BACKGROUND: Oliver's entry on the Arrow wiki!

Oliver was born some twenty-eight years ago to a life of privilege. He grew up spoiled, with money padding his every want and mistake. His friends were rich, he had his choice of any girl he wanted - and oh he wanted a lot of girls, and he lived his life from one police payoff to the next. Hell, Oliver Queen never even completed school. He never had to.

But all of this changed when, over the course of a few months, Oliver found himself faced with the terrifying possibility of growing up. He not only had a steady girlfriend he wasn't cheating on, but he had a girlfriend who wanted to move into a place with him. A place that would be completely, one hundred percent theirs.

And Oliver panicked.

First, he got a girl pregnant. Next, he started flirting with his girlfriend's sister. And finally, he took said girlfriend's sister on a trip that would end up killing her kinda and stranding him in actual hell for five whole years.

Five years that started with his father committing suicide so Oliver would survive, saw Oliver trapped on an island of outlaws and killers - and having to become one himself to survive it - and ended with him a completely different person. Hardened and scarred and traumatized beyond all belief from the things he saw the things he was forced to do.

But at the same time, his time on the island, on Lian Yu, allowed him to become who and what he needed to be. What he needed to become in order to do what his father had asked him to, stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean. To right his wrongs, and save his city.

NOTE: Oliver's time on the island is still largely a mystery in the show. It's in its third season and we're only just getting backstory of the second and third years. However, a huge part of Oliver is his reluctance to actually talk about the island. He'll give hints to his time on and off of Lian Yu, but only with fleeting comments and never about the actual details of what happened to him. At least not until his past is quite literally staring him in the face. The lack of information regarding Oliver's time on the island shouldn't be a problem in playing this character, seeing as no one other than him and characters that are just being introduced as the show delves into these missing years know what's happened. And it is an extremely important character point that Oliver just. Doesn't talk about his time away.

What we do know is that when Oliver first got to the island, he was first found by an archer named Yao Fei. Yao Fei was the one who gave Oliver his first lessons in survival. He taught him how to hold and draw a bow, to breathe and focus and let loose an arrow with his breath instead of with nothing but strength and slight aim. But most importantly, Yao Fei was the one who taught Oliver of pain and what it is necessary to do to alleviate said pain. He shot Oliver in the shoulder when they first met, and while recovering from that wound he refused to feed Oliver. Instead, he put Oliver in a situation where he had to make his first kill. He had to take his first life in order to survive. A skill necessary for the island.

Later on, Oliver was captured by the militia set up on the island. He was captured and tortured multiple times as the men - led by a man named Fyers - tried to learn of Yao Fei's location. A secret Oliver never divulged. Eventually, however, Yao Fei revealed himself to be working with Fyers, although it was later discovered that he was only doing so in order to save his daughter, and after seemingly killing Oliver in a fight, he sent the young billionaire on a hunt for a downed plane and the man living in the wreckage; Slade Wilson.

From there, Slade trained Oliver in self defense and strength. And despite not really making much progress in that, Oliver proved himself useful to Slade by figuring out how radio systems worked. Together, the two stormed Fyers' camp in an attempt to free Yao Fei, and it was there that Slade faced down with his ex-partner Wintergreen, and that Oliver met Yao Fei's daughter, Shado. Who they then escaped with. And she then took over teaching Oliver to be an archer by having him slap a bowl of water. A lot. .... Yeah, he thought it was stupid, too.

Anyway, shit happened and a lot of people (including Yao Fei) died in whole lot of complicated ways and in the end Shado, Oliver, and Slade mostly kind of got out okay, but Fyers and his men were killed and taken down. The most important bit of all of this is that Oliver stopped a commercial plane from getting shot down as it flew overhead and he made his first human kill. ... Well, first human kill with a bow and arrow.

So, months pass, and Oliver's getting pretty good with that whole archery thing, and he and Shado are like five minutes away from sleeping together which is kind of pissing Slade off, since he's not-so-secretly in love with Shado, too. And they all know that Oliver's head over heels for his honey back home but, you know, Shado's right here and very pretty and very interested and all in all hell island is starting to be pretty manageable. So you just know something's going to happen to ruin that. Because traumatized castaway murderers can't catch a break in DC or CW shows, so put them together and they're just. Screwed.

