To borrow a quote from Gandalf: "the board is set, the pieces are moving..." which is an appropriate summation for this episode, and the last episode, and quite possibly the next episode as well (I haven't seen it yet).
Though I can get a bit snarky in these reviews, I do enjoy Arrow (I wouldn't be writing about it if I didn't) and I'm in it for the long haul. That said, there's been some tripping up on the way to this season's finish line, and this episode in particular felt very "bitsy" in terms of what it was trying to do.
Which was to move things into position for the finale, deal with the fallout of the last episode's revelations, introduce two new characters for the spin-off, present the possibility of a mirakuru cure in the flashbacks, and bring back Roy. There's no thematic or narrative unity in any of those tasks, and as a result this episode felt like a checklist of things that had to be ticked off in order to proceed to the next one.
So, let's go through them all one by one.
Having been informed by Slade that Oliver Queen is the Arrow, Laurel investigates this claim carefully instead of rushing into any confrontations she'd later regret. It's possibly not a course of action she would have taken at the start of this season, but I appreciate they gave her the choice of outing the vigilante in order to get her father out of prison, only to decide against it after hearing what he had to say about it.
If there's a problem with this subplot, it's simply that she's finally realized something that we've known since the start of the show, and which is blatantly obvious anyway. I'd like to give the writers credit for letting Laurel figure out by herself that Sara is the Black Canary, but again – connecting these dots is something a pre-schooler should have been capable of (even given the comic book logic that paper-thin disguises are impenetrable).
And despite Laurel reaching out to give Sara and Oliver unexplained gestures of affection, I'm still not entirely sure how she feels about the two of them going out every night to disperse vigilante justice. And the way in which she gets her father out of prison is just ludicrous – especially on the heels of her blackmailing the very same person to get her job back. Once again her opponent just shrugs her shoulders and gives her what she wants. Just as I was thinking "that's too easy", Kate Spenser comes right out and says: "it won't always be this easy."
That was Laurel's part to play in the episode, and though it's hardly anything contentious, it's clear she needs to be given some better material. As it is I can see why people get frustrated with this character, and that's coming from someone who likes and defends her.
***
Over on the island flashbacks we learn that there is in fact a cure for the mirakuru. In his death throes, Professor Ivo admits that over the course of his research he managed to create an antidote (something neither he nor Oliver in the present day has seen fit to mention before) and is willing to share its location in exchange for a clean death.
It falls to Sara to take the killing shot, but Oliver steps in to do it for her. I call foul. Sara knew Professor Ivo best and she's the one who made the promise to end his life – so why does Oliver take over? Allowing Sara to keep her hands clean is framed as the "chivalrous" thing to do, as well as a necessary stepping-stone on Ollie's way to becoming the vigilante we saw in the first season... but have these writers already forgotten that Sara rigged an explosive device to an unconscious man in the last episode?
They even referenced her cold streak earlier by having her knock out the security guard at Robert Queen Applied Sciences and respond to Ollie's protests with: "he works for your enemy." Having her mercy kill Professor Ivo felt like the right fit for her character, not Ollie's. At least in my opinion.
And because the writers never really got a fix on Ivo's character, his death didn't amount to much. I get the feeling they were trying for some degree of pathos in his final scenes, but screw it – this guy executed a young woman in cold blood for no good reason. You don't get any sympathy after that.
***
Poor Thea is struggling with her very own downward spiral, having recalibrated her life and relationships in light of the revelation that Malcolm Merlyn was her real father: that Oliver now is her half-brother, that Tommy was her other half-brother, that Robert (probably) only loved her because he thought she was his biological daughter, and that she's "the child of two mass murderers."
Throw in her recent breakup with Roy, and she's remarkably perceptive about the fact she's headed toward a mental breakdown. I'm not sure where she's going when she leaves the Queen Mansion with her luggage at the end of the episode, but I hope it's to Laurel's apartment. Regardless of how often that place gets targeted by criminals, it's home to the one person who could hope to understand what Thea's going through right now.
