Arrow: 10 best episodes, ranked

4. “Lian Yu” (Season 5, Episode 23)

I know many of you probably don’t agree with where I have this episode ranked and I get it. But there are just so many episodes of this show that were outstanding that I couldn’t justify putting this higher than the other three. But let’s not pretend that four isn’t a good spot when the show did over 150 episodes.

In this episode, we got to see Oliver return to the place where it all started, Lian Yu. We also got to see Oliver return there to rescue his friends and more importantly, William – who, for those of you who may not gotten to this point of the show, is his son that had been kidnapped by Prometheus.

That’s when we got to see the return of Slade Wilson but this time we got to see them fight together, just like old times. But there are some problems, Merlyn wanted to tag along and Oliver didn’t trust him. And as it turns out, he should’ve because he later takes Thea’s place on a land-mine, and blows himself up.

More so than that, we got to see Captain Boomerang return and create some havoc on the island when Oliver and Slade walked right into a trap. But that was just an underlying part to the episode, let’s talk about the ending.

Oliver got on the boat with Adrian Chase and William and found himself in a very bad predicament. Chase had put TNT all over the island and it was triggered to go off when he died. So, Oliver couldn’t kill him with everyone still on the island. And although he didn’t kill Chase, the villain put a gun to his head, which set the explosions on the island off.

That’s when we got the cliffhanger of a lifetime. We got to see the island from a distance blow up and we have no idea who survives and who doesn’t.