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Subscribe on any of your favorite podcast feeds, or grab an MP3 download of this week’s episode. For more awesome content, check out the latest episode of IGN Unfiltered from our new barcade set, featuring an interview with Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order director Stig Asmussen. It’s an open bar; come and join us!

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It’s going to be an incredibly fun year of Xbox coverage. Join us!

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Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s Executive Editor of Previews. Follow him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan, catch him on Unlocked, and drop-ship him Taylor Ham sandwiches from New Jersey whenever possible.

January 26 in Australia is officially called Australia Day, a public holiday meant to celebrate the arrival of the British First Fleet in 1788. It’s the date that British sovereignty was declared, and as such it’s also a day of mourning for many indigenous Australians, as it marks the beginning of British rule and a period of history where numerous atrocities were committed. Reparations have never been provided, and land rights were never ceded.

In the wake of January 26, 2020, one Australian developer has pledged to take part in the “Pay The Rent” initiative, which asks people to pledge a portion of their income to indigenous groups on a regular basis. House House, the developer of Untitled Goose Game and Push Me, Pull You, will give “at least 1%” of all their earnings going forward to indigenous groups.

“Our videogames are made on stolen Wurundjeri land,” their announcement acknowledges. The land of the Wurundjeri tribe covers what is now known as the northern suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria. Prior to colonization, there were around 300 unique Indigenous nations.

To date, Untitled Goose Game has sold over one million copies–if it continues to sell well in 2020, 1% a month could be a substantial contribution. The goose terrorized the Game Awards in 2019, and might get its own Lego set.

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It’s a strange experience writing the final review for a series that’s been a part of my personal and professional life for eight years. Before Arrow existed, Smallville was the closest thing to a fully realized, live-action superhero universe on TV. Now we have a whole Arrowverse, one that keeps getting bigger and crazier and comic book-ier with each passing year. Oliver Queen changed a lot over the course of eight years, as did world around him. It’s fitting that the series takes its final bow not by putting Ollie in the spotlight, but by examining how his crusade affected the lives of everyone around him.

To be frank, Arrow didn’t even necessarily need a series finale in the wake of Crisis on Infinite Earths. Ollie already made his grand, heroic sacrifice and finally achieved his goal of saving Star City. What more even needs to be said at this point? But in a way, that works to the benefit of “Fadeout.” The hardest part is already over. There’s really no way to unstick the landing, so the finale is less an epic climax to the series than it is a quiet epilogue and an opportunity to spend one last hour with old friends.

Quite a few old friends, as it turns out. “Fadeout” shows us Lex Luthor wasn’t the only one to manipulate reality and create a new Earth more to his liking. Ollie apparently tweaked Earth-Prime so that doppelgangers of nearly all the loved ones who died over the course of the series are now living in the reborn Star City. It’s a clever twist that allows the series to end on a very upbeat and hopeful note despite, you know, everyone grieving for the dead main character. It says a lot about Ollie that he went through the trouble of giving all these people – his mother, Tommy, even poor, twisted Emiko – a second chance without trying to reclaim his own life. And perhaps most importantly, the method behind these “resurrections” dances around any concerns about cheapening their original deaths. Those deaths still happened, just in a universe that no longer exists.

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It’s great seeing so many familiar cast members back, including Susanna Thompson’s Moira Queen, Colin Donnell’s Tommy Merlyn, Katrina Law’s Nyssa al Ghul and even Joe Dinicol’s Rory Regan. The complaint with nearly all these returning characters is that we didn’t get to see enough of them, but there’s really only so much that can be expected of one episode.

And certainly, writers Marc Guggenheim and Beth Schwartz knew their biggest priority had to be Emily Bett Rickards’ Felicity. Season 8 has been able to coast by without Felicity up to now, but it would have been unthinkable to wrap up without bringing her back. Rickards delivers an emotionally charged performance to cap off her Arrowverse tenure, with Felicity juggling her grief over Ollie, her fear at losing William too and the profoundly strange sensation of meeting an adult version of her infant daughter. And fittingly, it all culminates in a sequence that finally reveals what became of 2040’s Felicity at the end of Season 7. This episode is somewhat vague (intentionally, no doubt) as to whether Ollie still exists in Spectre form or is truly and completely dead, but all that really matters is he and Felicity finally get that happy ending they failed to achieve at the end of Seasons 3 and 7.