***
Then there are the extended cameos of Caitlin and Cisco, both taking inventory at a warehouse belonging to Star Labs. Though I've watched the first handful of episodes of The Flash, this is (I'm confident in assuming) the first canon appearance of these two characters, doing their best to make raw exposition sound like normal human conversation. They fail rather badly, so let's just summarize the gist of it: a little update on Barry's condition, the name-dropping of Iris and Doctor Wells, and an allusion to Caitlin's fiancé's death.
Honestly though, it's mainly designed to give audiences the chance to see them in action before the spin-off starts, though it's done nowhere near as elegantly as Barry Allen's introduction (even if he did have more screen-time to get established). It's achieved by having Slade turn up to steal something-or-other, killing a security guard and threatening the two of them for no real reason.
Hilariously, at the first hint of danger Caitlin immediately takes off without Cisco, though she redeems herself a few seconds later by digging out a weapon by Arthur Light (that name rings a bell...) and presenting herself as bait so Cisco can use it on Slade.
But Slade ends up getting exactly what he came for, and it only remains for Felicity to make some awkward conversation that leads to the admittedly funny line: "Barry's in a coma and he's already moved on." Snort.
***
So let's move on to the main plot, squeezed in amongst all this other drama. Team Arrow decides to go on the offensive by targeting Robert Queen Applied Sciences in the attempt to stop Slade from manufacturing more mirakuru. For some reason they remove their balaclavas the moment they step into the building, but at least make sure the place is empty before blowing it up.
(Though it still feels like a dodgy plan to plant the timers before making the evacuation. And those unconscious security guards were laid out on ground that was pretty damn close to the subsequent explosion).
Isabel takes to the media to denounce it as a terrorist attack, even as the remaining Queen family scrambles to get control of some of the assets she's seized. It's around this point that Oliver finds out that Isabel not only slept with his father (his reaction is pretty funny) but that she considered Queen Senior to be her soulmate, conveniently supplying Ollie with a sob-story about how Robert abandoned her on the brink of their elopement in order to be with Thea after she broke her arm – oh, and he knew the whole time that she wasn't his biological daughter.
Wow, what are the odds that Isabel would think to divulge all this personal information just when Oliver needed to take a father-related personal anecdote back to Thea? The timing is almost as good as all those phone-calls interrupting his attempts at a heart-to-heart chat with her.
Meanwhile, Slade has already broken into the Team Arrow base to snatch a skeleton key so he can steal a bio-transfuser to spread more mirakuru throughout his growing army (for some reason Ollie and his cohorts run DOWN the stairs instead of back up into the club, but thankfully Slade suddenly acquires Stormtrooper marksmanship and misses all of them), and once Oliver tracks him down he discovers – in a surprise twist – that it's Roy's blood which is being used to level-up the escapees from Iron Heights prison.
One fight scene later, and Oliver gets out of there with an unconscious Roy in tow.
***
It's not that this wasn't an important episode – it was. Slade now has his super-powered army, Isabel among them (having been shot by Diggle and resurrected with the mirakuru). Thea has moved out of the mansion. Laurel has confirmed to herself that Oliver and Sara are vigilantes. Quentin is out of prison, and Roy is back in Starling City. Heck, even seeing Caitlin and Cisco for the first time could be classified as "important."
But it was a messy episode, one that wove together a number of subplots that (as yet) don’t have much to do with each other, and which relied on a lot of telling – Ivo telling Oliver that there was a cure to mirakuru, Isabel telling Oliver about her relationship with Robert, Caitlin telling Felicity about Barry, Slade telling Oliver how Roy had been kidnapped. Surely some of this could have been dramatized, if not simply to decrease the script's reliance on so many contrived coincidences.
All the bits and pieces don't quite make a cohesive whole – but hey, we're three episodes away from the finish line. Whatever happens next, it's bound to be pay-off instead of set-up, and in the long run that's what counts.
Miscellaneous Observations:
For some reason it strikes me as hilarious that the mirakuru is bright green. But then, what other colour could it possibly be?
This stunt was awesome. That's all I have to say for this week!
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