Arrow Season 8 Premiere: 12 Easter Eggs & References You Missed In 'Starling City'

12. The Pilot's Opening Sequence

As the whole episode was a love-letter to the pilot, we could spend the whole day going into all of the major references, or how they re-used the old sets, so we're not going to do that. However, the opening sequence was so incredibly executed that it should be discussed a little.

From the discovery of Oliver on the island to his return home to the Queen Mansion, the first few moments of the episode were identical to the opening sequence of the pilot. Even the music that played over his reunion with Moira in the hospital was the same score that played in Oliver's original reunion with the Earth-1 version of his mother.

On a side note, that emotional piece was also a reprise of the score that played over his emotional phone call to Moira just after he'd been rescued by the fishing trawler - a moment we saw in the final scene of the show's long-running flashbacks of Season 5. In fact, Moira even spoke some of the same lines of dialogue that she initially said in that scene.

There was just too much Arrow goodness (some obvious, some not-so-much) in the opening sequence not to discuss it and that, more than anything, highlights the level of care that went into crafting this wonderful episode.