For the most part, Arrow is quite similar, in tone, to Batman stories. But tonight, there were very far more allusions to the Superman family of films/TV than anything else. Let’s go through those references, but know that spoilers follow.
1. Superman II Twist
OK, so that last scene in Nanda Parbat was, essentially, the scene at the end of Superman II, when Lex, Zod + co., Lois, and Superman are in the Fortress of Solitude. There is an uneasy alliance between the good guy (Ollie + Team Arrow) and a bad guy (Merlyn), who isn’t as sinister as the really bad guy (Ra’s). The bad guy eventually sells out the good guy to avoid dying at the hands of the really bad guys.
And, like that scene, it appears that the good guys are going to be taken out – minus Ollie, all the people we care about are trapped in a room, presumably to be poisoned. But what if, also like Superman II, the tables were actually turned, and Ollie was protecting his friends, but actually unleashing an antidote, saving them, while taking out many of Ra’s cohorts? I suppose we will see next week.
2. Smallville Special Effects
One of the really pleasant parts of the CW-verse has been how much they’ve done, special effects wise, that exceeds expectations. Well, tonight wasn’t that aspect of the show’s finest moment. The scene where Phony Stark™ took out that airplane looked far more CW 2002 than CW 2015, effects wise. That is a small concern, but having a show that looks classy and realistic has been a huge boon to the series. Let’s hope that this is a one-shot deal, in terms of trying to overdo the visuals of the show.
3. Superman IV Acting
I’m sure Colton Haynes is a nice guy – he’s a good looking, parkour-ing dude. However, emotive acting isn’t exactly his strong suit. He is downright Nuclear Man-esque in his woodenness in this episode; he delivers the line “Oh My God” will all the intensity of a dandelion on Quaaludes.
Roy Harper can be a really integral part of this show, but they need to start using him in more effective ways (if he’s used at all going forward), and making him more stoic, rather than just unresponsive, might be a good way to go. Maybe have him join a monastery and give him more of a Connor Hawke vibe?
But, much like Christopher Reeve being a rock solid Superman, Stephen Amell continues to do fine work, as we see him switch between personas, all the while the stress building up behind his eyes. Since the show has started, Amell has turned into a really fine actor, and I hope he soon gets recognized as such.
4. Superman Returns Logic
Superman Returns is all about people thinking they don’t need Superman, until they realize that they absolutely do. There was a lot of that logic in this episode, and the preceding three or four too – everyone tries to move on with their lives, until they realize that, much like the narrator in “Landslide,” they’ve built their lives around Ollie. Felicity has literally the best boyfriend imaginable, and she leaves him the dust. Diggle is allowed the opportunity to retire from risking his life to take care of his child, and he can’t do it.
In that film, Superman proves himself to be worthy of everyone’s adulation, and it ends with a realization that everything will be ok in the end, because Superman is back. What has been interesting about this season of Arrow is that I truly don’t believe that there is anything that could happen that would really put all the pieces back. Even if, somehow, he convinces his friends that everything is going to be ok, there’s no way that Lance/Starling City is going to just take him back. There will be real consequences of his actions, and it will take far more than throwing a Kryptonite city into orbit to stop that.
Continued below5. Man of Steel Tone
I understand that the show has be dark right now – these are dark times – but man, this episode was pretty brutal. Aside from the weirdness of Ray Palmer giving his company to Felicity, and the temporary joy that Roy and Thea were able to have, this episode was just dark, dark, dark.
We get to see Katana suit up, looking just as good as the Suicide Squad version, only to see her kill her husband and then sing him to death with the same song she sang to her young son when he was dying in her arms. We got to see Ollie systematically destroy everyone he cares about, all while knowing that he doesn’t really want to – you can almost see Ollie’s brain working overtime the entire episode, and also see him trying to hide that fact from Ra’s and co.
The scene where Ollie tosses the biological weapon into the cell was about as bleak as the show could get, as we see five of the show’s most important characters all slowly succumb to the effects of the gas.
And then, we see Ollie and Nyssa, seemingly, actually get married. Marriage isn’t quite the end game it was in The Princess Bride, and I don’t know what the annulment process is like in mystical hidden cities, but this is a pretty big deal. Ollie thought he could get into the League, tear it apart, and be ok. But the more the season goes on, it appears that, even if he wins, his life has been forever changed – worsened, really – by the League of Assassins.
And, like so much of this show, that all comes back to Malcolm Merlyn. The more I think about it, the more his character is, beyond Ollie, the most important on the show. All this season, he has been attempting to rehabilitate his image to Team Arrow, but the he also throws Ollie directly under the bus tonight. Is this part of the plan? Is this the final moment to convince Ra’s that he has really turned on them? Or is this Merlyn revealing himself to be even slimier than we thought?
I’m leaning towards the former, as Merlyn, just a few weeks ago, was willing to die so Thea could live – now, I know Thea isn’t here, but it seems like a big jump from ‘willing to sacrifice myself for what is right’ to ‘wiling to sell out the one person who has believed/trusted me in the past two years.’
What do you think is going on, folks? Tell me in the comments!