If “Fadeout” does anything right, it’s in passing the torch from Ollie to Diggle. David Ramsey really shines here as a man mourning his brother and struggling to decide what his purpose is in a world that no longer needs Team Arrow. The flashbacks help highlight that brotherly dynamic and show just how far the two have come since 2012. And happily, this episode implies we’ll be seeing a lot more of the Diggle family beyond Ramsey’s guest role in next week’s The Flash. Their move to Metropolis suggests John and/or Lyla might be part of the supporting cast on Superman & Lois. And it sure seems like that John Diggle: Green Lantern fan theory has well and truly come to pass.

The actual conflict in the finale is nothing terribly remarkable. Post-Prometheus, the idea of an old enemy from Season 1 returning to strike at Oliver Queen where he’s most vulnerable seems a little redundant. But that subplot and the flashback scenes get the job done in terms of adding a little variety to the mix. You don’t want to devote an entire hour to people crying in front of tombstones and statues, especially when James Bamford is directing. And there’s something highly amusing about the very last villain in Arrow being named after the influential and infamously cantankerous comic creator John Byrne.

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While emotionally stirring in all the right ways, “Fadeout” does fall short in a few key ways. Anyone who’s followed my Arrow reviews over the years probably knows what I’m going to say next. It’s hugely disappointing that Manu Bennett’s Slade Wilson never made a significant return appearance in Season 8. Slade is easily the best villain Arrow ever produced, and he only Reverse-Flash rivals him as the best Arrowverse villain of them all. The series will always feel irritatingly incomplete in that regard. We do get that early rehash of the pivotal Slade/Moira scene from Season 2 early on, but one has to assume Bamford and his team fudged the end result using archival footage rather than actually flying Bennett out to film a couple quick shots of being punched in the face. Otherwise, why not give Slade a meatier role and actually provide the character with the closure Season 6 never quite achieved?

There are several possible reasons why Bennett never returned for Season 8 when nearly every other fan-favorite actor did. Maybe the scheduling never worked out. Maybe, as with Michael Rosenbaum’s refusal to take part in Crisis, The CW was never able to provide Bennett with the compensation he felt he deserved. Or maybe Slade is just another casualty of WB’s strange dislike of having multiple simultaneous versions of the same character. With Deathstroke playing such a huge role in Titans: Season 2, it could be that Bennett’s return was never going to be an option. Whatever the explanation, the almost complete lack of Slade Wilson in the finale causes the series to end on a needlessly sour note.

It’s also strange how much the events of “Fadeout” seem to clash with last week’s “Green Arrow and the Canaries.” That episode revealed Dinah fled to the year 2040 after discovering no trace of her existence remains in 2020. How exactly does that gel with what we see here? There’s also little sense of how and why Laurel comes to be in 2040. These glaring inconsistencies stand out all the more because this episode does reference William’s kidnapping in “Green Arrow and the Canaries,” so it’s not as if the two hands aren’t talking to each other.

For these and other reasons, Arrow’s final episode does stumble a bit as it crosses the finish line. There are a few too many loose ends that will probably have to be wrapped up in other Arrowverse series. But at least the core trinity of Ollie, Felicity and Diggle are given the sendoffs they deserve. Much as it has throughout its tumultuous existence, Arrow succeeds where it matters most.

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Oliver Queen may have died during the Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, but as Arrow’s series finale proves, the Emerald Archer’s story will continue to have ripple effects throughout the DC TV multiverse for years to come. Dead characters like Moira Queen, Quentin Lance, and Tommy Merlyn are now alive again thanks to Oliver’s sacrifice; Team Arrow members John Diggle, Dinah Drake, Laurel Lance, and Rene Ramirez have new jobs and missions ahead of them; Roy and Thea are finally getting married; Mia Queen is safely back in the future and all teed up to star in a potential Green Arrow and the Canaries spinoff; and Oliver and Felicity can look forward to an eternity together.

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And even though Oliver’s story is technically at an end, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee that we’ve seen the last of him – he is the Spectre, after all.

Below, Arrow executive producer Marc Guggenheim, showrunner Beth Schwartz, and star David Ramsey break down some of the biggest moments from the finale and the repercussions we might see in other Arrowverse shows like The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Supergirl, Batwoman, and the upcoming Superman and Lois spinoff.

Will John Diggle Become a Green Lantern?

In the final minutes of Arrow’s series finale, the show finally paid off a fan theory that has been years in the making. As John Diggle (David Ramsey) prepared to pack up his life in Star City and move his family to Metropolis following Oliver Queen’s funeral, he had a close encounter with some burning space debris, discovering a mysterious box in the wreckage that, when opened, emitted a bright green light…

We didn’t get to see exactly what was in the box, but DC fans probably have their suspicions, especially since Arrow has been teasing a connection between Diggle and the Green Lantern mythology for multiple seasons now.

