The England international brought down the curtain on his Gunners career after completing a January switch to Everton, having struggled to hold down any sort of regular starting role during his 12 years in north London, despite arriving with the billing of being "the next Thierry Henry".
The move to Merseyside was greeted with plenty of praise by critics and pundits alike, who applauded the forward's decision to seek pastures anew after seeing his dedication to the capital club go largely unrewarded, both in terms of minutes played and trophies won.
And while the choice to leave the Emirates Stadium may have been a brave one, the question seemingly being ignored is: 'what exactly does anyone expect to happen with Walcott at Everton?'
Image: Theo Walcott swaps the red of north London for the blue of Merseyside
It's not like the striker followed in the footsteps of Alexis Sanchez and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain in joining trophy-chasing sides Manchester United and Liverpool respectively (although Swansea and West Brom may beg to differ about the Reds' title-challenging abilities).
That would make sense; a high-profile move to a high-profile club for a 28-year-old who still has the fitness and speed of a teenager, which is exactly what he was when he joined Arsenal from Southampton in 2006. Surely Walcott could realise his supposed potential at a club competing for domestic titles and Champions League glory, right? That seems to be the consensus amongst the fans and media, anyway.
Instead, Walcott moved to Goodison Park. Ouch.
This is a club whose best Premier League finish in the last decade [fifth] is Arsenal's worst placing over twice that length of time, while the Toffees last lifted a trophy in 1995, the FA Cup. That fits in well with Walcott, though, whose only trophy successes in north London have come in that competition, in 2015 and 2017.
Now that may not entirely be Walcott's fault as he has hardly been expected to carry the team's goal-scoring burdens, and the Gunners' short-comings in the Premier League over the past 14 years and Champions League in, um, forever, are largely down to the ineffectiveness of the squad as a whole.
However, to say that Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger failed to get the best out of the forward is absurd.
The Frenchman is, amongst other things, considered one of the greatest minds in the game and has helped mould and develop some of the planet's most gifted footballers, and has done so on a consistent basis since arriving in north London in 1996.
Thierry Henry, Robin van Persie, Marc Overmars, Cesc Fabregas, Freddie Ljungberg, Robert Pires, Patrick Vieira, Theo Walcott... One of these is not like the others.
And again, to suggest it is Wenger who held Walcott back is preposterous, and I instead hypothesise that Theo Walcott DID realise his potential at Arsenal, it's just that the bar was raised far higher than the forward could ever reach.
Pace. That is Walcott's gin card. He's really fast, didn't you know. But that can only get you so far, both in your career and the opposition's third of the field. Have you seen Middlesborough's Adama Traore? Potentially the quickest footballer in the world but absolutely clueless when it comes to knowing what to do with the ball once he's outrun the defence. That makes speed a fairly useless weapon in the arsenal when the rest of your munitions are all blanks.
To be fair, I'm a big fan of Walcott, even if the previous 14 paragraphs suggest otherwise. He's got a heart of gold, a child-like enthusiasm and love for the game, and gosh-darn-it if he doesn't just try his little heart out every minute he's on the field. However, 'pretty-decent footballer' is about as far as one can go to describe him, no matter how rose-coloured your glasses might be.