Arrow - S8 E10 - Fadeout

Normally I try to do these in order, but haven't caught the first couple of seconds of last week's Legends, I haven't been able to bring myself to watch that episode and honestly haven't decided yet if I even want to; and figured if I was going to bother with an episode tonight yet, it might as well be the Arrow finale.... So here we go. Yeah, okay, if I became some sort of demi-god type being, I might be tempted to somehow tinker with a few things; especially rectifying the loss of certain loved ones, if it can be avoided in the short term.  Undoing Moira's death seems like a big deal though, because that kind of radically alters the last 6 years where she wasn't present.  I mean, just off the top of my head, would Thea have still gone off with Malcolm to train that summer?  Did they still have the same confrontation with Slade and his small army invading the city after this new scenario where Oliver managed to free himself and get the upper hand on Slade? It also raises some questions of some of the other changes and to what degree Oliver was involved (and how) and what are either aberrant differences that just randomly occurred and what were indirectly caused by some of these other changes, by way of the butterfly effect?  I mean, this is evidently a world in which Dinah Drake never existed, are we supposed to infer that Oliver didn't particular care for her and snapped her out of existence?  Did Dinah steal the last bagel in the bunker break room right before Crisis and Oliver's carrying a petty grudge? Or maybe he really liked and her decided to save her when the arbitrary path of the new timeline decided to delete her - which I imagine is what we're probably supposed to believe, but I'm going to assume it's the bagel thing.

Here's another thing, why did anyone tell Moira she died in some alternate timeline?  I don't think I'd want to know that; especially since that whole encounter was probably pretty terrifying and for everything Moira did and gone through up to that point, it's still conceivable that just the experience of almost dying at Slade's hands might have been cause for her to develop PTSD.  If finding out that she actually did die during that encounter and then six years later her son died and became the fucking Spirit of Vengeance and helped reboot the universe and somehow manipulated this timeline where you lived isn't a trigger, I don't know what would be. Oh, come on, make up your mind people; was Dinah there or was she erased from existence?  I get that she said last week that it wasn't until after Oliver's funeral that she woke up in the future and discovered she'd been erased, but seriously, how long did they wait to put Oliver's funeral together that she had time to still be part of whatever Saint Oliver retrospective documentary they're doing?  And are we now going to spend the entire episode pretending that we didn't see any of the events from the last episode?  Because that makes the less episode less of a "backdoor pilot" and more of just a pilot that they randomly inserted into another series just for the sake of tying it in. Thank fucking God the entire fucking episode isn't going to be done in the documentary format.  I hated whichever the last time they did that; whether it was last year or the year before.  I think it was last year and it was dumb and boring and definitely not the format the last fucking episode of the series should be. Crime in Star City disappeared overnight.  Literally. Fucking how?  They tried to play this bullshit in the last episode and makes no sense; how does a city of....what?  At least 10s of thousands if not probably hundreds of thousands or a million people.... how does a city the size of Star City suddenly have no crime, just because....Oliver willed it or something?  Doesn't that sort of negate the free will of the people in Star City?  And why just Star City, not the entire world and allow Barry, Kara and the others to kick back and relax?  Why does this magic spell suddenly get lifted in 20 years? So the scene of them all toasting Oliver's memory answers one question I raised previously, which is, did Roy still lose his arm; and the answer is, yes; and Cisco or whomever built him the most Robo-Cop type arm they could come up with.  And I'm guessing that might be the answer to how Caitlin or Cisco support themselves in spite of Star Labs otherwise being defunct by all account; because if either of them developed that prosthetic, and I'd bet dollars to donuts one of them, probably Cisco did, they must be a fucking billionaire as a result of all the limbs of everyday people I'm sure they've helped replace with this technology. Though my follow-up question is, if in this new reality Crisis never technically happened, how and when did Roy actually lose his arm?  Second follow-up, noticing that it is in fact his right arm and assuming that since he's drinking right handed..... does the arm vibrate and what level of precision can he control his grip strength?  I'm fairly confident these were questions at the forefront of Roy's mind when he got his new arm. (Sigh)....So he saved Quentin too it seems..........cool........ So what was the fucking point of that fantasy episode the Monitor put Oliver and Laurel through right before Crisis, where Oliver tried over and over to save Quentin and had to come to grips with not saving the day or some bullshit? Well congratulations on the promotion to Chief of Police, Dinah; I'm sure you're going to be in that job for many years to come and not going to be whisked away to 20 years in the future, while be simultaneously erased from history. Also, all through the last episode I was trying to figure out what Dinah looked different; and I still can't quite my finger on it, especially since in this episode she looks how she normally looks.  I also can't describe the way in which she looked different last week; like she looked....hotter.....and also slightly younger.  Am I nuts?  Does any of that make sense? Augh, what the fuck.  Why would Mia be given the memories of Oliver watching his father killing himself?  That is what they're suggesting happened, right? So we have Dinah and Laurel in the present day prior to their quantum leap to 2040 that took place in the last episode, which I guess technically makes all of those scenes the past even from our perspective.  And now we're jumping forward again to 2040 to presumably some point after last week's episode, to a time when Mia has her Pre-Crisis memories; just in time for a visit from Sara.  Have I got that all straight?  Is Mia coming to the present day after all?  Are they going to make that any more of a cluster fuck?  It seems unlikely, since they bothered transporting some later version of Laurel and Dinah there and setup the whole thing with JJ getting his Pre-Crisis memories. Maybe Sara's there to do her fucking job protecting the timeline and has some issues with them stopping Bianca's murder last week?  Nah, probably not. I'll tell you what, I may be able to make my piece with all the Olicity bullshit if it means it's all been leading up to this moment where Sara is actually there for a booty call with Mia. Augh.... of course she's there to take Mia to her father's funeral.  Fuck you writers. Seriously, they're still getting those stupid fucking tattoos? You know what we definitely don't need in the fucking series finale?  New, unnecessary flashbacks shoehorned into season 1.  Why the fuck is this part of the show?  Is this the result of them realizing they killed off the main character two fucking episodes before the end of the series and needed to find a way to inject him back into the last episode for more than just a cameo? Wait, did Mia just say "a few weeks before Sara showed up"?  As in, Williams was kidnapped weeks ago?   Did anyone else forget that William was kidnapped last week?  Did anyone else just realized that they basically set something like that up and it won't be resolved for like, 9 months; assuming their spin-off does indeed get picked up? Also, did she actually tell Laurel that William was kidnapped or did she keep it ambiguous what happened "right in front of her" and it's just us that were reminded the details via flashback?  Because if she actually told her what happened to William, Dinah she presumably remember this when she wakes up 20 years in the future in a couple of days and then run into Laurel whenever later.... God these writers suck at writing time travel stories.  Why are they so fucking bad at telling time travel stories?  Why do they keep writing something they're so fucking bad at? Wait......wait......wait.... Sigh..... Was the scene in the Bunker between Mia and Dinah....in the fucking past or the present?  I'm pretty sure it was in the fucking present, right?  And now a news report about William being kidnapped comes up on the computer; so.....William is being kidnapped in the present day too?   Fucking William. And fuck you, writers. Holy shit, they brought Ragman back? Oh, for fuck sake, of course they're going to try and force this stupid flashback into relevancy by trying to give it repercussions in the present.  It was bad enough when they pulled that shit with Adrian Chase. Fuck you.  Oliver's getting pounded on by a small mob and he somehow manages to aim his bow to fire a grappling line to get him out of that?  Seriously?  And how much help was the smoke bomb in doing that? And what is he even grappling to, the sky??  I thought he was inside a building and then I see he's outside, soaring past a bunch of tower or silos or whatever; and there's literally nothing directly above him but the great beyond. Are they going to bother explaining how, in spite of whatever voo doo has miraculously wiped crime out of Star City and will do for the next 20 years, John Byrne is somehow the exception and manages to kidnap William of all people? Who the fuck took the footage of Mia rescuing William??  How did they even know where or when to shoot that? Oh man, I'm so glad that after 7 years they finally addressed that dangling plot thread of how Oliver decided to be less lethal during season 1.  It's been a while since I watched season 1, but clearly the writing was sloppy and incomplete back then and they're finally making up for the low writing standards by filling in the blanks now before the series ends.... Of course they also brought back Tommy, because fuck the entire series and almost every important thing that's happened in the last 8 seasons.  And how the fuck does it work that Laurel is other Laurel instead of Laurel-1?  This Laurel wasn't at the dawn of time, she should have been overwritten by the new reality that was formed.  I mean, from another perspective I was thinking about towards of the start of the episode, really, with the exception of anyone who was at the battle at the dawn of time, every other character ever shown on these shows, any other person who hypothetically lived on Earth 1, died.  And while this New Earth sprung up in its place with virtually all of the same events, one might argue that it's a completely different universe, and all the people in it aren't technically the people who were alive before Crisis.  They may look and behave like those people, they may even have the vast majority of their experiences, but even glossing over the crucial fact that there are differences, even if there were it could still be argued that these are entirely new and different beings from the ones who existed before.  Copies, but wholly separate; especially factoring in the lack of Crisis or the ever growing list of divergent properties, like people who did not die in this new reality and the combination of people and histories of at least three or four other Earths.  It's kind of a cluster fuck and the lack of proper answers behind other Laurel is really unsatisfying. Thea: Yes. Roy: Yes? Thea: Yes.

