Arrow Season 8 and Crisis on Infinite Earths Story Details Revealed

Arrow season 8 will be the show’s last. Not only will this final, 10-episode season mark the end of an era, but it may also mean the end of its green-hooded protagonist’s life. Indeed, with a Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover on the way, based on a comic that famously killed off several major DC characters, Oliver Queen is entering his 8th season of adventures with a target on his back. 

Fittingly, his journey in season 8 will be very different from anything we’ve seen on the show before. When the show returns this fall, he’ll be taken out of his home in Star City to work for the Monitor, an omnipotent being who first appeared in the Arrowverse in last year’s Elseworlds crossover event. (The character was first introduced in The New Teen Titans #21 in 1982 by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, the creative team that would tackle Crisis on Infinite Earths three years later.)

At the end of last year’s event, Oliver struck a deal with the Monitor to save Flash and Supergirl’s lives in exchange for his own. Oliver agrees to help the Monitor to fight the upcoming Crisis, and at the end of season 7, this multiversal force comes to collect. 

“[We’re] taking the show on the road, really getting away from Star City. Oliver is going to be traveling the world, and we’re going to go to a lot of different places,” executive producer Marc Guggenheim said to EW. While we’ve seen Oliver travel to many places over the years, both in the present and in the show’s signature flashbacks and flash-forwards, he’s never faced a challenge like a multiverse-spanning Crisis. 

“This is sort of his final test because it’s greater than Star City,” showrunner Beth Schwartz said of what’s to come for Oliver, who’s gone from grounded vigilante to larger-than-life superhero in the past eight seasons. Oliver’s story has always been about his evolution and his progression from grim, vengeful anti-hero to the leader of a whole universe of superheroes.  

According to star Stephen Amell himself, the final season will include plenty of homages the show’s history: “Episode 1 is an ode to season 1, and episode 2 is an ode to season 3. We’re playing our greatest hits.”

One thing fans should definitely expect is for Arrow season 8 to directly connect to this year’s crossover. It sounds like the final season of Arrow will lead into Crisis on Infinite Earths.

“Everything relates to what’s going to happen in our crossover episode, which we’ve never done before,” Schwarz said. 

Will the crossover actually end with Oliver Queen’s death? We’ll see Oliver dealing with this prophesized doom in the lead up to his final scene.

“Oliver [is told] he’s going to die, so each episode in the run-up to Crisis has Oliver dealing with the various stages of grief that come with that discovery,” Guggenheim said. “So the theme really is coming to terms, acceptance.”

“Because he’s a superhero with no superpowers, I always felt he should die — but he may also not die,” Amell added.

We’ll find out for sure what awaits the Green Arrow when the show returns for one last season on Oct. 15 on The CW.

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John Saavedra is an associate editor at Den of Geek. Read more of his work here. Follow him on Twitter @johnsjr9 and make sure to check him out on Twitch.