Arrow series finale almost featured an appearance from Batman

Oliver Queen’s death in the Arrow finale was originally going to influence Bruce Wayne to become the vigilante superhero, Batman.

Arrow, the show that launched the Arrowverse ended earlier this year with an emotional finale.

Oliver Queen’s friends and family came together to mourn and celebrate him before moving on to carve futures of their own. The last episode of Arrow was dedicated to what made the show such a fan-favorite – raw action and plenty of heart. But the original idea for the swan song was quite different.

As revealed to Fake Nerd Podcast, Arrow creator and finale co-writer Marc Guggenheim planned a finale with another DC Comics connection.

Guggenheim always envisioned Arrow to end with Oliver Queen’s death. He explained that his hope was for Oliver to have inspired an entire generation of superhero vigilantes like himself. One of those vigilantes would have been none other than Batman himself.

"“And then you would go to this rooftop in a whole other city, and on the cut a thug or some bad guy would crash into the frame, having been punched off-screen,” the writer said. “And these pair of black boots would come down right in front of him and there’d be a flutter of a scalloped cape and the voice over would say something along the lines of, ‘Oliver Queen inspired a whole new generation of vigilantes.’ The implication being, of course, that he inspired Batman. So that, of course, didn’t happen for a variety of different reasons – not the least of which is Batwoman came along – but that was my original conception.”"

The show would have introduced the concept of Batman, though it doesn’t seem like a separate Batman series was on the cards. While Guggenheim’s idea sounds like any comic book fan’s dream, the scene plays out somewhat similarly to another Batman-adjacent series, Gotham. That show followed a young Bruce Wayne before introducing the Caped Crusader in the 2019 finale.

Considering Oliver believed that he was the original vigilante, this storyline could potentially have played out in the Arrowverse. However, the ‘Elseworlds’ crossover introduced Bruce Wayne’s cousin Kate Kane as Batwoman, and Kate was inspired to put on the cape and cowl because of Batman, so that plan was shelved.

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It also doesn’t help that Oliver had already been killed during the events of Crisis on Infinite Earths. This meant that Stephen Amell only featured in the Arrow finale through flashbacks.

Even without Batman, Arrow has successfully launched several characters from the DC Universe and has hinted at the possibility of more to come. Before his death, Oliver handed over the Green Arrow mantle to his daughter Mia, who was later seen teaming up with Earth-2 Laurel Lance and Dinah Drake in the future. We also saw John Diggle encounter a glowing green object, which was confirmed to be the Green Lantern ring. Whether we’ll see these characters return in any spin-offs has yet to be confirmed.

Would you have preferred the original ending planned for Arrow? Let us know in the comments.