Top 3 Reasons to Resurrect Tommy Merlyn on Arrow
That's in addition to Colin Donnell being super handsome, and the sad fact we're down one hot guy on Arrow since Colton Haynes left the show. (Brandon Routh just took a job transfer to Legends of Tomorrow. We'll be seeing him again soon.)
On a show about superheroes, we just can't have that.
There are many reasons why Tommy Merlyn should come back from the dead as a regular cast member on Arrow, but here are my top 3:
Malcolm Owes Us
Malcolm owes us - all of us, forever - for taking Tommy away after one measly season. Now he has the means to deliver.
It was Malcolm's unspeakably evil Undertaking that ended Tommy's life in the season 1 finale. He always talks about the son he "lost." Tommy wasn't lost, Malcolm.
He was murdered. By you.
Malcolm has never answered for his crimes and probably never will in a court of law, unless he pisses off Felicity enough to tell everyone on Planet Earth his current whereabouts.
If Oliver giving Malcolm the demon's head ring in the season 3 finale - in exchange for his cooperation in destroying Ra's Al-Ghul and saving Starling City - is what it takes to get Tommy into that Lazarus Pit, then it'll all be worth it.
But Tommy has a lot to catch up on regarding Malcolm, most of it bad.
He doesn't know Malcolm conspired to sabotage the Queen's Gambit, making his father partly responsible for his best friend's 5 years in hell.
He doesn't know that Sara Lance survived and was stranded with Oliver on Lian Yu, only to be shot off a rooftop with arrows fired by Tommy's half-sister Thea, in yet another murder orchestrated by their father Malcolm.
He won't be surprised, though. Oliver nailed it in the season 1 finale: "The difference between us, Tommy, is that you've always known the man he is."
Even so, I'll never forget how, as Tommy died, he thanked Oliver for not killing Malcolm when he had the chance. Malcolm does not deserve a son like Tommy.
In any lifetime.
Oliver Needs Him
Oliver needs his childhood friend to see that he became a hero after all.
Tommy was the inspiration behind season 2 and Oliver's quest to transform from vigilante to hero, but Tommy never got to see any of it. Oliver was haunted that his best friend died thinking he was a murderer, and he never got the chance to fix that in life.
Despite all Oliver has done to honor Tommy since the Undertaking, I don't think he'll ever feel that work is done. Maybe not even as the Green Arrow.
But he's wrong. Tommy would be so proud of all the lives Oliver has saved, and the team of heroes he's built that protects the city so well.
When Oliver first came back from the island, Tommy made it his mission to get him back into the swing of their superficial, super-rich party boy lifestyle. But he knew Oliver too well. He knew something was up, from the day he went to court with Oliver to get the death certificate rescinded.
Oliver had become a completely different person and Tommy learned only a fraction of the truth about Oliver before he died.
Oliver would want the chance to tell Tommy the rest of the story. The unabridged, sometimes ugly, best-friends-in-life version.
Tommy also has never met Felicity. He'd be amazed at the change in Oliver since falling in love with the right woman and letting her love him back.
Tommy would find out Diggle was the furthest thing from a bodyguard and chauffeur. Those men are brothers to Oliver in very different ways. Diggle is, and always will be, the older brother. The mentor, the example, the voice of reason.
Tommy used to be Oliver's partner in crime. Maybe they'd be partners in heroism now.
Somebody asked Stephen Amell: if you could bring one person back to the show, who would it be? Without hesitation: Tommy.
He means Colin. They're good friends in real life and he wants to see Colin more often than for beers after WWE Summerslam!
Dear CW: we want to see Tommy more often, too. Like every week.
Laurel Needs Him
Laurel Lance, who two seasons later can't seem to fall in love with anyone else on the show.
Laurel didn't appreciate Tommy at the time, and she expressed her non-appreciation by sleeping with Oliver again. Laurel betrayed this man who loved her, whose last words before dying were to ask if she was safe. (He actually apologized to the guy she cheated with for being jealous!)
Like Oliver, Laurel never got the chance to make things right, as they said to each other standing before Tommy's tombstone in the season 2 premiere. Too late to fix it. So many regrets.
Nobody on the show since has made her smile the way Tommy did.
Laurel has evolved enough to make different choices now. She's clean and sober. She's gotten over the worst of the hurt from Sara's death. She and Oliver have established a friendly relationship as superhero colleagues on Team Arrow, and she considers Felicity a friend, too.
Black Canary? Something tells me Tommy Merlyn night have a thing for hot blondes in black leather.
