6 Times Arrow Improved Green Arrow Mythology (& 4 Times It Failed)

3. Death Is Irrelevant

Stephen Amell Arrow Death
The CW

Now, for the most part, death in comics is completely and utterly irrelevant. That is, apart from a handful of exceptions - such as the Green Arrow.

Ever since Superman was revealed to have simply been having a massive kip in 1993’s legendary The Death of Superman, death in comic books has usually been simply a plot point used to advance a story, with it no longer the permanent arrangement it once was.

Back in 1995, Green Arrow sacrificed his own life in order to protect Metropolis – and its millions of citizens – from being wiped out. This was a hard-hitting death that was felt across DC Comics for years to come, particularly for poor Connor Hawke as he tried to continue on with the Green Arrow moniker his father had made so famous.

Oliver Queen wouldn’t be fully back into the fold of the main DC Comics landscape until 2001, when Kevin Smith’s Quiver arc brought Ollie back. But even then, it wasn’t simply a case of Oliver being back as Green Arrow with no questions asked. Instead, the resurrected Queen would struggle to find his place in the world, with him likewise struggling with his memories, and he’d take several years to actually become the Green Arrow once again.

In Arrow, sadly death has been a complete nonfactor. When Oliver was brutally stabbed through, kicked off a clifftop and left for dead by Ra’s al Ghul during Arrow’s third season, the seemingly dead Queen was back on the road to recovery by the very next episode. Sara Lance and Thea Queen killed? Let’s just dump them in a Lazarus Pit. Laurel Lance left dead? Let’s just bring in the Laurel of an alternative Earth to fill that void.

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