Arrow reaches its series finale next week, but this Tuesday offered a chance to look into the future. The penultimate episode of season 8 – and the show as a whole – served as a backdoor pilot for prospective spinoff/sequel series Green Arrow and the Canaries. I say prospective because The CW has yet to officially give it a greenlight, as execs were waiting to see how this episode fared. And while we’ve still yet to get any sort of announcement, the good news is that it went down a smash in the ratings.
As per TVLine, Arrow 8×09 “Green Arrow & the Canaries” managed to land an impressive 0.92 million viewers and a 0.3 share of adults 18-49. This makes it the second-highest viewed installment of the season. And the highest was last week’s “Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part 4,” which featured the death of Stephen Amell’s Oliver Queen. So, you could say that the backdoor pilot earned season-high ratings out of the “regular” episodes of the shortened 10-part run.
This comes on the back of generally positive reviews. TVLine also reports that their readers gave “Green Arrow & the Canaries” a B grade and 65% said they would “absolutely” watch the spinoff if it went ahead. All this sounds encouraging, but it’s worth remembering that the network did just give Superman & Lois a full series order and there are only so many Arrowverse shows they can air at one time. Still, there’s clearly an appetite out there for more of what the pilot had to offer.
The episode jumped forward to Star City 2040 and followed Oliver’s daughter Mia Queen (Katherine McNamara) as she teamed up with Black Canaries Laurel Lance (Katie Cassidy) and Dinah Drake (Juliana Harkavy) to protect her father’s city. First introduced in season 7 and officially handed the mantle of Green Arrow by her dad in “Crisis,” there’s been a lot of set-up for this show, so it would be pretty devastating if Mia’s journey abruptly ended here.
While we wait to find out what the future has in store, don’t miss Arrow 8×10 “Fadeout” next Tuesday, January 28th on The CW.