Arrow: 10 Greatest Episodes
6. Sacrifice (Season 1 Episode 23)
Arrow owes a huge chunk of its early success to its season finales. The final episode in season 1 is everything you want from a finale: Malcolm Merlyn goes full Dark Archer, and Ollie puts together everything he has learned over the course of the season to prevent Merlyn's plan to level the Glades.
Even excluding the perfect choreography of the rooftop fight scene, Tommy's heroic death and John Barrowman's performance, ‘Sacrifice’ stands out on the grounds that Merlyn actually succeeds. Not many superhero stories end in defeat, and although Ollie beats Merlyn, he watches as a huge chunk of his city explodes, and at the same time - Arrow proved that it wasn't just a superhero story.