Arrow 5X23: Lian Yu

I don't even want to write anything here. I feel like the amazingness of this episode should stand on it's own. It doesn't need me screwing it up. But, I'm gonna anyway.

Okay, I don't usually talk much about the flashbacks in my descriptions, but how perfect were these? My god. It was just a masterpiece.

So we bust out Slade and the other guy whose name I don't know and head out to find our friends. We stumble across some of them in cages, but it doesn't seem like anyone is guarding them. But as soon as he move forward, we're ambushed. And the guy whose name I don't know turns on us and suggests Slade do the same. He declines, and Team Arrow ends up successful. We break out Felicity, Curtis, Thea, and William's mom (it's not Sara, but I wanna say it is). We decide that Malcolm is going to take them back to the plane, and Oliver, Slade, and Nyssa will go after the others.

While they are headed to the plane, Thea steps on a landmine. However, it is so rusted that their is no way to deactivate it. While they try to figure out what to do, Malcolm pushes her off and takes her place. He sends the the rest of the group away to find the plane. Not long after, they hear and explosion and we can only assume that Malcolm is dead, but we've assumed that before.

When the group makes it to the plane, they discover that the entire island is covered in C4. There is basically nothing they can do. They contact Oliver and tell him that he's set up to Chase. If he dies, the island blows up. So don't kill him. Oh, and he also sabotaged the plane, so we can't actually leave.

After Oliver frees Diggle, Rene, Dinah, and Lance, Chase and his company catch up to him and fight ensues. The rest of the team takes out all the opponents until it's only Oliver and Chase left. Oliver refuses to kill him and continues to demand to know where William is. Chase tells him he's dead, but Oliver doesn't believe him.

Chase tries to escape on a boat, but Oliver catches him. Turns out, William is alive and on this boat. Chase gives Oliver a choice, he can either kill him and save William (but the island blows up along with all his friends and family), or he can let Chase kill William, and save everyone on the island. Oliver decides to shoot him in the leg.

He lets William go and tells Oliver that he won. But then starts to pontificate and in the end, ends up shooting himself in the head, which causes the island to explode.

And that's where we fucking end. Why would you do this to me Arrow?!?

Okay, we can only assume that somehow at least some of us are alive on that island, right? We, as a group, are too smart and too resourceful to not have come up with some kind of idea. My money's on Thea not making it. (Mostly because she was hardly in this season). I'm also thinking somehow this ends up with Felicity back in the wheelchair, and William's mom not making it either (which will throw a wrench back into Oliver and Felicity getting back together because now he'll need to be an actual dad to William).

But also, how can we ever top this season? I feel like it has to be downhill from here, right? This season was like, an 11/10.