Why would Diggle now accept that they're not needed as a hero in Star City, on the premise that crime has become virtually non-existent, when they literally just stopped a kidnapping? So if Diggle is moving to Metropolis, is this there way of saying he's moving over to the Superman spin-off?  Are JJ and Sara going to have play dates Clark and Lois' twins? Oh, it's a statue.  Honest to God, when I saw it in the promos, I thought Oliver was going to appear as the Spectre, inexplicably wearing black make-up instead of the conventional white hue the Spectre is normally given.  I thought it seemed like a questionable way to go.... What??  Oliver couldn't change the things that would have changed him?  You mean things like Tommy dying or his mom dying or even fucking Quentin dying? You mean those things? But also, you know, not preventing Laurel-1 from dying....That was important. Oh for fuck sake, and fucking Emiko is alive too and out and about like it's no big fucking deal.  Fuck this show, I'm glad this is the last episode. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME???  So now Laurel-1 was Tommy's fucking wife.  Because of course she fucking was.  Because that is the sort of logical fucking thing that happens when you fucking mess around with the timeline.  Crisis along with this whole fucking episode completely undermines the rest of the fucking series by essentially saying that most if really any of it never actually happened. When Sara told Felicity about bringing Mia back from the future, she decided not to tell her anything else; like the fact that Mia had been involved with Crisis or met Oliver or that Oliver gave her her Green Arrow suit?  It's not like its a "protect the timeline" thing, everyone else knows this information; which is either all in the past or never happened, depending on how you look at it. You know what would have been great, Barry shows up and he's got like a handle bar mustache or an eye patch or bleach blonde hair like he's got in the comics; and then no one says anything, because this is just Post-Crisis Barry now. Yeah, of course they're going to make Diggle a Green Lantern the last few seconds of the series..... I fucking called the Monitor taking Felicity to some pocket dimension to spend eternity with Oliver..... fuck this show. So does that mean Mia (and William, I guess) just never see Felicity again?

Fuck this show.