‘Arrow’ 7×21 recap: A blast from the past haunts Oliver

WARNING: The following article contains spoilers from Arrow Season 7 Episode 21 titled “Living Proof”. Do not read if you have not seen the episode or read ahead at your own risk.

Oliver Queen was visited by someone from his past in Monday night’s Arrow and it provided him with a much needed therapy session as the show gets closer to its season seven finale.

Last week’s episode ended with Oliver and the rest of Team Arrow being crushed by falling debris after Emiko revealed to him that she had the chance to save Robert Queen but did not warn him the Gambit was going to blow up.

So while Oliver was down, he was visited by Tommy Merlyn, who I’m going to refer to as Ghost Tommy since he died many seasons ago. Ghost Tommy basically urges Oliver the entire episode to not kill Emiko and to try to reason with her instead, because deep down she may still be a good person.

Oliver shot back that he will be as ruthless to her as she was to his father. Since Ghost Tommy can’t seem to get through to him with words, he makes him think up a scenario where Oliver goes through with his plan to kill Emiko. If that were to happen, than the rest of the team would die, too. He sees this in the form of Rene, Diggle, and Dinah’s dead bodies.

Obviously this was all a nightmare, but Oliver wakes up and finds that Ghost Tommy is still there. Oliver tells his friend’s ghost he misses him every day and Ghost Tommy makes one final push for Oliver to give his sister a chance and to be better than he once was.

Oliver finally gets out of the rubble he was trapped under and reunites with the team. He confronts Emiko, who ends up stealing the weapon and tells Oliver that she knows Felicity is pregnant. She flees before Oliver can get through to her. So as we head into next week’s finale, Emiko has the weapon and she plans to destroy Star City.

Episode Notes:

• This week’s flash forward left viewers with a cliffhanger as well. In 2040, future Felicity’s mission to shutdown the Archer program, which Galaxy One wants to use to send army soldiers into Star City and kill every last vigilante. Her mission did not go as planned as she and future Alena were arrested.

What did you make of the episode? Let me know in the comments below!

Arrow airs its Season 7 finale next Monday at 9/8c on The CW.