Arrow reached its series finale last night, bringing an end to the DC show’s monumental eight-season run. Fans seemed to really love the episode, titled “Fadeout,” as well, with many of its elements being praised. From the thrilling tease that John Diggle is going to become a Green Lantern to the emotional final scene between Oliver and Felicity. However, in the ratings department, things might not have been as impressive as The CW was hoping.
As per Variety, the finale drew a total of 723, 000 viewers, which marks a sizeable 20% drop off from last week’s penultimate episode. To be fair, this was the backdoor pilot for the upcoming spinoff Green Arrow and the Canaries, which – as we noted at the time – brought an upsurge in the ratings. The figures for “Fadeout” are pretty much in keeping with those of the rest of season 8, then, excepting “Crisis on Infinite Earths: Part 4,” of course. The finale also landed a 0.3 rating in the key demo of 18-49 year-old adults, which is the same as last week.
Still, it’s obviously a little bit disappointing that more folks didn’t tune in for the last ever installment of the series. To put it in perspective, the season 7 finale – which dealt with Oliver’s conflict with his twisted sister Emiko – drew in around 100,000 additional viewers. The finale’s low figure is also a heck of a long way off from the 4.14 million pairs of eyeballs that caught the series pilot way back in 2012. Though, to be fair, those high numbers were never matched again during its run.
As for the documentary special that preceded the Arrow finale, “Arrow: Hitting the Bullseye,” that scored a decent 0.2. rating and managed to nab 663, 000 viewers, meaning the vast majority tuned in for both.
All in all, the upside here is that viewers were interested to see what “Green Arrow & the Canaries” offered last week, which means they’re excited about the next story that’ll unfold in Star City, even if they didn’t bother to show up for the final chapter of this one.