I’ve seen some people talking about Robert Queen recently. Wondering how Oliver didn’t put two and two together. Talking about how he watched his father kill while on the life raft. So I decided to write a short thing that turned into a really long thing, because of course I did.
Early on in the episode, Oliver flat out refused to watch the video, and when Thea forced him to, he insisted on it being a cover-up. He was about to do a press-conference saying that it was until his sister put a stop to it.
Oliver Queen sees the best in people, especially in those closest to him. Even after five years in hell where that was shocked and beaten out of him, he still has that little glimmer of hope in his heart when looking at a person. It’s why he tried to convince Evelyn that they could work together in 5x17. There’s a hundred examples, and though that heart for people has diminished at times, he still tries to see good. It’s part of why Felicity loves him, and why the team stands by him. But that can cloud his judgment, and it’s been shown in the past that it especially becomes problematic when he’s around family. He refused to believe Thea killed Sara, refused to believe anything bad about Laurel. Diggle had to step in to deal with Moira in season 1 because Oliver wouldn’t.
It’s the same with his father.
And it’s the same with all of us.
Growing up, a lot of us view our parents as saints. We come to them for help when we need a problem dealt with, we cry on their shoulders. We think they have all the answers. But they don’t. As we get older, we realize that they have their faults, and they don’t know everything.
Oliver skipped that moment that all of us have to deal with when we realize that our parents aren’t exactly who we thought they were.
We don’t really know when he started partying and sleeping around, but we know he got shipwrecked around his 22nd birthday. That was probably a few years into his alcohol-haze, and we’ve seen that he feels guilty for the things he did during that time, especially the cheating. After he was shipwrecked, he proceeded to spend five years in the worst kind of hell, where he had to kill and torture to survive. That took a toll on him; enough that he passed up two or three opportunities to go home because he thought he was a monster.
He came home thinking he was a man irredeemable. In the pilot, he walks out of the bathroom and loos at himself in the mirror. The Hood flashes, giving us a glimpse into how he views himself. He looks in the mirror and sees his scars. The nightmares. The PTSD. Everything that he has done, in his opinion, has sunk him into a pit that he can’t climb out of.
And then he sees his family.
All of them, in his eyes, are better than he is.
Deep down, Oliver doesn’t believe he is as worthy as others. He spent five years trying to convince himself that his family was perfect because he thought he was terrible. He needed something to believe in, so he told himself over and over again that Thea was his baby sister who liked playing with dolls and Moira was still his mom who gave him her smile every morning, even if he was hungover.
And he convinced himself that though Robert Queen had started the undertaking with Malcolm, though he had shot a man in the life-raft, though he confessed to not being a good man...that he was still better than him. He created the Arrow crusade to honor his father, because the only reason he was alive was because his dad shot himself in the head. He feels responsible for Robert dying, so he created this...only to realize that his father had done the same thing he’s spent so many years beating himself up about, and spent so many years fighting in his name.
In 5x21, Felicity tells him that he needs to start living for himself.
And Oliver will truly be able to do that when he realizes that he’s good enough.
That he deserves to have a wife.
To have a sister, and to be a brother.
He’s finally realized that all of the people who he cares about have their faults. Thea isn’t innocent anymore. She’s killed, and she’s angry. Diggle took his own brother’s life. Felicity got into bed with Helix. His mom was involved in the Undertaking, and forced Samantha to lie about William. And now, the last piece of that puzzle has been placed: Robert killed.
Oliver can no longer put himself down because other people have done bad things too. It’s not that they’re all terrible people now; it’s that they’re not perfect in his eyes anymore. And that knowledge will release him from the burden that he’s carried.