Arrow: Salvation

I feel that we’re heading toward end-game now, with all the disparate pieces clicking into place, and everything setting up for the season finale. As such, this episode was somewhat mediocre, but solid in its mediocrity, if that makes sense. Its purpose was to push forward the Moira subplot another few inches, introduce the existence of the subway system (and its importance to the Undertaking) and introduce Roy to the vigilante.

I appreciate that this show often explores and challenges the definition of vigilantism. Let’s face it, Oliver has absolutely no legal or ethical right to go out every night to do what he does. He does it because he’s got the resources and the will – that’s it. On any other superhero show this would be glossed over; such people are given a right to fight crime based on their preternatural powers or their destiny or their tragic backstory.

But Arrow consistently raises the question: what gives Oliver the right to do this? And more often than not, it doesn’t try to deliver a simple answer. It was only last week that the reappearance of Helena had Oliver (and show) struggling to justify and differentiate between his brand of vigilantism and hers – eventually deciding that he didn’t hurt innocent people on his road to justice, and here a similar scenario is kicked into gear.

As with the Black Archer, Joseph Falk is something of a copycat criminal, though he adheres even more closely to The Hood’s modus operandi. Come to think of it, you could say that he’s a combination of Malcolm Merlyn and Oliver Queen, combining the former’s backstory with the latter’s self-imposed jurisdiction. Like Malcolm, his wife was killed in the Glades, and like Oliver, he’s visiting the houses of those he deems responsible (individuals who are also on Oliver’s list) and dispensing his own brand of justice.

Not as interesting as he looks.

(This is where it gets a little over-the-top, as not only is Joseph an expert hacker who can hide his internet trail and broadcast his executions to everyone’s cell-phones – much like the Truth Terrorist in The Tunnel – but has access to abandoned subway cars that no one seems to notice are up and running again).

But as he asks Oliver during their confrontation: “you’ve killed people for this city and so have I. What’s the difference between you and me?”

I suppose the first difference is that Joseph is clearly unstable – Oliver responds to Felicity’s raised eyebrow by stating that other vigilantes “don’t show my restraint.” Secondly, Oliver always gives his targets a second chance to right their wrongs before taking extreme action (in fact, he points this out to Joseph when they come face to face). And thirdly, Joseph is holding Roy Harper hostage – a character that we know and like and don’t want to see die. You can see the authorial fiat at work here, for despite Felicity’s emotional response to the deaths of Joseph’s first two victims, it’s not until Roy’s life is on the line that the audience can really feel invested in what Joseph is attempting to do.

No! Not the white male guest star!

Because of course, Roy is also walking a fine line between good and bad; having already brought a gun to rob a store (of a jerk, he insists) despite Thea offering him a job at Oliver’s nightclub. Having removed the bullets in order to pacify her outrage, it’s a wonderful moment of irony when he attempts to defend himself from Joseph’s kidnapping by trying to fire the unloaded gun.

Ultimately poor Joseph was more of a viewpoint than an actual character, but he did convey some fairly nuanced points: that he grew up in the Glades without becoming a criminal like Roy, that Oliver’s vigilantism is a morally ambiguous role at best, and that the taking of a life is a Very Serious Issue.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Our resident Lady Macbeth is running out of justification for her crimes, deciding to pin the attempted assassination on Frank Chen, and watching him get shot down in front of her. As ever, her excuse is all to do with protecting her children, though the scene in which she has a very literal “out, out damned spot!” moment in the car reminds me of an Agatha Christie quote (I believe it was from a Miss Marple mystery), which points out that some women will consider any crime justified so long as it’s done on behalf of her children. As with Moira, it doesn’t take into respect other people’s children (Frank Chen had a daughter), or even the thoughts and feelings of her own.

But it was a fantastic little moment when she slipped in her high heels after Malcolm tells her he’s closing in on his target.

The Quentin/Dinah/Laurel mini-arc is brought to its conclusion, with Laurel identifying the mystery girl in the photo as a random tourist who just happened to look like Sara. It all felt a little bit superfluous, though I appreciate that Laurel gets story-arcs of her own that exist outside Oliver’s orbit, and for the first time I really got a sense of just how torn apart the Lance family is after Sara’s death.

This really deserves a lot more attention in the wider context of the show, especially in regards to Oliver being the one responsible for having Sara on the boat in the first place. Laurel should be absolutely freaking furious at him for this, and (knowing what I do about fandom’s opinion of Laurel) it’s a pity that the writers didn’t let her keep this – entirely justified – opinion of him. Laurel should have been characterized as the hardworking and heartbroken defence lawyer that Oliver desperately wants to apologise to, in deeds if not words. His mission should not just be one of retribution for his father, but atonement for what he did to the Lance family – instead they have him reaching out to Laurel for a coffee when she has every right to tell him to go you-know-what himself.

Nice action sequence with Oliver racing across town with Felicity’s instructions in his ear; it really gave us a sense of what Stephen Amell is capable of in regards to his physicality.
That was sound amazingly stirring (though rather inappropriate) music when Oliver was confronting Joseph in the subway.

Calling it now - she's gonna die.

Meanwhile, over in the flashbacks, it’s just more manoeuvring pieces around the board: Oliver/Slade head for a rendezvous with Fyres/Yao Fei, only to lose the circuit board and gain Shado. She knows what Fyres is planning with the missile launcher, so I’m guessing their next move will be to stop whatever it is.

But like I said above, authorial fiat was a little too overt in this episode: Joseph’s kidnapping of Roy was a random attack which served the narrative purpose of drawing him and Thea into the vigilante’s orbit, whilst his implausible use of the subways was apparently to serve the plot-point of Oliver realizing that the strange pattern in the notebook matches up with the map of the subway tunnels.

And what the heck were the police force doing when all these kidnappings were taking place??