You're a hero. For three years, you've been a rock. The city's rock, my rock. For three years, you have been the person I can count on. I'm still counting on you.

My name is Oliver Queen. After five years in hell, I've returned home for only one goal - to save my city. And I did. I became a hero who helped people. But now it's time to be someone else. It's time for me to be something else.

When I started this, I wanted keep you away from it as far as possible, because that has always been my instinct - to go it alone. But the truth is that we won tonight because I wasn't alone. I thought that this crusade would only end with my death. But even if I had died tonight, it would live on because of you.

Ra's took the Arrow identity from me. I couldn't be that person even I wanted to be. And I don't want to be. I told you that I couldn't be the Arrow and be with you. I want to be with you. You told me that I have become someone else, and I would like to... maybe discover a little more about that person. If you come with me.

I have a prison like this. Mine's on a nearly inhospitable island in the north China Sea, but this works too.

Barry, I have been living this life for almost eight years, encountering things that you can't even fathom, and I am still alive. Not because super-speed kept me out of the ground. It was because I realized that I needed to keep learning, keep training, keep getting smarter, and until you get that, despite your best intentions, you will do more harm than good.

My identity is a closely-guarded secret only known to a few, and if it were to get out, will endanger my family, my friends, and it would embolden my enemies to retaliate at me through them.

The name of the island they found me on is Lian Yu. It's Mandarin for "purgatory." I've been stranded here for five years. I've dreamt of my rescue every cold black night since then. For five years I've had only one thought, one goal - survive. Survive and one day return home. The island held many dangers. To live, I had make myself more than what I was, to forge myself into a weapon. I am returning not the boy who was shipwrecked, but the man who will bring to those who have poisoned my city. My name is Oliver Queen.

All that time plotting my return at the island, I didn't realize how hard it would be to reconnect with Mom, Thea... Laurel... and I didn't... I didn't know how painful it would be to keep my secret. You asked me to save the city. To right your wrongs. I will. I swear. But to do that, I can't be the Oliver that everyone wants me to be, which means sometimes, to honor your wishes... I need to dishonor your memory. I'm sorry...

-Oliver Queen (Arrow/The Flash)