Throughout its seven-plus years on television, Arrow has always been at its best when telling family stories, and that doesn’t just mean stories about the parents and children of the Queens, Diggles, Lances, and Smoaks. Oliver, Diggle, and Felicity forming the Original Team Arrow is a family story. Dinah discovering a new home with Team Arrow after losing everything she held dear to her in Central is a family story. Young William Clayton adjusting to life with Oliver and Felicity after Samantha’s death, learning to embrace them both as his parents and even calling Felicity “Mom,” is a family story. And that’s why “Present Tense,” is, at its heart, also a family story, although easily one of the most unorthodox ones Arrow has ever told, as Oliver and Diggle do their best to get to know the adult versions of their children from 2040 after they’re transported to Star City in 2019.
Some viewers may have hoped that Mia, William, and Connor would run into their fathers’ arms and everything would be happy and peaceful and wonderful. But that doesn’t make for good TV, or, more importantly, authentic storytelling. While it makes sense that Oliver and William immediately embrace, since they already had an established father-son relationship before 2019, it’s also fitting that both Mia and Diggle would be hesitant to hug Oliver and Connor, respectively.
For Mia, Oliver is a myth, a legend, a specter of a man who abandoned his family for a mission he deemed more important. She only knows him through photos and stories, passed down from Felicity and William, but their words, no matter how warm and heartfelt, can’t stop Oliver from feeling like a stranger to her. Mia’s resistance towards not only physically touching her father (unlike William who hugs Oliver as soon as he sees him) but also emotionally connecting to him rings true for her character and also serves as a reflection of the way Oliver used to be. In fact, William and Oliver even joke about this, when William mentions how Mia “can be a little stubborn and hard to read sometimes.” “Shocker,” Oliver responds. Who’d she get that from?” “Mom, I guess,” William says, as the two of them laugh together.
However, even though Mia’s behavior helps lead to that wonderfully hilarious exchange, her demeanor and actions are unjustified or treated as a punchline. Mia is a woman who has almost everything and everyone taken away from her: her parents, her home, her safety. The loss of Zoe, whose death she blames herself for, reopens all of those old wounds. How can she learn to live after losing so much? She understands that she cannot move on, but how can she at least move forward?
Fortunately, Oliver has also experienced similar loss in his life, and over the course of Arrow’s seven-plus seasons, we have seen him deal with it, in both healthy and toxic ways. Now, as the series nears its end, with only six episodes remaining, Oliver Queen possesses the most stable and mature mindset he has ever had. That is why he is able to offer to help teach his daughter something much more important than how to talk, walk, or fire an arrow with a bow—he wants to show her how to move forward with guilt, how to press on and continue living life, no matter how much the pain and regret of loss tries to halt you. “You can learn to live with it,” Oliver tells Mia. “I can help you with that, Mia, if you’d like.” And while we don’t hear Mia say “yes,” the expression on her face provides us with the only answer we need. She is willing to learn from Oliver, connect with him, and even embrace him, maybe not in the way William does at the start of the episode, but in a manner that is just as meaningful.
Similar to Mia, Diggle also spends most of “Present Tense” adjusting to a person he hardly knows. Dig has only just met the younger, child version of Connor hours before his adult counterpart arrives. Sure, he may have rescued Connor and his mother, showing kindness and compassion to a boy who was terrified and traumatized, but there is still a major difference between being a child’s hero and being their father. Further complicating the matter is the guilt and horror Dig experiences when he learns the type of madman JJ has become in the future. How can he reconcile raising one son, a person he hardly knows, to become a hero, while the other son, the boy he has raised for nearly decade, transforms into a villain?
Of course, the revelation about JJ causes Dig to reflect on his relationship with his own brother, Andy. He not only thinks about how JJ sounds as if he has become a new version of Andy but about how his and Connor’s relationship mirrors Dig’s and his younger brother. Diggle questions the point of everything; if history is essentially going to repeat itself, if the worst is yet to come, then what does it matter what he does now in 2019, how he raises JJ, or whether or not he continues to save Star City?
Ultimately, Dig decides to be the best version of himself in the hopes of making a difference, in the hopes of creating a better future for himself and his family. He listens to Dinah’s wise words (“Knowing what happens can either destroy or save us. We’ve seen our worst. We can be our best”) and takes on the role of father and mentor to Connor. As Connor begins to blame himself for what JJ turned into and for what happened to Zoe, Diggle doesn’t let him. He silences those negative thoughts of “Maybe if I had been a better brother” with one reassuring sentence: “Connor, you are my family, son.”
Oliver’s relationship with Mia and Diggle’s with Connor will continue to evolve throughout the rest of Arrow’s final season. There will continue to be triumphs and challenges, just like in all family relationships. However, as long as both Oliver and Diggle continue to teach their children not just fighting techniques or field strategies, but the importance of values like trust, compassion, and forgiveness, than they will be not only great heroes but also great fathers. And it is through Oliver and Diggle’s roles as fathers that they will truly save Star City, creating a lasting legacy for Team Arrow by inspiring their kids to continue to fight for what’s right in the right way, even after their parents are long gone.
Other thoughts:
- Black Siren nd Dinah get the idea for the Canaries network in “Present Tense,” setting up pretty obviously for the backdoor pilot of Green Arrow and the Canaries, which will serve as episode nine of this 10-episode season. But will Laurel betray Oliver to so the Monitor will bring back Earth-2, thus throwing a wrench into her and Dinah’s plans? Guess we’ll have to wait and see.
- Curtis returns in this episode, and it’s…fine, I guess? I really like Echo Kellum as a performer (and his new beard is great!), but Curtis as a character really soured for me back in Season 6 and has never fully recovered. I did like his awkward attempts at bonding with William, though.
- William’s coming-out scene to Oliver is beautifully written and performed by both Ben Lewis and Stephen Amell. It’s easily one of my favorite moments so far from this final season.
- Also, a small but incredibly sweet moment: Oliver getting the opportunity to make grilled cheeses for both of his kids.
- “I would have killed him.” “I know and I know you didn’t want to.” “Thank you.”
[Photo via The CW]
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