Can the Glades handle another siege?
What They Say:
Uprising – Still without Oliver, the team is forced to consider Malcolm’s offer; more details of Malcolm’s life are revealed.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Arrow has managed without Oliver fairly well for the couple of episodes we’ve gotten without him that I can easily imagine just keeping him in the flashback storyline for a bit longer, allowing the Starling City cast to grow and change without him for a bit. Though a lot of people have been ambivalent – at best – about Laurel taking on the Black Canary role, she’s definitely managed it a lot better than most expected and seems to be coming alive with it in a way that alters the group dynamic. Which is good, as it got shaken up for a couple of episodes with Felicity leaving and everyone unsure of how to proceed. Using that as a launching point for Laurel has been fun, especially since it lets Roy take a bit more of a leading role with her, but also because it finally feels like Laurel is finding her real purpose and path rather than moving from point to point without anything feeling significant or important.
The cold open here is one that doesn’t go big in a quick way, which is nice, as we see some of what Oliver and Tatsu talked about as he’s getting ready to leave for Starling City. Oliver is trying to get her to go back with him, to try and bring her back into the world, but she’s made it clear that she’s left the world like Maseo has and wants no part of it anymore. Not that you can blame her as the world isn’t exactly a great place to be, especially if you’re in the Glades. With it being a week since the police pulled out, the place has fallen quick to Brick with his guys running the place hard, but they’re getting some good push back. Roy and Laurel are making some good moves here, but they’re up against an overwhelming force when you get down to it. There’s some good nods here within it, as Roy gets mistaken for the “red streak” guy and Roy compliments Laurel on Ted’s training as it seems to be paying off well. And then Sin shows up and gets a little confused in seeing what she thinks is Sarah.
Malcolm’s story is what’s going to dominate this episode and for good reason as he’s pretty much just waiting for the League to show up and try to kill him. He’s still doing what he can to make sure he has a little help with the training he’s been giving Thea, but she’s still pretty adamant that she’s not going to go down that route. Of course, she sort of already did in killing Sarah, but she’ still not aware of that. A discussion of death is a perfect springboard for talking about Malcolm’s past, which brings us back a good twenty years or so as we get a look at him with a young Tommy, who was struggling with his own issues at the time. Having this be the moment when he learned of his wife’s death, which would put him on the path to where he is, is one that a lot of people wonder how they’d handle it in the long run. The League of Assassins isn’t the norm though.
That past is connecting the present in an intriguing way as Malcolm has now found out who killed his wife all those years ago. With Team Arrow having gotten some new case file intel on Brick from Quentin, who himself is struggling with the way the police can’t get into the Glades, Felicity discovers that the gun that Brick is using is connected to Rebecca’s death. And Malcolm being Malcolm, has hacked into her laptop for a regular feed, so he’s now discovering this fact as well as it turns out the man he did kill wasn’t the right person. So now vengeance is all that he’s focused on, even with the other threats looming, as he has to make this right. While Malcolm has been focused, this has him coming across with different kind calmness about him, one that has refocused him on a task that he can accomplish and to bring proper, true closure to what he knows he has to do.
While he prepares, Team Arrow has managed to find a way to figure out where Brick is as they aren’t exactly eager to send Malcolm after him since that’s pretty dark, even for them. Brick is rather amusing in what he’s done in making sure the Glades is cut off but also in taking control of the abandoned police precinct down there as his base of operations, which certainly sends a message in itself. The first attack goes pretty well on the place, though with as many men as there are there, it goes only so far as Laurel and Roy get some serious pushback. Having Malcolm save the day? No surprise, but a great sequence as the action ramps up a bit and he slides into things and takes control of the flow of events, which includes him using that confidence to try and get the team to work with him on his overall mission as their interests are aligned at the time.
The choice of working with Malcolm isn’t an easy one since it seems like it’s compromising their beliefs to do so, and to go against what Oliver would do. But as Roy says, Oliver isn’t there anymore and they can’t really do things the same way he would, they have to find a new way. Interestingly, Laurel and Roy find themselves accepting of this as they go through the whole process, especially since Roy gets a couple of insights into Malcolm based on what he learns from Thea about what happened in the night of the siege, but it all comes down to whether they’ll use him in the way he’s using them to achieve his goals. It’s a complex moment to really figure out for the group since it feels like they’re moving further from the path that Oliver set, and that huts each of them in different ways. While you might expect that they would give in and do this, I like that they opted to find their own path instead, which is finding help from within the Glades itself in order to set things right. With Laurel going to Ted and Roy going to Sin, that sets some fun stuff into motion.
While not on the level of the siege, having the two sides face off in the street works better than one might expect as you’ve got a chunk of the population there that’s intent on not being screwed over like they were before, and will want to fight back directly rather than just keep taking it. There’s a lot of unknowns running around in this, but I loved seeing Ted throw a mask over his face and go against Brick directly, even naming himself as Wildcat. Of course, Brick is just too damn hard to take down so Ted gets smacked hard, but I had hoped for a bit more out of him. There are some really solid moments to be had here though, as something new comes into the mix that inspires both Laurel and Roy, but we also have Malcolm cornering Brick to the place where he had killed the wrong person for Rebecca’s death all those years ago.
The two have a really great sequence here that you’d expect from both actors as the truth of the incident comes to light. But it also has the other big moment as Oliver arrives there as well and tries to keep Malcolm on the right path, to keep him from killing Brick, so that Thea doesn’t get hurt by him again. Everything moves rather quickly here, too quickly when you get down to it, but it works in standard Arrow fashion with Oliver now being here and making the right speech that gets picked up on TV about how those in the city did not fail themselves. It’s all goofy and dramatic in proper comic book form, but it provides the right kind of inspirational aspect that’s need to move Starling City forward more, and those in the Glades in particular.
In Summary:
One of the things I rather liked with this episode is seeing how Malcolm ended up getting drawn into the League as he ends up in Nanda Parbat and it’s just a quick leap to master assassin from there. The flashback material this time around is fairly simple, as we get Oliver on his journey, but Malcolm’s flashblack piece is the kind that really does change perceptions of the characters, though it doesn’t wipe the slate clean. With this bringing the Brick arc of the season to a close, it has a lot of good stuff as the team really came together well and it got the Glades to take back itself as well. There’s a lot of past and present material that blends together here as it focuses on Malcolm’s story, but it connects to so many other things. There’s also some good seeding of other events to come, such as Quentin learning that Canary isn’t Sarah and Felicity realizing Oliver isn’t the person she thought he was. The show is always balancing a lot of things but the back half of the season looks like it’s really going to change the dynamic from the first and hit the ground running even harder.
Grade: B+
