The television series Arrow, based on the DC Comics character Green Arrow/Oliver Queen, concluded in late January 2020. In the final moments, a character comments “the Oliver that I met eight years ago is not the one we say goodbye to today.” Arrow is the story of the redemption of Oliver Queen. He starts as an aimless prodigal son. When he first acquires a purpose, it is as a hardened vigilante for whom the end justifies the means. Through the influence of family and friends, he gradually becomes an honorable man: a husband, a father, and a hero who saves the world.
**Major Spoilers Ahead!!
When Arrow started in October 2012, it had been a groundbreaking year for superhero movies. Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy concluded earlier in the year with The Dark Knight Rises, and Marvel’s The Avengers had broken multiple box office records. However, there had been no live-action television shows using major Marvel or DC characters since the conclusion of Smallville in spring 2011, and Arrow launched to great anticipation.
In that first season, Oliver Queen returned home after having been presumed dead for the preceding five years. The show told two parallel stories: the “current time” story, and then extensive flashbacks from the time Oliver was missing. Together, they gave us the origin story: a rich kid, with a limited moral compass, forced to survive on a remote island when the yacht he is traveling on sinks. He returns home with the survival skills acquired during his time away, and with a new found mission to save his city.
Oliver becomes a vigilante known as The Hood, using a bow and arrows, and impressive fighting skills, to target the corruption destroying his home. In an approach very different from the leading DC characters of Batman and Superman, The Hood is not reluctant to use lethal force. Not only is he willing to kill people who attack him during his missions, there are even times when killing someone is his plan.
The majority position in the Christian moral tradition permits use of force in self-defense, including using deadly force if the situation requires it. However, both the nature of the act and the intention of the defender must be stopping the unjust aggressor. A virtuous man will use enough force to definitively stop an attack, but no more. Consequently, he would not enter a confrontation with the foregone conclusion that he will kill his opponent; if the enemy is still alive but no longer a danger, he would stop.
The Hood does not follow this moral precept. The people on his list are doing great damage to the city, and the justice system cannot reach them, making Oliver’s decision to act outside the law understandable. But even if some level of vigilantism could be tolerated, Oliver’s actions in the first season cross the line- a handful of times, he intentionally kills someone he could have incapacitated or captured.
Oliver builds a team, albeit unintentionally at first. The team questions Oliver’s willingness to use lethal force, and challenges him to do things differently. In fits and starts, Oliver moves towards a new approach, beginning with deciding that a few of the people on his list can be brought to the police. It culminates with something like a conversion experience at the end of the first season, where he finally decides to change his strategy. At the beginning of season two, this new approach is symbolized by changing his name from The Hood to The Arrow.
Like a monk being renamed when making his vows, or Abram became Abraham when given his role as the patriarch of the chosen people, Oliver Queen takes up a new name. In this new identity, he takes on two classic DC villains over the next two seasons: Deathstroke and then Ra’s al Ghul. Both are depicted in ways that respect the personality of their characters from the comics, but also that fit naturally into the developing “Arrowverse,” as the shared universe of DC shows (Arrow, Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, etc) came to be called.
As the Arrowverse grew, more elements from the DC Comics universes were added. The first season of Arrow was careful to remain arguably realistic. The abilities of characters and technology were only slightly outside what would be possible in our world. For example, while Oliver’s fighting skills were impressive, most of what he did was identifiable as real-world martial arts techniques. However, between seasons two and five, Oliver and his team encounter metahumans and aliens, magic and time travel, parallel worlds and resurrections.
Facing this more complicated world, Oliver has to become better. In addition to new skills and tactics, he has to become a better leader. His teammates challenge his willingness to use deception and secrecy, causing him to again rethink who he is and how he does things. As he does so, he once more takes on a new identity, first using the name Green Arrow at the beginning of season four.
In the remaining seasons, he faces, and accepts, the consequences of his own and his father’s past bad decisions, while continuing to adapt his strategies to protect his city from new threats. At the same time, he assumes the responsibilities of family life, getting married and learning he has a son. He knows he has not had great examples of how to be a husband or a father, and he makes mistakes on both fronts, but never gives up on trying to be who his family needs him to be.
In the second to last season, in the Elseworlds crossover, Oliver is told that his friends Supergirl and Flash will die in a coming crisis- and he immediately asks how to save them. The final season of Arrow is then the setup to Crisis on Infinite Earths, an ambitious crossover of numerous superhero shows that concluded in January 2020. All reality is endangered by a new threat, and Oliver gives everything to save as many people as he can. In the end, he ends up dying a sacrificial death twice, to save the universe.
In the last few minutes of the final episode of Arrow, the character Diggle says that Oliver was continually saying he needed to “become something else.” Variations of that line had been part of the series’ opening monologue for years, but Diggle explains that Oliver did not just mean becoming the Green Arrow- he meant becoming a better man.
Benedictine monks and nuns take a vow of conversion of life, viewing conversion not as a one-time experience but as a continuous process of cooperation with God’s grace. If we pursue continual growth in holiness, our journey may resemble Oliver’s rebirths from prodigal to vigilante to hero. While most of us should not take up a bow to fight for our city, we can take up our Rosary. Like Oliver’s rejection of the morally flawed methods he started with, we can all repent from our sins, and work to replace bad habits with better ones. And just as Oliver was motivated to be better by his family and his team, we should all try to connect with people who will encourage us to be better. Because in the end, we are all called to be “something else” – saints.
Matthew Heffron
Matt Heffron is an Iraq veteran and an attorney. He lives with his wife and nine kids in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and loves Catholic tradition, practicing martial arts, riding motorcycle, and superheroes.