Arrow Finale Sets Up a Surprising New Path for Ollie (and the Show)

No more Arrow? Well, shoot.

In the final moments of Arrow‘s third-season finale, Oliver Queen (Stephen Amell) announced that he was hanging up his longbow to basically run off with Felicity (Emily Bett Rickards) and be hot together. And given what he’s been through this year—almost dying, being forced into the League of Assassins, the murder and Lazarus Pit resurrection of Thea (Willa Holland), all of that Ra’s al Ghul ugliness, and a massive bio-weapon attack on Starling City—we can’t really blame him. Plus, like he said, the city is in good hands with his Speedy kid sister, Black Canary Laurel (Katie Cassidy) and pretty much everyone else in his social circle assuming some sort of superhero identity. The guy could use a happy ending (keep it clean, kids).

“Given Oliver’s descent into the darkness of the League, the big questions going into the finale [were] ‘Is Oliver redeemable?'” says executive producer Marc Guggenheim. “Can he still be a hero? What is that road gonna be like?”

Clearly, he is redeemable—even Digg (David Ramsey) will probably come around. And at least part of that road is the winding coastal one we saw Ollie and Felicity speeding down as they drove off, smiling into the sunset. “I think the finale answers that question, or at least give a strong indication of where we’re headed in Season 4. We’re not going to leave the audience hanging that far out there,” continues Guggenheim, adding that a world without the Arrow leads to an entirely different question: Where can the show go from here?

Guggenheim isn’t ready to spill those details just yet (although we already know that part of next season will involve setting up the Flash-Arrow spinoff, Legends of Tomorrow), but he does admit that he and his fellow EPs Andrew Kreisberg and Greg Berlanti all see this surprisingly upbeat twist in Oliver’s journey as a chance to restart the show. “It felt like we were writing a series finale. Greg, Andrew and I have been saying that this finale feels like the end of three seasons of TV, not just one season,” says Guggenheim.

“We always felt like this was the end of a trilogy,” agrees Berlanti. “And next season will be the beginning of a new chapter.”