WARNING: The following contains major spoilers for "Fadeout," the Arrow series finale.
Before Arrow signed off for good, Oliver Queen's friends had to face one last villain. In what has become an Arrowverse tradition, "Fadeout" -- the series finale -- named its big bad after an iconic comic book creator: John Byrne.
In a flashback sequence to Season 1, Oliver conducted a little research on the next name on his father's list: John Byrne, the CEO of a beer company. "The company is a front," he explained to Diggle. "He's using his trucks to ferry a very different type of commodity."
"Drugs?" Diggle asked, only for Oliver to sigh and reply, "People."
Later, as Oliver prepped for his mission to take Byrne out, Diggle insisted there were non-lethal ways to punish the villain. Though Oliver resisted at first, he took Diggle's advice to heart and left Byrne to be arrested rather than killing him outright.
Unfortunately, this came back to haunt Oliver's son William in the present-day timeline. When he was released from Iron Heights Prison, Byrne went after William and kidnapped him. This sent the rest of Team Arrow scattering to find the teenager. Mia eventually tracked him down -- and just in time, at that. She stopped Byrne just as he went to shove William off a rooftop to punish Oliver and his legacy.
"I brought him up here to throw him off," Byrne explained to Mia, his eyes wild. "My whole life ended right here! He thought he was saving me. Eight years in Iron Heights never saved anyone." When Mia threatened to put an arrow in him, he let William go and spread his arms open wide with a cry of, "Do it! After eight years in prison, I've got nothing left to live for, anyway!"
"No," Mia responded. "If Oliver Queen didn't kill you, then neither will I, but your ass is going back to prison."
In real life, John Byrne is a longtime comic book creator. He worked on some of the most iconic X-Men comics with Chris Claremont, including the "Dark Phoenix Saga" and "Days of Future Past" storylines. He co-created fan-favorite characters like Kitty Pryde, Emma Frost, Sabretooth and Scott Lang's Ant-Man. He also enjoyed a long stint on Superman, picking up right after Crisis on Infinite Earths ended.
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.