Latest Arrow Episode makes Star Trek movie reference, Guggenheim Confirms

In the latest episode of The Arrow, Oliver and Thea fought Slade Wilson on Lian Yu and which also resulted in Thea finding out what Malcolm Merlyn did to her so as to cause the death of Sara.

Apart from this, the flashbacks to the past revealed that Oliver checked in on his loved ones while also stopping China White from selling the Omega virus.

Yet there was one more thing that might have been obvious to Star Trek fans: a fun reference was made to the 1982 movie titled “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”.

The scene in question, involved Slade Wilson telling Oliver that he would leave him just as he [Oliver] left him. To fans of Arrow, this might have seemed payback considering that Oliver locked Slade in the Season 2 finale but it was more to fans who have seen the aforementioned movie as well.

In fact, this reference was confirmed by the executive producer, Marc Guggenheim, who said that Slade’s line was a deliberate reference to “The Wrath of Khan”, which incidentally, was one of his all-time favourite movies.

Of course, the only difference between the two movies is that while Khan intended to leave Kirk on a dead planet (just like Slade intended to do with Oliver and Thea], Slade, unlike Khan, survived when Kirk [Oliver too] managed to escape.

The Flash also did something similar this week by dropping movie references to The Terminator and Back to the Future.

Guggenheim also suggested that references to the TV series Wiseguy would also be made – the 1987 crime series starring Ken Whal.

That said, they could even take this reference a few steps further in bringing William Shatner back as Kirk in guest appearance mode.