‘Arrow’ Season 6 Premiere Will Give Us One Last Flashback
Arrow Season 5’s finale return to “Lian Yu” definitively caught up with the five-year flashbacks begun by the pilot, but left its own major gap to fill. Even so, Season 6 may not be done with its trips to the past, as executive producer Marc Guggenheim teases at least one more flashback when Arrow returns this fall.
You’re warned of full spoilers for Arrow’s Season 5 finale from here on out, but “Lian Yu” left us with one Walking Dead-sized cliffhanger, as near all of Oliver’s friends and allies were left on the title island when explosions covered the landscape. And like the AMC drama, Arrow Season 6 may not immediately return us to that moment, but rather flash back to its aftermath.
In an interview conducted with Access Hollywood before the finale’s airing (h/t CinemaBlend), EP Guggenheim carefully explained that the Season 6 premiere would carry on the flashback tradition:
I will tell you that the season premiere of Season 6 will have a flashback … To the island? If you take me literally at my word, yes, back to the island.
There are at least a few ways to interpret Guggenheim’s quote, as it’s plausible the premiere will simply wind back before the explosions to explain how surviving characters escaped the blast. Another possibility is that Season 6 will pick up with Oliver moved on from the island tragedy, and gradually reveal who did, or didn’t survive by flashing back to the finale.
Then again, if we want to get even more literal with Guggenheim’s words, perhaps a last-second Flash rescue saved the day? Don’t ask us how that would work, between Barry’s current predicament with the Speed Force, aversion to time-travel or the continuity of any speedster being available to help; it’s just something Guggenheim potentially meant to hint at.
Elsewhere of Arrow Season 6, we can at least consider Rick Gonzalez’s Wild Dog and Juliana Harkavy’s Dinah Drake safe from Lian Yu’s destruction, by their ascent to series regulars. Katie Cassidy will also return to the series as such in her Earth-2 Black Siren capacity, while John Barrowman has firmly denied the return of Malcolm Merlyn.
We’ll see what Arrow Season 6 does with its flashback this fall, but what other surprises might the series’ next phase bring?