And screwing came in the form of Shado getting taken by pirates (well, kind of pirates) and interrogated about the location of weird bodies on the island, so Slade and Oliver jumped in to rescue them and Oliver promptly lost his mind and beat someone to death and then kept... beating them. But, in the end, the three of them went off in search of what the pirates were looking for, eventually finding several deformed skeletons. Shado, given her background in medicine, took one of the bodies back to the plane to examine it, and... that's sort of when things went even more wrong.

While Shado was studying the bodies, Slade and Oliver went searching for the ship the pirates came from, only to see said ship firing missiles towards their camp. They got back only to have the second round of shots come in, knocking Oliver out and setting half of Slade's body on fire.

So. From here on out things really take off. Because this is when Oliver wakes up in a cell in the belly of a ship and finds out that dear ol' Sara Lance is not only still alive, but also working with the very people who kidnapped him. And were now torturing him trying to find out where a weird Japanese sub carrying this drug called Mirakuru was. Needless to say, Oliver not only didn't know anything, but was incredibly pissed because as far as he knew, the man in charge of this whole operation - Anthony Ivo - had killed his friends.

Desperate to find this sub, Ivo took Oliver back to the island, where he and his little team were eventually ambushed by Shado and a heavily wounded but very pissed off Slade. Taking advantage of the situation, Oliver grabbed Sara and ran with her and his friends, escaping Ivo and setting off on an adventure of their own in order to find the downed submarine. Eventually, it became pretty obvious that Slade's injuries were becoming fatal. And Sara reluctantly confirmed that the Mirakuru, the drug Ivo was after, might have the possibility of saving Slade. Either that or it would just kill him faster.

Not seeing much of a choice, when the found the drug Oliver and Slade both agreed to give the injured man the drug. Only to, you know, basically keel over dead just a few seconds later. Which sucked, because that's about when Ivo found them again, and took Oliver, Sara, and Shado captive.

Sara attempted to persuade Ivo, through his affection toward her, to let Oliver go, but Ivo turned the situation on its head, forcing both Sara and Shado to their knees and pointing his gun at their heads, forcing a tied up Oliver to choose which one he wanted to live. Oliver had until the count of five, and when the gun turned to Sara he yelled out and pitched himself forward, making his choice.

Ivo then shot Shado straight through the head. Killing her just seconds before Slade showed up and basically ripped everyone but a fleeing Ivo apart with his bare Mirakuru strengthened hands.

Of course, Sara thought it would be a fantastic idea to then lie to Slade about why Shado had been killed, and told him that Ivo did it without reason. So Slade sort of went on a Mirakuru rage influenced vendetta against Ivo, plotting with both Sara and Oliver to take the ship down. Which they did, more or less. Even if it ended in Ivo telling Slade that Oliver had made the choice to save Sara over Shado, and then ended in Slade turning on his friend and locking him away in the cells while he took over control of the ship.

Meanwhile, Sara escaped with some of the other prisoners and made it back to the island, where she remained in kind of contact with Slade and was making some pretty shady deals to hopefully get Oliver back alive. Which was a really iffy point for a while considering that Slade kept torturing Oliver endlessly and almost shooting him in the head like Shado had been like... every five minutes. Needless to say, Mirakuru isn't all that fun on the sanity.

Eventually, a second showdown happened on the ship, and Oliver was faced with the chance to either cure Slade or kill him. And after having Slade pinned by metal in a sinking and flooding ship and hearing him yell and curse and swear that he was going to kill every single person Oliver knew and loved, he put an arrow through Slade's eye, presumably killing him just seconds before the ship went down. Aaaaand then Oliver passed out.

Only to wake up in China, under Amanda Waller's watchful eye. Which is where we're at in current season flashback land.