Talking to reporters following a screening of the Arrow finale, Ramsey was coy about what the moment might mean for Diggle moving forward.

“So he did get a green box and it was very exciting. I don’t know what that means, but he does go to Metropolis and he got a green box, and we’ll see… we’ll find out [what that means].”

Arrow co-creator and executive producer Marc Guggenheim said they had to be purposefully vague about a potential Green Lantern connection because of an agreement the Arrow producers made with DC: “This was something that was worked out over a year ahead with DC Entertainment. We very specifically negotiated and discussed the parameters and I feel like to say anything beyond what we have shown you would violate our agreement with DC.”

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Ramsey admitted that it felt very exciting to be able to pay off the long-held fan theory that John Diggle is connected to Green Lantern John Stewart in some small way: “I think there’s been a bit of a payoff, but we’ll see what all that means. But I’m with Marc; anything [we say] beyond that I think is kind of violating these parameters that we’ve been given by DC that we have to honor. But I think we’ve done some justice to the six-year tease that we’ve had so far.”

“David and I have actually talked a lot about Diggle’s and David’s post-Arrow future,” Guggenheim teased. “We’ve got some really good ideas and I’m going to stand pat on that. I will also say David has become a remarkable director. So we’re as interested in him behind the cameras we are in front.”

Fans will remember that back in April 2019, Arrow introduced Diggle’s estranged stepfather, General Stewart, while 2018’s Elseworlds crossover saw The Flash from Earth-90 (played by John Wesley Shipp) pointing out that it was odd that “John” wasn’t wearing his ring when he met Diggle, implying that the Diggle of Earth-90 was indeed a Green Lantern.

For now, all we know is that Diggle and his family are headed to Metropolis, where The CW’s upcoming Superman and Lois spinoff will be set – so chances are good we might get a hint about Diggle’s destiny when the new Arrowverse series hits our screens next season.

And don’t forget that HBO Max has greenlit (no pun intended) a new Green Lantern series that is also being produced by Arrow executive producer Greg Berlanti. In the meantime, Diggle will also appear in the February 4 episode of The Flash, although Ramsey told reporters that his presence in Central City won’t be tied to that mysterious scene at the end of Arrow.

“There’s a whole cast over there on the Flash that they’re still recovering from Oliver’s death. And part of the connection to Oliver is Diggle, obviously. And so Diggle’s presence there serves as kind of that conduit, a way to grieve,” Ramsey said. “But there’s also a case, there’s something to solve that’s going on over there in Flash’s world that Diggle’s a part of. But in terms of what happened at the end of Arrow, following that over there on Flash, no, that doesn’t happen. It is John Diggle over there as John Diggle and we’re working on a case.”

Oliver and Felicity’s Happy Ending (and Why Felicity Wasn’t in the Flashback Storyline)

The Arrow Season 7 finale set up a long-awaited reunion between Oliver and Felicity, although at the time we didn’t know the context for why they had been separated.

Schwartz revealed that they had known the vague plan for Oliver and Felicity’s reunion since Season 7, but had figured out the exact beats of that emotional final scene between them in June 2019, when Guggenheim wrote it after meditating.

“I meditate every morning and this one morning I came out – this has never happened to me before or since – I came out of the meditation with the entire scene in my head. Literally, word for word,” Guggenheim said. “It just felt so right. And I very excitedly texted Beth, I’m like, ‘I wrote the final scene, I’ve got to send it to you,’ and of course, the big question was ‘is Emily [Bett Rickards] coming back to be in it?’ I’m like, ‘well now she really has to because I really love this scene.'”

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“We didn’t even think of another ending,” Schwartz admitted. “We didn’t have a backup plan at all. We were just like, ‘Emily needs to do this.’ And luckily she did.”

Guggenheim did reveal that they had initially hoped that Rickards might be able to return for long enough to take part in the finale’s flashback storyline, but the scheduling didn’t work out.

“The original plan was for it to be something with Oliver, Felicity, and Diggle, probably circa… right after episode 114 when Felicity was brought into the circle of trust. The problem was that Emily was only available to us for two days. And that meant basically if we had a third day with her we would have been able to tell that story,” Guggenheim said. “Once that didn’t materialize, we were like, ‘okay, well our backup plan is do something post-105 after Oliver and Diggle have started working together, and just tell a piece of the story you didn’t see, which is really the start of their relationship.’ And I think … as partners and, as Diggle says later, as brothers you see, as Oliver says, the proof of concept of what that relationship could be. And I think what was very nice and rewarding for us to see was how that and the eulogy speak to each other. And you really do see how much things have changed [between them].”

