Entertainment

Will Oliver Queen Still Be On 'Arrow' Season 3?

Arrow returns Wednesday night to The CW, and there's one pretty major question left unanswered. Was Stephen Amell killed off of Arrow , his own show? All of my hilarious Miley Cyrus jokes fell flat when "The Climb" delivered that (literal) cliffhanger. How can Oliver Queen be dead? What's going to happen now? The short answer: we don't know about Oliver, but Amell isn't going anywhere, at the very least. You forget, half of this show is a flashback. We'll still see Oliver on the show, but his fate in the present is unknown.

There are plenty of ways that Oliver Queen could return from his fatal blow. He could be resurrected in the Lazarus Pit. He could be rescued by another character. Or, he could be gone for good and we're going to have to find a new name for this show. It reminds me of how I never though Meredith Grey was in danger of dying on Grey's Anatomy until her multitudes of sisters started popping up. You can have Arrow without the Arrow, unfortunately. Let's just hope it doesn't come to that!

In an interview with TVLine, Amell was decidedly shady about Oliver's fate. Here is how he described his character's current condition.

"Dragged on a rickshaw through the cold and the wind and the rain and snow, and hopefully heading for recovery... You have to defeat your protagonist every once in a while, so that hopefully he or she learns something. And hopefully they’re alive to learn the lesson."

Last time I checked, most people don't just "come back" and recover from death like it's the flu or something. So does that mean he's alive? That kind of sounds like he's alive. I'll take Amell's word for it.

Team Effort

The bright side here is, of course, that we'll get to see other characters hop into the Arrow spotlight in Oliver's absence. Not only will we see Laurel and Ray's transformation into Black Canary and The Atom, but Felicity, Roy, and Diggle will have plenty of work to do in the Arrowcave without its namesake bossing them around. They have a lot to deal with right now, especially after learning that Thea is being controlled by her father and is truly on the path to becoming an Arrow villain now.

Amell also mentioned that we won't see any grieving just yet — the team just thinks he's gone missing. That makes sense, actually. I doubt Ra's Al Ghul has Twitter or any way to let everyone know that he's just killed the Arrow.

Source Material

In the comics, Oliver Queen did fake his death or was presumed dead for a long time. At that time, young Connor Hawke tracked his father down, and Connor has already been teased on Arrow this season (well, it was technically on an episode of The Flash). Could Sandra Hawke and her child return to the show in Oliver's absence? She was banished from Starling City by Oliver's mother, so there's no reason for her not to return now.

As sad as I am about this potential development, it does open up a lot of exciting opportunities for all of the characters on Arrow, Oliver Queen included!

Images: Cate Cameron/The CW (3)