Meanwhile, back in the semi-present, Oliver was rescued and taken back to his family and to Starling City. But he was also a completely different person. Honoring Shado's memory, he kept the hood she wore and wielded a bow, setting up shop in an old warehouse his family's company owned and then building a Nightclub on top of it. Owned and operated by Oliver Queen, and a convenient cover for where he spent his nights.

From there, The Hood began making appearances. Using a list his father had given him when he died, Oliver went and threatened the worst of worst in Starling City, uncovering conspiracies and ties to various mafias and drug lords, and forcing each and every one of Starling's criminals to face the things they'd done.

For the first long bout of his work, Oliver was ruthless. He gave criminals one chance and one chance only to do what was right, and the second they turned against him he would either rob them blind or, given the situation, kill them without mercy. Usually, the high profile targets would end up pinned - still alive - by arrows outside the police station with evidence and confessions at their feet, but for everyone else? For gangbangers and drug dealers and those stupid enough to try and take hostages or shoot back? They ended up in the morgue, with arrows struck through their hearts, slicing their necks, or buried right between their eyes.

It's because of actions like this, actions that Oliver thought necessary for his mission at the time, that he gained a bit of a... bad reputation. He, in a way, led to the full creation of the ruthless semi-villain Huntress, brought stronger Triad attention to the area, and even gave certain would-be villains a bit more power in the eyes of the underworld.

But he also, through his work, gained some friends. Friends like his former bodyguard, John Diggle, who set out almost instantly on trying to get Oliver to branch out from his obsession with the List. To stop just crossing names off, and instead look at the other things happening in the city. It was through Diggle's meddling that Oliver first started fighting regular crime. Crime that wasn't tied to the horrible things in his father's book of names.

A book that he would soon learn his mother also possessed. Only through approaching her first as Oliver and getting nothing, and then as the Hood and being faced with his mother's fear and desperate will to live, he ended up shot. Shot in a way that would have been fatal, had he not revealed his identity to Felicity, a young IT worker in his family's company.

Together, these three formed a thing that would, rather reluctantly, be called Team Arrow.

And together, the three of them found out that not only was Oliver's best friend's father kind of a psychopathic assassin, but he was planning on going through with something called The Undertaking. Which is just a threatening way of saying setting off a giant earthquake machine and leveling the poorest and most crime ridden section of the city, killing hundreds of hundreds of people in nothing but cold blood.

Which, after this whole mess where Tommy found out who Oliver was, Oliver slept with Laurel who was then just out of dating Tommy, Tommy running to his dad's company and getting mad at Oliver, Oliver finding out Malcolm was the captain of the Undertaking and also the mysterious archer who almost killed him, Malcolm finding out that Oliver is the guy he almost killed, led to a showdown on the night of the Undertaking.

Moira, in a moment of bravery, warned the people in the Glades about what was about to happen, despite the fact that she was complicit, even if it was through some pretty severe blackmail. So Detective Lance, with the aid of Felicity, went to disarm the device, while Oliver went to face down Malcolm in hopes of stopping the Undertaking before it even began.

Both of them failed. Oliver killed Malcolm (or at least thought he did), and while Lance and Felicity disarmed one device there was a second one set up as a failsafe. Despite their best efforts, the Glades fell. And Oliver was left racing through the quakes and collapse and screaming, frantic people to try and get to where he just knew Laurel Lance had gone as soon as she heard there would be danger. Her law office. In the Glades.

In the end, Oliver stopped to save a woman from some thugs trying to make the most of a bad situation. And when he got to Laurel's offices he saw it was too late. The building had fallen. But instead of Laurel lying half buried and impaled on metal... it was Tommy. His best friend.

Eventually, he would take solace in the fact that he got to be with his best friend as he died, that at least Tommy didn't die alone and scared, at least he had someone with him. But if there's one thing Oliver's good at, it's taking blame on himself. And under the weight of his guilt, the knowledge that if he hadn't stopped to help save a stranger's life his best friend would still be alive, Oliver gave both Diggle and Felicity a million dollars worth of severance pay and returned to Lian Yu.

Because, honestly, he had failed his city.

