1.) Vanch is almost startlingly ridiculous
Cyrus Vanch, the first villain to have a name that sounded less evil and more like a salad dressing, is a criminal recently released from jail on a technicality who walks into his friend’s house, stabs him, and declares that he’s going to take over all of the crime in Starling City. All of it! It’s all very disconcerting how this “huge and very serious threat” comes out of nowhere with no prior warning. At least last week’s Count had a bit of foreshadowing in the prior episode. Either way, he basically does the same thing as the Count by being really charismatic while killing people; though there’s one great moment where he outwits The Hood by just hiring more guards than Ollie has arrows for.
2.) The Island
Wow, was this week’s Island segment great. Past Ollie is going to the area marked on his map by Arrow Classic, who I finally realized has the name Yao Fei. He arrives at a crashed airplane from the Lost set dressing department where he’s immedietly attacked by a crazed Australian. The Australian punches Ollie up some more before agreeing with him that they have to go save Yao Fei, but first he’ll train him. They exchange names and Australian’s name turns out to be Slade Wilson, not Captain Boomerang as I had desperately hoped. Ollie has never seen Teen Titans so he takes the revelation of Slade’s name in a chill manner before looking at Slade’s dresser and seeing the Deathstroke mask. Queen understandably freaks the freak out before Slade explains that there’s two Deathstrokes and the one who cut Ollie and gave him a bajillion scars that last five years later was a different one. Slade doesn’t give us a name for the second Deathstroke but… Wade?
3.) Quentin Lance was the best part of this episode.
Quentin, Laurel’s dad and the seemingly only detective in Starling City, finally had a bigger role this week after a few episodes in the background. Here, he bugged his daughter’s phone so that whenever The Hood (who they’ve finally given up on calling anything similar to Green Arrow) called he could track them down. After being told how stone cold he is for doing that by around half the cast of the show, he shows a warmer side by doing a Liam Neeson and screaming for a half hour about how he’s going to save his daughter from Vanch who kidnapped her. The highlight of the entire episode is when, after calling on The Hood to help him get back Laurel, he bursts through the door and threatens to kill Vanch. Ollie has a neat line in “I’m the vigilante; you’re the cop” to which Quentin replies “YEAH! BUT I DON’T HAVE TO READ HIM HIS RIGHTS” which is entirely untrue but still great.
4.) Interesting family drama!
Most of Arrow’s domestic drama usually comes from Thea doing drugs off an iPhone app or whatever it is teens do these days and Ollie reconnecting with his family, but this week focused more on Ollie discovering that his mom was involved with the yacht incident. Ollie denying that his mom could be involved was a little sad considering that we’ve been watching her get reluctantly involved for basically the whole season, but the end scene where Ollie, as The Hood, shows up and says Moira has failed this city and then it cuts to the title card was really chilling stufff.
5.) The next episode looks insane.
Okay this technically isn’t a thought about this week’s episode, but the teaser for the next episode looks amazing. Moira shooting The Hood before he can kill her? A little anticlimactic sure, but I’m always up for episodes of TV shows that take place while the character is dying. Especially considering that Ollie in a hallucinatory state of dying means the next episode will probably be at least half Island Flashback. For the first time, I really want to see the next episode of Arrow.
Review Score: 7.8/10 – A sucky villain, but a compelling everything else.