Why did Earth-2 Laurel Survive the Crisis Instead of Earth-1 Laurel?

Another emotional moment in “Fadeout” came from Earth-2 Laurel’s reunion with a resurrected Quentin Lance, with the former Black Siren wondering why she still existed when the aftermath of the Crisis had brought back many of the people who were most important to Oliver, but not his version of Laurel.

“We went back and forth on that a great deal. Truth be told, that was really driven by the spinoff. I think if we weren’t doing a spinoff we probably would’ve gone a different way,” Guggenheim said. “We had a lot of conversations … basically which version of Laurel did we want on the spinoff? We’ve really fallen in love over the years with the Earth-2 version of Laurel. We love Katie’s take on that character. We love writing for that character. We love the complexities of that character’s moral seesaw. She’s just always been a more interesting character to us.

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“In Seasons 7 and 8, she was really able to redeem herself,” Schwartz added. “And we felt that that was such an important story for her character. She’s come such a long way from murdering people all the time to becoming the hero she was at the end of Season 8 and will continue to be in the spinoff hopefully. So it just felt like we would shortchange her if we didn’t really honor the growth that her character went through.”

But, Schwartz added, just because they established the rules of the resurrections, in that it’s “the people who were important to Oliver that have come back, that doesn’t mean we won’t surprise you, if the spinoff goes, or on the other shows, if there’s another character that might come back.”

Will Stephen Amell Return to the Arrowverse as the Spectre?

Although Oliver sacrificed himself during Crisis on Infinite Earths crossover, that doesn’t rule out a return at some point – as he says in the finale’s opening voiceover, he’s become something else. 

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“The whole point of making him the Spectre was just to give us story opportunities because who knows what’s going to happen in the future?” Guggenheim said. “And the one thing I always say, every time a character dies on any of these shows, it’s like, we’ve got alternate realities; we’ve got time travel; we’ve got flashbacks, you name it. We have all these different devices – no one’s ever really gone … So, while I would always love to see Stephen back … I think it would be how we brought him back and when? If we brought him back in the seventh season premiere of Flash, it would probably diminish this a bit. Fortunately we have some sway with those folks.”

“There’s always an opportunity to cut to him and Felicity in the afterlife,” Schwartz quipped. “Just hanging out.”

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What did you think of the Arrow series finale? Share your thoughts below.

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Destiny 2 players had a bit of a scare earlier, as servers were taken down after the latest patch saw players lose currency and materials. The game has not been playable, and Bungie has assured affected players that their goods would be returned to them.

Bungie has now confirmed, via Twitter, that the promised rollback is complete. The game is due to return online around 7PM PST on January 28, so there’s not long at all to wait if you need to get your Destiny 2 fix.

Players who were playing the game between 8:30-10AM PST were impacted. Here’s all the information that might affect you:

• Players may have to redo any progress or quests they completed between 8:30 – 10 AM PST.
• Purchases made between 8:30 – 10 AM PST will need to be redone. Silver spent during that time will be restored.
• Destiny 2 Silver purchases from the platform store will be added back to player accounts.
• ‘The Pidgeon and the Phoenix’ Lore being removed is a separate issue and will be resolved in a future update”

The good news is that the bug has been squashed, and players do not need to worry about their materials being lost. Freebies are coming to the game on January 29 for Twitch Prime subscribers, too, and the latest Exotic weapon, Bastion, is now up for grabs.

Fans of The Division 2 can gear up for the game’s third free episode next month. The episode will take players to a new location in search of a cure for the virus that kicked everything off. Episode 3 of The Division 2 will open up Coney Island, and will make use of the island’s amusement parks.

As is standard for the game now, the island has been seized by Black Tusk–but you’ll be able to take them out by equipping a flamethrower.

Episode 2 of The Division 2 released in October 2019. The game has received several major additions since launch, but this one–which looks like it could move the series’ plot forward in a meaningful way–is particularly exciting.

Ubisoft also released some screenshots from the episode, which are below.

You can currently nab The Division 2 on PC for just $12, but act fast, because that deal won’t last long. A movie based on the game series is being planned, with David Leitch attached to direct it for Netflix.