In 2013, Arrow aired its first season finale. After spending months building up to a confrontation between Oliver Queen and Malcolm Merlyn, the two enemies fought one another with the fate of Starling City's Glades hanging in the balance. Unfortunately for Oliver, while he defeated Merlyn, the villain's dastardly plot was successful: his earthquake machine leveled the entire neighborhood. Worse still, one of the casualties of the attack was Oliver's best friend, Tommy Merlyn.
The cliffhanger ending was heart-wrenching, as viewers had to say goodbye to a fan-favorite character. What's more, ending the season with the hero failing to prevent the villain's attack was a bold move for the series, one that helped cement Arrow's popularity and that showed the series wasn't going to play it safe.
Now, on Twitter, Arrow co-creator, producer and writer Marc Guggenheim shared the fake script pages that had been written to keep Tommy's death in the Season 1 finale a secret. And it turns out this fake ending sounds even better than what we got.
The fake ending of Season 1 is similar to the real one -- after the Undertaking, Oliver rushes to CNRI to discover that Tommy had been badly injured by rebar after rescuing Laurel. Like the real ending, Oliver admits to his best friend that he has just killed his father in order to stop him.
But this is where things take a different turn. In the real ending, Tommy then dies from his wound, and Oliver is left to mourn his loss. But in the fake script, upon hearing that Oliver has murdered Malcolm, Tommy pulls himself free of the rebar, gets to his feet and swears vengeance on Oliver. "Now I know what I have to do," Tommy says. "I'm going to kill you."
As far as endings go, this one sounds like a hell of cliffhanger. Instead of leaving fans saddened by Tommy's passing, they would have been left shocked by this sudden but incredibly promising change in the dynamic between Oliver and Tommy. After all, in the early days of the series, we weren't certain what direction the writers would take Tommy in. There were instances where it appeared he was groomed to become a villain, and others where it seemed he would remain on Oliver's side. There was a theory, however, that Tommy would become Green Arrow's true nemesis, the villainous archer known as Merlin. While that didn't turn out to be the case, this fake ending would have set that up brilliantly.
Of course, this small change would have considerably changed the trajectory of Arrow in its subsequent seasons. Season 2, which featured Slade Wilson/Deathstroke as the primary antagonist, is arguably the series' very best, and one that the show never managed to top. Part of the reason for that was the strong emotional turmoil that was at the root of the season's conflict. But it seems we could have gotten more of that if Tommy had become the series' villain.
Coming out of Season 1, Tommy was not ready to successfully take on Oliver. Therefore, while Oliver dealt with Slade in Season 2, Tommy could have been off on his own, training in Nanda Parbat just like his father did before him. Once he acquired the skills he needed, Tommy could have then returned home to Starling City, where he could have become the main villain of Season 3. While that would have altered the course of the show, it could have set up Ra's Al Ghul to be the villain of Season 4, instead of Damian Darhk.
It would have truly been interesting to see Tommy's descent into villainy, and a relationship of brothers devolve into a bloody rivalry. With Tommy established as the one true Merlin, the series would have been different, and it would have made for a great, tormented arc for Oliver. After all, the vigilante has long wrestled with the idea of killing his enemies or letting them live. With his best friend as his enemy, Oliver could have made it his mission not to repeat what happened with Malcolm by devoting all of his energy to trying to save Tommy. This would have heightened the emotional tension in the series -- something that could have been carried on for years.
In fact, there is no telling where things could have gone from there. After being painted as the bad guy, Tommy could have then worked on redemption. Once redeemed, perhaps he could have even joined Team Arrow, instead of the series introducing multiple new characters in Season 5 to widen the team's ranks. Having Oliver and Tommy team up to take out bad guys as a crime-fighting duo in Star City sounds incredibly awesome, and something we would have liked to see more than the extended Team Arrow we got in later years.
In the first season of Arrow, Tommy Merlyn rapidly established himself as a fan-favorite character. In fact, he was so beloved that many would agree it was a mistake for the series to get rid of him so quickly. Colin Donnell and Stephen Amell had great chemistry together, and they showed the two characters had a special bond.
It's no wonder the show kept bringing Donnell back in subsequent seasons, whether as a ghost, a vision or a flashback. His guest appearance in the "Crisis on Earth-X" crossover even showed us what an evil Tommy could have looked like on the series. The actor was a friend of the show, and his sporadic returns always reminded us of what had been lost -- and what could have been.
Now, with the release of the fake Season 1 script, we've gotten the biggest "what could have been" ever. This small change in the series' first season finale would have drastically changed the show. If only there was an alternate Earth out there where this very moment went down -- perhaps then we could see what an Arrow centered entirely around Oliver Queen and Tommy Merlyn's relationship would have been like. Odds are, it would have hit the bullseye.
Arrow stars Stephen Amell as Oliver Queen, David Ramsey as John Diggle, Rick Gonzalez as Wild Dog, Juliana Harkavy as Black Canary, Katie Cassidy as Black Siren, Katherine McNamara as Mia Smoak, Joseph David-Jones as Connor Hawke and Ben Lewis as William Clayton-Queen. All eight seasons are currently streaming on Netflix.