Warning: The following contains SPOILERS for The Flash season 8, episode 5, “Armageddon, Part 5.”
The story of the final chapter of The Flash Armageddon crossover event wasted the new Green Arrow, Mia Queen. Beyond failing to advance Mia’s story following her last appearance in the finale of Arrow, the brief cameo also made the young hero look utterly incompetent. All in all, it was a disappointing turn of events for Arrowverse fans, who had hoped Katherine McNamara’s return to the role of Mia Queen might lead to a resolution of her story.
Originally introduced as Mia “Blackstar” Smoak during the flash-forward segments of Arrow season 7, Mia Queen was trained from birth to learn the skills her father, Oliver Queen, had possessed, but was never intended to follow in his footsteps as a vigilante. Despite this, Mia stepped up to save her city and adopted her father’s mantle. Her fate and name were changed by Crisis on Infinite Earths, but her memories of who she had been were restored thanks to a device built by Cisco Ramon, just in time for her to team with both Black Canaries to fight a new Deathstroke. The penultimate episode of Arrow season 8 ended with Mia being assaulted and her brother William being abducted, but this storyline was left unresolved when the CW failed to move forward with a proposed Green Arrow and the Canaries series.
When it was announced that Mia Queen would return as part of The Flash season 8 Armageddon crossover event, fans hoped that William’s fate might be resolved. Sadly, her appearance in “Armageddon, Part 5” was little more than a cameo, with the new Green Arrow coincidentally showing up just in time to stop the Reverse-Flash from rampaging through CCPD headquarters. Mia later explained that she had been tracking temporal energy signatures trying to find William’s kidnappers and had “tracked Thawne’s scent by mistake.”
This admission set the tone for Mia’s continued presence in “Armageddon, Part 5.” Far from the confident survivor who made her own way as a pit fighter, Mia was portrayed as a total novice who needed Iris West-Allen to give her advice on how to be a hero. Beyond that, Mia’s only purpose in the event was to act as an unwilling foot-soldier of the alien telepath Despero, when he needed someone else to attack the rest of Team Flash as he confronted Barry Allen. To add insult to injury, it was revealed that Mia had been searching for William for two years and had no leads on who had taken him apart from tracking temporal disturbances and trying to interpret the symbols on the Queen family hōzen.
The long-hyped return of the future Green Arrow proved to be a disappointment on every level. Despite this, Katherine McNamara has voiced her willingness to play Mia Queen in the future following her appearance in The Flash season 8. Hopefully she will be given that chance and Mia Queen’s quest to find her kidnapped brother will be resolved at some point in the future, in a storyline that does right by both McNamara and Mia.