‘Arrow’ Season 5 Finale Will Expand Oliver’s Pilot Episode Scenes

Arrow fans have known from the first year that Season 5 flashbacks would return us to Oliver’s island exile on Lian Yu, leading straight into the pilot. Now, with the actual finale looming, producers tease that the May 24 closer will actually flesh out Oliver’s pilot scenes beyond what we witnessed, including “moments that we never got to see.”

You’re warned of potential Arrow Season 5 spoilers from here on out, but when last we saw, Oliver was leaving Russia to stage his grand return to Star(ling) City by way of Lian Yu. There’s quite a ways to go (including a few more inches of hair and beard), but as executive producer Wendy Mericle tells Entertainment Weekly, Season 5’s finale will go beyond recreating the pilot:

We’ve managed to hopefully stick the landing on it in a cool way that allows us to see both some of the moments right before we first met Oliver in the pilot, where he launched that flaming arrow and it lit up that signal fire, and also maybe a little bit after as well, some of the more emotional moments that we never got to see in the pilot.

As you can see, the hair is at least in order, to say nothing whatever spoiler-y pants Oliver is wearing:

At least one shot from the recent trailer seemed to imply that Dolph Lundgren’s Kovar would end up on the island with him, while the present-day will also see the team venturing to “Lian Yu,” and picking up some help along the way.

We’ll see what surprises lie in store as Arrow kicks off the first of Season 5’s final episodes with Wednesday’s “Dangerous Liaisons,” so check out the trailers below, and stay tuned.

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