But if there's anything Dig and Felicity are good at its making sure Oliver doesn't sit and sulk too much, so it was only a few months before they both showed up on the island to drag Oliver home. Which only really worked because his mother was going on trial for assisted murder and terrorism which kind of sucked.

So yeah, he came back and his sister was running his nightclub and his mom was kinda in a bad place and apparently Laurel was also in a really bad place and becoming an alcoholic and buddying up with this creepy mayoral candidate named Sebastian Blood (how they ever trusted someone with the last name Blood we'll never know) so really everything was even worse off now. Especially since Laurel kind of blamed the Hood for Tommy's death while Detective Lance was demoted but also on the vigilante's side and...

Yeah. Which made it even more fun when Sara came back from the dead. Turns out that while Waller pulled Oliver out of the ship after the whole Slade fiasco, Sara was found by the League of Assassins and taken to Nanda Parbat to be trained by Ra's al Ghoul and his daughter, Nyssa.

So, with Sara joining Team Arrow as the Canary and Oliver taking advantage of Roy Harper being all obsessed with him after he saved his life a while back, he set out to start bettering the city again. Although this time, to honor Tommy's memory and the man Tommy wanted him to be, Oliver has put his foot down on the killing. He is very much no killing. No one kills. Never. Not once can they kill anymore.

Unless Vertigo is threatening to kill Felicity right in front of Oliver and the only course of action is to put three arrows in his chest and make him fall out of a window to his horrible, painful death. Then they can kill.

Anyway, some time passes and some loser nerd from Central City comes to butt into a case the Arrow (because the Hood was so last season) is working. And, I mean, sure Oliver almost dies as the Arrow and the kid ended up saving his life but he was annoying and definitely useless (even if he gave a lot of good information and even made Oliver a mask to wear...) but really who cares about that Barry Allen kid anyway pshhhh.

Except during the time Allen spent in Starling, Roy ended up getting captured and injected with something Oliver would later identify as a new strain of Mirakuru which ended up giving the already angry kid some even worse rage problems. As well as superstrength. So Allen's visit really was kind of important. Even if he spent the entire time accidentally charming his tech girl away from important Arrow-centric stuff.

Although he does kind of feel bad about him getting struck by lightning and going into a pretty intense coma. Kind of.

So. Roy and superstrength. Kind of a problem, considering that the kid eventually hospitalizes someone because of it. So, in a desperate attempt to help Roy - because the guy's a good kid, just sort of misguided... and Oliver's sister's also pretty in love with him - the Arrow approaches him to try and help him control his strength. But even that isn't enough. And eventually, in an attempt to get Roy to focus the strength he can't quite control and help save everyone from Earthquake Machine v2, Oliver reveals who he really is.

Which would later prove to be incredibly useful, just a bit down the road, when Slade Wilson appeared out of nowhere at Oliver's house, casually conversing with his recently cleared of all charges mother about her upcoming mayoral campaign. Thankfully, by that point both Sara and Roy are full-fledged members of Team Arrow, and when Oliver calls Felicity while he, Slade, his mother, and Thea are touring the house, Sara recognizes his voice and mobilizes the team.

It doesn't take long for Oliver to greet Sara as she comes by for a visit, and for Thea to be a bit confused when Roy also joins them downstairs. And with his team by his side he feels less threatened, less like Slade would kill his family right then and there, and while Dig might have been taken out before he could put a bullet in Slade's head, it was enough that everyone walked away in one piece.

And, you know, it was also one of the defining moments of Team Arrow.

It's just after this that Oliver will find himself taken away to Mask or Menace.

PERSONALITY:

To fully understand Oliver Queen, you have to first understand the man he was before the island. A playboy to the extremes, used to getting what he wanted when he wanted it. It was part of being born into the Queen family, of being born into more money than he would ever know what to do with. He had hundred dollar bills falling out of his pockets from the time he learned how to talk, to walk, to go to school unchaperoned. And part of having money flowing so freely was a selfishness. Because how could someone who had always had everything handed to him, had people falling over themselves to be seen next to them- how could they not develop an ego? Although, for Oliver it really might have gone beyond that. He became so used to doing whatever he wanted and having his money even pay off the police every time he got pulled over for driving drunk with underage passengers that he just never quite understood the importance of consequences. He never even cared that what he did hurt some of the people he was with. Because he was so used to money and his name taking care of every little blemish in his life.

