Arrow: Crucible

It's time to admit to myself that I'm a contrarian, which sounds all rebellious and everything, but is probably just another way of letting myself be influenced by outside opinions.

You see, before watching a single episode of Arrow I was informed by the fandom that I had to hate Laurel and adore Felicity, something which only made me feel protective of the former and stubbornly meh about the latter.

So with the reappearance of Sara Lance, I feel that now I'm free to enjoy a female character without any fandom baggage and preconceptions weighing me down. And I really, really enjoy her.

It probably came to absolutely no one's surprise that the second Lance daughter was still alive, though she's rather changed since we saw her last (or technically first). The character was played by Jacqueline MacInnes Wood in the pilot episode, but by pulling a Flashback With The Other Darrin, Caity Lotz has taken over the role and reshot the introductory scene on board the Queen's Gambit.

Usually I'm a stickler for continuity, but I do handwave its disruption when a change is clearly made for the better. And apart from having the awesome-sounding name of Caity Lotz, this actress is tailor made for the role of proto-Black Canary. She's a much better actress, it's obvious she has the physicality to pull off most of her own stunts, and that voice! Dang, I could listen to that voice all day long.

Clearly she's got a doozy of a backstory that'll be unpacked over the course of the season, but what little tidbits we get are already compelling (the off-handed way she namedrops Slade and Shado; her words to Sin that: "no woman should ever suffer at the hands of a man"). The shift between the carefree floozy on board the Queen's Gambit and the hardened warrior with the sad eyes that Oliver captures in Starling City is striking – perhaps even more so than the change between feckless pre-island Oliver and post-island vigilante.

What can I say, I think Stephen Amell is certainly less wooden than he was at the start of the show, but Lotz pulls off so much more in much less time.

It's certainly a retcon that Oliver is now telling Diggle and Felicity that he knew all along that Sara had survived the sinking of the Queen's Gambit, which leads to a promise the show makes to its audience that may prove difficult to keep. According to Oliver, he didn't tell the Lances that Sara hadn't drowned because what really happened was so much worse. Given it's fairly unforgivable that he didn't tell the whole truth to the Lances before this point, the story he withheld is going to have to be really, really horrific if we're to believe he was justified in his decision.

I honestly have no idea what happened to Sara (at the time of this review, I've only watched one episode in advance) so time will tell whether the retcon works, or whether it's just a clumsy way to shoehorn her into the backstory. Either way, the flashbacks are already getting a little convoluted. By the time Oliver ends up on the freighter (and gets shot, and has to dig the bullet out himself – what??) Sara has already been there for a while. In order to get her story, we're going to need a new set of flashbacks that run concurrently to all the crap that went down with Oliver on the island in season one.

And at some point, he's going to have to see her "die" (again) before she goes through her second ordeal with the League of Assassins. Is that right? It's all very LOSTian, but hey – I want to know what happens, so I guess it's working.

***

This was a "bitsy" episode, with about a dozen things going on and every character vying for a mini-subplot of their own, but I like the steady branching out of this "network" that exists between all the various storylines. Sebastian and Oliver come to a truce of sorts (after the latter saves the former's life), only for the final scene to reveal that a guy whose last name is "Blood" is surprisingly not as upstanding as you might expect. Roy and Sin cross paths again, but because Thea is present it means she's drawn in too, as is Sara who visits Sin at the hospital after she gets shot. It makes it feel as though the net is closing; that everyone and everything is connected.

And all of these interactions pivot around the same "cash for guns" events that is crashed by – okay, words can't describe the unfortunate implications of a black gangster toting machine-guns and firing indiscriminately into crowds. Though I realize this episode aired well before the demonstrations in Ferguson, I'd prefer not to discuss it at all. Moving on.

What this episode was really about was the Lance family drama and how Oliver is smack-dab in the middle of it.

Laurel is starting to drink and take pills – it's a heart-breaking sight, but a realistic one given all the trauma she's been through, and her father is the only one noticing the red flags. I'm not sure why exactly, but my headcanon is that Sara was always Quentin's favourite daughter (in the secret, he-would-totally-deny-it, but you can just tell sort of way that all parents have) but that he sees so much of himself in Laurel.

It leads to a suspenseful scene in which Quentin asks Oliver for help in reaching out to Laurel, unaware that Sara is right on the other side of the door. Ouch. Sara wants to remain a secret for now, and the show ends with an interesting montage: of Quentin at an Alcohols Anonymous meeting, Laurel popping pills in the darkness of her apartment, and Sara taking Oliver's hand – presumably as the first step toward telling her family the truth. And for this, I'm quite impressed with Oliver. Having established that the Lances would never forgive him for holding back on the truth, his determination in reuniting the family means that he really has something to lose by doing so.

And when you've already cheated on one sister and led a beloved daughter to her death, that's really saying something.

Miscellaneous Observations:

I loved the opening sequence in which Felicity points out that the mysterious blonde vigilante may not be targeting Oliver at all – but Laurel. It's an interesting commentary on the centricity of white male heroes, and that Oliver simply assumed he was the object of interest.

Small but welcome appearances from Lyla and Isabelle; though neither one are particularly central to the action, I can feel that they have lives outside of their interactions with Diggle/Oliver. As such, their roles are paradoxically important by not being that important. Put it this way: they could have easily been male characters, but the fact they're women isn't treated as a big deal in the way the narrative uses them.

Oliver digging the bullet out of his own chest was absurd, but hey – at least it accounts for one more of the scars on his chest.

For some reason these people on board the freighter are looking for graves. Hmmm.

There are a few glimpses here and there of what Sara went through. Obviously she met up with Slade and Shado at some point, but telling Sin: "no woman should ever suffer at the hands of a man" feels uncomfortably like there's a rape in her backstory somewhere. Look, I won't make a big deal of it if it's confirmed, but I really hope it stays implied and not explicit. This whole "rape makes a woman stronger" narrative has to die.

Is it ever a good idea to take a staff and a bow to a gun-fight? Apparently it is when you're Oliver and Sara, and I enjoyed the mid-fight weapon switch.