Green Arrow has been a series that I have only kept up with a few times throughout its current run. However, one thing I didn’t expect was the series being cancelled. However, that exact thing happened and now after this issue, it seems that we must live in a world without the Green Arrow.
(Spoilers Incoming)
As Green Arrow moves across the rooftops of Seattle, Black Canary has dialogue between herself and an unknown person. This person wants one thing from Canary: to bring down Green Arrow. As Arrow enters a nearby building, he confronts Riot, an ally of Green Arrow and his team. As Arrow tells Riot that their current course of action is going to get them killed, Riot activates the building’s defense systems and escapes. As Arrow returns to his home, he is met there by Black Canary. She tells him that they need to talk immediately, to which he begrudgingly agrees. She reminds him of her time as a spy before becoming a superhero, before telling him that her old organization reached out to her. They contacted her about bringing in a dangerous target, which Oliver tells her he can help with. She tells him, “Ollie…The target is you.” She tells him that for him to escape this, he has to hand over the box that was given to him by Martian Manhunter that was said to be the one thing the Justice League was afraid of (after the events of No Justice). When he denies knowing what she’s talking about, she tells him that she has known about the box the entire time he had it. When she asks why he never told her about it, he tells her, “Because when the Justice League left for Colu, when all of you got, I don’t know, space kidnapped, I was the only person left to protect the Earth…And when the League came back, and I read them the riot act…J’onn J’onzz of all people gave me the box. He told me it was a weapon that could destroy the League…It was my secret to keep.” The two continue to bicker back and forth before Dinah tells him that the best way for this to go is for Oliver to give up the box and put down his bow. Arrow immediately refuses, telling her, “This is what I do, Dinah! This is who I am!” She replies, “And where does that leave us? Ollie…It’s just a mask.” Despite her pleading, he still refuses. Dinah then tells the people on the other side of her earpiece that he said no.
At that moment, their house explodes, sending Arrow flying through the air. As Oliver regains his composure, he flees into the nearby woods to escape the units moving in. As he moves, he encounters and takes down a number of soldiers before stealing one of their motorcycles and jumping into a nearby lake. After using the lake to enter his base under the ruined house, he grabs the box and Roy Harper’s hat before initiating the self-destruct sequence. He escapes using his Arrow Jet before being intercepted by fighter jets. Under assault in the air, Arrow is forced to eject before his jet is shot out of the sky. As he clings to the box, he sees Roy’s hat caught in the explosion, burning to ash. As he prepares to smack the ground below, Dinah uses her Canary Cry to cushion the landing as much as possible. She kneels down and hugs him before being surrounded by soldiers. When they tell Dinah to stand down, she fights off all of them. She then tells Arrow to run and get away before more of them show up, but he refuses and tells her that they need to do this together. She kisses him one final time before yelling, “Jayce, now!” At that moment, Riot flies past on a motorcycle and grabs Oliver. On the outskirts of the city, Riot tells Arrow that it’s time for him to leave Seattle for a long time. Riot leaves Arrow by himself in the woods with the box and a bag of clothes. As Oliver stands there, he slowly opens the box to find out what exactly he ruined his life for, when he finds absolutely nothing in the box. This causes him to break down, yelling at Martian Manhunter, wherever he may be. Ollie yells that he always knew the League didn’t take him seriously and that it cost him everything. He begins to remove his uniform and drop it where he stands. He puts on civilian clothes and places the box next to his uniform as he says, “I’m a survivor. I’m Oliver Queen. And when you do overstep your bounds-And you will- it won’t be an empty box you’re facing. It’ll be me. See you soon.” As Oliver walks into the woods and away from his life as Green Arrow, the box begins to glow green.
The Green Arrow is no more. With the impending end of the CW show coming in the fall, now the comic book follows suit. While I thought Oliver was well-written in this issue, my only problem was Dinah. Black Canary has always been the badass that stood by her friends and family no matter what. So why did she turn on Oliver so easily? This is the man she loves, so why sell him out and literally burn your house down for some intelligence agency? That was my biggest issue with this whole thing. But as far as I’m concerned, Oliver’s performance made up for it. Seeing him lay down the Green Arrow uniform was an emotional moment; hopefully his return to the hood will be equally as impactful.