Arrow Season 4 Episode #02 – The Candidate Review

There’s a new mayor in town and this one’s assassin-proof

What They Say:
After defeating Ra’s Al-Ghul, Oliver’s decided to put the vigilante life behind him and retires out in the suburbs with Felicity. However when a new threat run by Damien Darke appears, Oliver must once again take up the hood. This time though he’s decided to take on the title of “Green Arrow” and vows to be the symbol of hope the old Arrow wasn’t, but will Oliver be able to escape the darkness of his past so easily?

The Review:
Content(warning as portions of this review may contain spoilers):

So Arrow’s fourth season came out of the gate running with last week’s premiere and this episode more or less continues that trend. This one also has to juggle a few more elements but manages to handle them all effectively while also handling the introduction of a new villain who I’m personally pretty excited to see. Once again, though, the concept of this season’s supposed lighter tone is something that still seems rather questionable.

The core of this week’s episode centers around an old friend of the Queen family named Jessica who’s decided to run for Mayor. Of course, this proves to be rather problematic as thanks to the Ghosts and other recent threats, pretty much every city leader’s been assassinated. As such, it doesn’t take too long for her to become a target but Darke’s assassin is an outsider from his own H.I.V.E. organization named Mason who Darke feels is a bit too reckless. Meanwhile Thea’s violent tendencies are starting to get worse, and Oliver has to try and find a way to keep them in check while dealing with some issues of his own regarding his current attempts at an image change. While it’s certainly enough for him to say he wants to do things differently, Lance isn’t so convinced he can do that so long as he decides to operate in the dark.

Things eventually reach their breaking point here when Jessica’s daughter gets kidnaped and Oliver and Thea’s issues reach their respective destinations. Oliver is eventually able to tie Thea’s changes down to her resurrection via the Lazarus Pit which, of course, isn’t a revelation she takes very well and it’s nice to see that paying off so soon. Inevitably though, in spite of her trying to get a handle on her impulses, things end pretty tragically for her when she ends up seemingly burning Mason to death in an attempt to rescue Jessica. While  I can’t say I was expecting things to go quite that badly for her, I’m glad it seems like those issues are going to be something she’ll have to gradually deal with and especially so given that things end with her going on a trip with Laurel to the source of those problems back at Nanba Parbat. Oliver, on the other hand, goes through another more positive transition when he decides to take on the task of running for Mayor after Jessica decides to drop out from the stress of the kidnapping incident. It was certainly a predictable outcome given the route of the episode and where Oliver ends up in the comics but it’s nice to see a continued commitment towards making Oliver a brighter symbol as opposed to the semi-Batman he’s been for the last 3 seasons and I’m looking forward to seeing how the rest of this storyline plays out.

We also have a few side things going on this week with the biggest being Felicity returning as the new CEO of Palmer Tech and having to deal with the company’s downsizing issues alongside a new character named Holt. It’s a pretty tough issue for her to deal with but interestingly enough Oliver is actually the one who convinces her to find a way to change things around and it’s nice to see him getting positive advice rather than receiving as has almost always been the case with and it does a better job of selling the Olicity pairing than anything from last season. While she does manage to talk her way into stopping the company from firing people by  instead relocating them to a new “project” that doesn’t yet exist, I’m not sure how interested I am in seeing where it goes. Although it does at least seem like Holt will fill the comic relief gulf that currently needs to filled while thankfully not complicating things by being yet another love interest character since he’s already explicitly stated to be married.  There’s also a little bit more on the Diggle fallout plot which doesn’t get a whole lot of focus this time but he does at least decide to let Laurel know the truth about H.I.V.E. although she tells him from her own (endless) experiences that withholding it from Oliver will only end badly.

Unfortunately the slowest moving thing this week would probably be the flashbacks. We see that Oliver manages to infiltrate the island successfully and manages to find a mysterious camp of soldiers using people for something unknown. The leader of these soldiers doesn’t know of Oliver’s reputation outside of who his family is but figures he’ll at least be useful since he’s seemingly survived being in Lian Yu for three years and decides to let him join in on their operation. It’s all pretty slow moving and unlike last week’s doesn’t really tie into the main plot for this week’s episode on a thematic front either outside of once again hinting that we’ll slowly see more of Oliver’s dark side emerge here. At least he gets to finally ditch his “survivor” look for his current one, though.

What’s more interesting, though, is some of the setup we get for future events though  I’m a little mixed on them.  On the one hand, we find out that Mason isn’t quite so dead and has now instead been reborn as the villain Anarky. Truth be told, I’m only really familiar with him from the recent Beware the Batman cartoon, but if his characterization here is anything like that incarnation, I’m looking forward to his reappearance. On the other end, though, we find out at the end of the episode that Laurel has an ulterior motive to bringing Thea to Nanba Parbat: so she can have Sarah resurrected by the Lazarus Pit. Honestly, I’d be lying if I said that didn’t bug me a little. While I certainly preferred Sarah over Laurel as Black Canary and wasn’t big on how she was stuffed into the fridge last season, the possibility of her being brought back feels somewhat cheap now that we’ve gotten somewhat used to Laurel having taken over that mantle and her bits of growth. I’m hoping that she’ll eventually decide it’s not worth it after seeing the effects it’s had on Thea, but I guess we’ll have to see how that goes. In spite of Oliver’s positive growth, things are still looking pretty dark on other fronts this season but at least it’s the interesting kind of dark as compared to where we were in the second half of the last season. For now, that’s good enough to keep me excited.

In Summary: This season’s second episode manages to keep up the momentum of the first as we dealt with the new mayor storyline. While Oliver deciding to take on that role in the end was inevitable, it was handled well enough that I’m genuinely interested in seeing more on that front as well seeing how Thea’s journey to battle her literal inner demons fares for her. On the downside the flashbacks are a bit slow this time and I’m not too sure I like the idea of a potential Sarah resurrection but neither of these are big enough red flags to detract from the overall sense of improvement I’m feeling from where we were last season.

Grade: B+

Jarius Taylor

Also known as Alphanega on the forums, Jairus Taylor has a been a member of Fandom Post since 2011 and an anime fan for 12 years. He is driven by a passion for all things animation be it western, japanese and even CG. He also occasionally writes on his blog animationinfinity.com

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