiy

It was RIGHT THERE. How did we get all the way over here instead Marc? Make it make sense. Please.

I saw moments of greatness with this show. At one point, it reminded me of other shows that I had loved for their storytelling. Oliver was the spitting image of Angel. I believed in this show and thought it could be on the level of Buffy the Vampire Slayer because I saw some of that potential in Arrow. To think all my fondest hopes were dashed for what amounts to a business decision.

When I imagined the end of Arrow, it wasn’t Oliver becoming a ghost with superpowers, rebirthing a universe, and bringing back every dead character. That’s just not Arrow.

Look at this.

WHAT THE HELL IS THIS?! I laugh hysterically every time I look at it…then I cry because it’s depressing.

I know the universe has evolved since the Flash came on the scene, but was it really for the better? Throughout its run, Arrow lost what made it unique. It was a gritty, grounded show about a man with PTSD.

This is a man who spent 5 years enduring unimaginable trauma. He watched his father shoot himself in the head. He lost countless people through death and betrayal. He was broken. Mind, body, and soul. When he returned home he didn’t know how to live in the civilized world “Everything that was once familiar was now foreign”. He saw targets instead of people because his brain had been hardwired to search for threats. Being vulnerable, both physically and emotionally, was a dangerous weakness.

In order to survive, he had to become “something else”. At first, it was a way to release the rage he felt at the world. He ruthlessly punished those whose actions hurt other people because he knew what it was like to be one of those people. Then as he started to heal, the meaning of that persona changed. It helped him to fight the guilt that he had and channel all of that pain into helping other people.

So, in my mind, he should have hung the hood up at the end of his journey. He should have gotten to a place where he didn’t need it anymore to feel whole. The audience would have known Oliver had reconciled the past and was ready to move forward with the rest of his life. Or maybe it ends with him defeating the big bad and going out the next night and pounding the concrete. I’m not picky.

At first glance, it’s just a comic book story about a guy who shoots a bow and arrow. What I learned is that his story is about overcoming the bad things that happen in our lives. Each of us has to decide if it will break us. Oliver showed us what happens if we push forward. This character shows us that maybe one day, we won’t just be surviving anymore. We’ll be living.

It’s a profound story to tell. So why did the people in charge change the story when they were so close to the finish line?

Oliver’s dead because DC decided they just had to respond to Avenger’s Infinity War. Or maybe he didn’t die? It’s semantics really because from where I stand, he will never get to live the life he fought so hard for. He won’t raise his children or spend time waxing poetic about the glory days with Diggle. He was denied that. Look at them. Look at what was stolen from him.

Which to me means he might as well be dead. I guess he’s some kind of all-powerful spirit who can bend reality and re-create a universe. Look that’s all fine and dandy, but it’s not Arrow. Deep down, I think most of you know that. And I get it, I do. The show you’ve been following for 8 years is ending. You’re emotional. You love the characters. It’s hard to let things go. I’ve both been there and done that.

I just think that any emotions people felt during that hour were coming from within you rather than the writing.

So no, I don’t like Arrow s8. It abandoned its mission statement. Similar to Oliver, it gave up everything it could have ever hoped to be. And for what? A spin-off that will probably never see the light of day, and a crossover people didn’t like.