But as Oliver says, the island took that spoiled boy and stripped away the varnish of inexperience and selfishness. It stripped him of what society had made of him, and revealed the man underneath. A man that was then hardened and shaped by the island he was trapped on.

One of the first lessons Oliver learned on the island was one of duty. Of honoring dying wishes and learning to live for what anyone who saved his life stood for. In fact, he learned this lesson even before landing on the island, when his father killed an innocent man and then turned the gun on himself, when he looked Oliver in the eye and told him to live before pulling the trigger and leaving every ounce of water and food for his son. There were times, on the island, where Oliver wanted to give up. Where it could have been so much easier to just lie down and let death claim him. To open his mouth and spill secrets that weren't his in order to end pain and torture. But instead, that little seed of duty and living for what someone else died to protect either stayed his mouth or pushed him to fight for survival. Now, as the Arrow, duty is the single most important thing to him. In the first season, Oliver spent almost every waking moment hunting down the people on his father's list. Now, with the worst of the List gone and the Reckoning completed and Merlyn out of the picture. Oliver has shifted his promise to his father from righting his wrongs to saving his city. To watching over Starling like a guardian angel, fighting to keep its people safe no matter what the cost is to him. Even if that cost is his own social life, his relationship with his own family.

It's a variation of something else Oliver lives by. Of yet another thing he learned in full on the island; do what is necessary, no matter the cost to you or others. It's a lesson he first learned from Yao Fei, a lesson in trusting even those that hurt you if it means survival as well as taking a life if it means your survival. It's something that was solidified when Oliver first met Slade, when the man tied him to a chair and decided to kill him rather than trust him. He had to break his own hand in an effort to fight back, to show Slade that there was a spark in Oliver, something more than the lost and stranded rich boy. Something that would eventually turn him into what he needed to be in order to save Starling City. And it's something he upholds as the Arrow. He does what's needed, even if its horrible and shady and very clearly breaking the law. If it means saving lives and protecting the city, he will do anything he needs to. Even if it's killing.

And killing is something he's really trying not to do.

When Oliver first came back to Starling, he killed without mercy and without thinking twice. He snapped necks of people who saw his face, he put arrows in body after body after body, taking down thugs with guns with terrifying ease, his body count climbing steadily every night he put on the hood and picked up his bow. However, after seeing the fear and distrust in his best friend's eyes, after watching Tommy die selflessly trying to save the woman he loved... Oliver couldn't do it anymore. He couldn't be what he was, he had to be someone better. Someone who deserved the friend Tommy Merlyn was. So, he's made a vow not to kill. A vow he's done his best to uphold but-- there are stipulations. There are situations that Oliver just can't ignore. Situations where he doesn't care about ending a life. And those are situations where a friend or family member is threatened. Where not killing could mean losing someone for good. If there's one thing you do not, under any circumstances threaten. It's one of Oliver's people. Especially one of Oliver's female people. His mother. His sister. Laurel. Felicity. The women that he loves more than life itself, all in different but equally fierce ways. The women that aren't like Sara, that aren't trained to hold their own against even the League of Assassins. Just... if you want to live, stay away from Ollie's girls. He doesn't think clearly when its about them.

Now, as a quick aside, it's important to touch on that even though Oliver doesn't kill anymore, that doesn't mean that the urge isn't still there. It's not like he enjoys death and causing death, it's nothing like that. Oliver is an honestly good person, he always has been underneath everything. It's just... the island left its mark on him in a big way. He spent five years living in adrenaline, fighting for his life against everything from assassins, pirates, torture-happy criminals, and the Chines mafia to wolves, tigers, wild animals of all kinds, and the harsh reality of weather and mother nature. It's not something that just goes away. It's not an existence he can simply exchange for one of comfort and peace. Oliver always, always feels an itching in his bones, a call to fight. And he enjoys it. He enjoys throwing and taking punches, enjoys the way his blood rushes and his heart races when he's facing down someone with even a modicum of fighting talent. More than that, he feels comfortable in it. In an environment where he's fighting for his life, when he's wounded and scrambling and it's just him versus certain death. The island scarred Oliver in ways that aren't just physical, and this is really just one of the fallbacks from his time there.

