What They Say:
Left Behind – As Diggle, Felicity and Roy start to fear the worst after Oliver’s disappearance, Merlyn pays them a surprise visit.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Arrow had a bit of a rocky first half of the season before the winter break, as it had a lot of things going on but had a feeling of not being quite as cohesive as the first two seasons were, but there was a lot to like with character moments, the expansion of the overall universe it works in and, of course, the Flash crossover. There was a good sense of paring things down to the core and then rebuilding anew and we got a lot of that overall. Bringing Ra’s al Ghul in definitely worked very well for me and though it had its campy moments at times, I really liked seeing how that fight went down and giving us a great cliffhanger of Oliver being kicked off the side of the mountain.
With the return of the show here, the cold open gives us some decent basic kind of crime going on in the streets of Starling City where we get a bunch of thugs that are off in a van being chased by Roy on Oliver’s motorcycle, which he can’t handle too well, and Diggle wearing the Arrow uniform complaining that the thing is too tight. They’re not exactly skilled at replicating what it is that Oliver can do, but they do some damage here even though it’s not a complete win. Sometimes the small victories are all they can hope for and with Roy and Diggle trying to fill some big shoes while hoping for Oliver to return so they can stop worrying. It’s good to see them filling in for him pretty quickly since they have to imagine things didn’t go well with his going after Ra’s al Ghul as opposed to just waiting around and letting crime build up in the city.
While that’s going on, we have Felicity being drawn more and more into what Ray is doing as he wants to help save the city, though she’s now getting more and more worried not coming back from things like Oliver. Laurel is doing good with her work as a prosecutor and being aggressive as she’s definitely getting a good sense of justice driving her these days, which is coupled with the physical side of things that’s been increasing with her time training with Ted Grant. The bouncing around works well enough in re-establishing things after being off the air for a few weeks and there’s good character pieces coming in as well. Particularly with Diggle trying to nudge Felicity into preparing herself for the eventuality that Oliver may not be coming back from challenging one of the world’s oldest assassins. She’s got a hell of a lot of faith and there’s definitely a lot to like in her with that after all this time.
The crime story this time around isn’t terribly interesting overall for a lot of it as there’s a man named Brick that’s definitely running strong over those that he’s in control of for committing crimes in the city and that works well enough. This storyline gives Diggle and Roy something to chew on and follow as they’re moving throughout the city and keeping hidden, and for Felicity to be distracted by as well. It also ties in well enough with Laurel and her trying to put these guys away but being unable to as there’s enough legal power and money behind them to keep them out of jail, even with all that they actually did with the number of bodies out there. It’s also good to see that she’s becoming a bit more involved in talking directly with everyone about things since she knows what’s going on now, removing one of those goofier aspects of the show that you kind of have to accept.
As the show tackles what happened to Oliver, it does provide for some good stuff with Merlyn as he goes to find out for himself what happened and realizes the truth of it all. What works really well with it though is that he’s pretty up front with Felicity and the others about it because he did orchestrate the whole thing in order to have Oliver kill Ra’s al Ghul. But his failure to do so means that the death warrant is still out there on him and he knows he’ll survive only so long because of it, which is partly why he’s training THea so much and so well. It’s a good connective tissue for the story as a whole and the kind of deep ties that exist between everyone. Playing all that out with the reveal of the mysterious person who goes and collects Oliver’s body from the cliffside where he landed adds a nice ominous air about it because your first instinct is to believe that it’s Merlyn playing another game within a game, until you realize that it’s Tatsu who is the one that saves him in the end.
The big action component in the show, at least in the present, revolves around Brick’s plan to get a whole lot of case files for a whole lot of cases stolen so that the cases can’t go to court. It’s all tied back to a lot of what Oliver and company have been up to for the last several months and having all those street level enforcers get back on the street would undo all that work. So amid the loss of Oliver, it makes for a good personal reason to really get involved with it and go the distance. Diggle gets a good bit of time here with the physical side, first with some gunplay but then with a really up close fight with Brick in Brick’s preferred one on one style. There’s an uncertainty about Brick and his abilities here as it’s not something we’ve seen much of before. There’s also some good uncertainty about the situation in general as we see how, as much as this trio tries to fill the void left by Oliver, they’re not able to and Felicity is calling it as being over. There’s an interesting finality about it in a way with how it’s presented, though you know it’s just going through a change.
The epilogue aspect of the show is definitely the tantalizing piece for what it offers of things yet to come. Getting to see how Oliver is brought to Tatsu to be saved by her former husband is intriguing as you expected him to be beyond helping Oliver much at this point. We also get Felicity further making it clear that she wants nothing to do with this world saving stuff anymore and cuts certain ties with Ray as well as she doesn’t want to be involved with someone else dying like Oliver did. There’s also some good bits with Laurel at the end as she talks with Diggle about things as he’s unsure if he’s going to continue, but it all just nudges her further towards becoming the Black Canary – scream and all.
In Summary:
Arrow is going through a transformational state, more so than usual, as we get a lot of things happening because of Oliver’s death. Though we know things will get worked through there with some of the teases we’re given, it’ll be interesting to see the end result of it and what unknowns there are there. Team Arrow is going through the bulk of the visible changes here though and watching the way they react is good since it’s just a lot of uncertainty on their part combined with Felicity being utterly crushed by all of it, which certainly makes sense considering her overall investment in things. With the show going through so many changes like this, I’m looking forward to seeing how it all coalesces over the next few episodes and really curious to see what kind of show it wants to be as it gets closer to the end of the season, which is thankfully a good bit away. The seemingly throwaway story with Brick also has some potential to get more of a new generation of heroes to step up as well, which if they’re picking up any clues from Flash on how to introduce things should be good.
Grade: B+
