Arrow season 6 spoilers: Prepare for Oliver Queen the … mentor?
Before diving further into analysis, let’s start this off by sharing what executive producer Marc Guggenheim said on this subject to Entertainment Weekly:
“This season, we’re trying to give you a different version of Oliver. Because of the journey he went on in season 5, he finally got to a place where he was ready to follow everyone’s advice and discard the past and move on with his life. The Oliver Queen that you’ll meet in 601, he’s still the Oliver you know and sometimes love, but he has a different sense of himself… In season 6, I think you’ll see Oliver giving the people in his life the advice for a change. He’s been through five years of being this superhero and he went through five years of hell before that, so he’s got 10 years of very heavy experience to start to bring to bare, and that’s something we’re interested in seeing more of a mentoring Oliver as the various people in his life face their challenges.”
The thing about Oliver as a mentor this season is that it makes sense more so than it would at any other time. It’s hard for Oliver to help people when he couldn’t help himself, and the show wrote itself out of so many corners with the Prometheus arc last season. For example, take the whole issue when it comes to him keeping secrets. If you think about it / ponder it over, one of the key components to his dishonesty may have been the sole fact that he didn’t want to trust anyone else because he couldn’t trust himself. If he couldn’t admit that he liked being a killer on some level, why would he let anyone else in when it comes to his son or anything that happened on the island? It also explains his rough, rugged training style — because he was hurting, he wanted everyone else to hurt.
We’re not saying that season 6 Oliver Queen should be an idealized version of the Oliver that some other characters wanted to see during the fifth season, but he’s a more complete character as a whole. He may be able to find other sources for some of his pain and stress.
If you missed it
Yesterday, we shared the official title for the season 6 premiere — be sure to check that out over at the link here.
Meanwhile, let us know in the comments what you think of the idea of Oliver as a mentor as opposed to the secret-keeper / the tortured soul. (Photo: The CW.)