Another is... the nightmares. Nightmares of the boat crash, a crippling fear of being on open and rough water, images and memories that haunt his mind any time he steps foot on a yacht. Whenever it storms, Oliver dreams of the Queen's Gambit, whenever he falls underwater he thinks back to the many times he's almost drowned. He used to sleep on the floor, in the cold, because he couldn't get used to the warmth of a bed, and while he no longer does that, really, everything else is still there. Still very much an issue but- well. That's another thing the island left him with. Oliver is very much unable to fully deal with what happened to him in those five years away. He can't open up to it even to members of his team. Even Sara never knew the full extent of what happened to him, and she was there for part of it. But there is... so much that weighs on Oliver from his time on and off the Island, and unfortunately most of it emerges in paranoia, guilt, blaming himself for the death of Shado, the corruption of Slade- things that made it so easy for him to slip into blaming himself for the failings of the city, for even Tommy's death. It culminates in frustration, in a slight depression that hangs off of him any time he has to be Oliver Queen for too long. Any time he has to lie to his family about who he really is, any time he has to let Oliver Queen take a hit for what the Arrow needs to do. Because of those five years, Oliver Queen just doesn't fit in anymore. And as much as he would like it to be otherwise, it's slowly wearing away at all the relationships he has left.

However, as time goes on, as Oliver has been getting closer to Felicity and Diggle and especially with Sara - a huge source of his guilt - returning to Starling, the effects of the island are starting to heal. It's a slow process, and the changes are minimal and almost easy to miss, but Oliver Queen has been getting better. His humor is a bit more visible, his jokes a lot less rigid and his smiles coming more and more often for things that actually mean something. His friendships are a lot more genuine, his exchanges with members of his team a lot smoother, and his ability to trust is getting greater and greater. The longer he fights for his city, the more he's healing from his experiences. Even Slade's reappearance, while terrifying and an exercise in ripping open old wounds, doesn't shake Oliver as much as it would have in the first year he was back. He has a team, he has friends, he has people who know his secret and who always have his back. Even if he does things that are one hundred percent island Oliver (ie; putting an arrow through Roy's knee the moment he found a lead on Mirakuru in order to keep him from even being able to go after the lead himself), the humor and sarcasm he's been redeveloping is quick to come back. But even more than jokes and a quick tongue, Oliver's ability to show he cares is probably the most important thing. He might be there with words quite yet, instead standing quietly and awkwardly whenever there's an emotional moment, but every now and then he knows what to say - even if its just a word or two - and more often than not he knows what to do. Be it filling an apartment with flowers and writing a heartfelt note or simply offering a hug or cupping a cheek and smiling.

In short, Oliver's a mess. He's still kind of a playboy, definitely still a bit of an ass, and undeniably broken and struggling, but. He's also healing. Becoming something stronger and better. Shaped by friendship and loyalty and a deep love for his city and the people in it. He might say later, when standing on a rooftop staring at a kid that can move at the speed of sound, that he's not the hero the Flash could be, but damn if he isn't working his way there.

POWER:

Voice Modulation - the ability to change his voice at will. While this does mean he can, with training, mimic the voices of people he hears, he most often uses it to deepen and robot-ify his voice to go along with being The Arrow. Concealment - except in a very specific way. At will, Ollie can either form green paint-like smudges around his eyes or don his fabric mask and seemingly simply... lose his identity. It warps perception of his features in such a way that it is very nearly impossible to recognize him. Danger Sensing - when he's being targeted or is in harm's way, Ollie will be able to pick up on it. He won't know when or where or what, but he'll be able to know something is going to happen. Only, it won't be by some prickly feeling on the back of his neck or some innate knowledge. Oh no. His danger sensing is going to come in the form of people he's known and lost or quite simply failed appearing as hallucinatory warnings.