Arrow: City of Blood

This ended up being something of a Breather Episode in the aftermath of Moira's murder, but with a low-scale twist halfway through. Oliver doesn’t appear for a significant portion of the episode's length, but in all the time we think he's out there getting ready to unleash hell on Slade, it's eventually revealed that he's slipped into a Heroic BSOD, with no plan that goes beyond giving himself up to Slade.  

He's shaken out of it by the arrival of the newly-informed Laurel in the Arrow Cave to give him the information he needs to realize Slade's plan is much larger than a personal vendetta, but when the episode opens on Moira's funeral her son is nowhere to be seen.

It was nice seeing Walter again, but Oliver really couldn't make the effort to be there for his sister's sake? It led to the one thing that bothered me most in this episode: the way it ignored how Thea could have easily gone to either Walter or Laurel for a place to stay – two people who care about her deeply and have never lied to her.

Instead she ends up with her psycho father (yes, I've watched the final two episodes, and the in-story justification is that "she had nowhere else to go" even though she clearly has a place with Laurel or Walter. The authorial fiat was way too heavy-handed with this decision).

On a better note, she gets the brilliant line: "there was a psychopath in our lives and my brother never warned him about us" – unfortunately it's wasted on Walter, who only offers her a half-baked platitude about how Oliver loves her in return. Um, no. Not good enough. She should be confronting Oliver with this very real and valid grievance, not being hushed into silence by a pretty speech about love. I've linked to this article before, but it's worth mentioning again how little writers care about the inconvenient anger of female characters when they learn their loved ones have been lying to them.

I mean geez, Oliver just drops everything to sit in an empty room while Slade is still running amuck, even though at least three more women could be at risk from him. Did he at least send Laurel a text to tip her off? How the hell does he believe that Slade's words: "only one more person needs to die" refer to him, when he's obviously planning to go after his Shado counterpart?

***

Diggle heads over to A.R.G.U.S and Amanda Waller in the hopes of getting a lead on Oliver's location. The sequence is mostly designed to remind us of the facility's existence, and to drop a few hints that Oliver and Amanda have a history together – how else would she know where he's hiding?

Oliver's would-be suicide-by-Slade is cut short by Diggle, Felicity and a handy tranquillizer dart, and he wakes up back at the Arrow Cave to find Laurel standing by.

I actually liked the way they handle Laurel's confrontation with him: there is a level of resentment seething just below the surface – especially when it's confirmed that Tommy knew who he was – but since there are more important things going on in the city, she puts it on the backburner and gives him the info-dump he needs to get his act together. 

Sebastian Blood is now Mayor Blood (talk about Names to Run Away From Really Fast), but Laurel has proof that he wrote a speech concerning Moira's death before it actually happened. It reawakens Oliver's sense of purpose, as well as readjusting his sense of scale and ego-centrism. Suddenly the playing field is a lot bigger than just he and Slade, and gives him someone less personal to target.

The shift in his motivation and the reasons for it worked surprisingly well.

***

This was an interesting episode for Laurel, though I'm sure that fandom's hate-on meant that her two most important scenes were widely misinterpreted. Maintaining her suspicions about Sebastian Blood, she follows her instincts to the truth and presents Oliver with evidence that a city-wide conspiracy is going on.

(We can give her credit for this, right? Often the victories of unpopular characters are never acknowledged).

I imagine that fandom took Oliver's line: "this started with the three of us, it's time we got back to that" as a deliberate snub at Laurel – but then the episode's final act completely undermines this sentiment. Laurel follows Oliver and ends up saving his life from one of Slade's men. It hindsight, the line feels like foreshadowing of the fact that the team will inevitably grow beyond Oliver, Diggle and Felicity to include Black Canary, Arsenal and Speedy.

The team dynamic is growing and changing with each episode that passes, and Oliver's line only served to emphasise that.

***

The flashbacks deal with Oliver and Company trying to utilize the Japanese submarine as a weapon against Slade. It's revealed that Peter has radiation poisoning as a result of Professor Ivo's experiments, and knowing that he's about to die anyway he opts to crawl into the torpedo and manually steer it to the freighter.

It's a somewhat odd finish to a character that (in hindsight) didn't seem to have much of a purpose in the first place, save for a few encouraging platitudes that Oliver can echo in the current-day.

Other noteworthy bits are Anatolie's line to Oliver and Sara: "you two are made for each other, you like your explosions." It only interested me because they've already broken up in the present-day, and yet in the flashbacks they're being treated as the show's Official Couple. It's strange is all I'm saying. 

And of course, it ends with Sara getting kidnapped. Sigh.

***

Finally, we end with the beginning of an action sequence that's sure to be ramped up in the next episode: Slade's minions spread out across the city and start attacking civilians at the designated time, while Oliver's team plan to destroy the building over the heads of the remaining mirakuru soldiers, burying them in rubble.

There's a brief hat-tip to Oliver's no-killing policy when Felicity points out the consequences of this plan, but it's handwaved when he responds that Slade's soldiers are no longer people. There's an ethical debate here just waiting to be untangled, but it's obvious the writers aren't interested in it – not that I blame them this close to the season finale, but in light of what eventually happens to Slade, I can't help but feel they're just standard Mooks whose humanity is deliberately hidden behind masks in order to make their violent deaths more palatable.

After all, Isabel is the only mirakuru soldier who has a mask revealing at least part of her face; designating her as a significant character.

Miscellaneous Observations:

Poor Thea gets evicted from Verdant – though I never did figure out how she never discovered the secret base under the floor. Didn't she ever wonder where the door led?  

Great little sequence with Diggle and Felicity snagging Sebastian's bodyguard and getting information out of him non-violently.

Even though I feel she's been short-changed, there is at least an effort made to examine Thea's grief, specifically in her leaving Queen mansion by herself, and in the culture-shock at the train station when she realizes that coach passengers have to wait their turn.

A major narrative problem occurred to me in this episode: I actually have no idea what Slade wants when he sends his men out to cause carnage in Starling City. Seriously, what does he gain from this? Is it just all part of his vendetta against Oliver, or is there some other goal he's trying to achieve? I mean, part of Sebastian's speech to the soldiers involved the words: "take back this city." Take it back from what?