This is it! The final episode of the season! Will Ollie stop John Barrowman’s plan? Probably. Massive spoilers ahead!
1.) Goodnight, sweet Queen.
And so with this episode, the inaugural season of Arrow is now over. Ollie escapes from Merlyn’s basement thanks to Diggle showing up and proving there was a point to the tracer-on-the-boot recurring joke. Unfortunately, John Barrowman’s evil plans to solve crime by destroying poor people accelerated as he placed a bomb in The Glades, Starling City’s slums. All of this was caused by John Barrowman’s wife being killed by street thugs years ago and as ridiculous as it sounds for Merlyn to rationalize the destruction of an entire neighborhood, Barrowman manages to pull it off. Team Arrow ends up hunting down the bomb, but this comes at a cost.
A sacrifice you might say.
Because they do. Everyone say “sacrifice” about a dozen times throughout the episode; almost as if it were the title.
2.) S.O.B.s
There’s this one episode of Arrested Development where everyone, including the narrator, overtly hints that someone will die at the episode’s resolution. “Sacrifice” has this same exact feeling, the absence of subtlety included. Everyone has a chance of dying; Quentin gets suspended and doesn’t know how to defuse the bomb he’s next to, Roy is fighting off looters, Ollie stabs himself through the chest to kill Malcom Merlyn (which kills Merlyn but just gives Ollie a flesh wound.) Yet, the one person who does die ends up being pretty… huh.
3.) Merlyn gets cancelled.
Tommy Merlyn bites the dust. A few episodes this would probably not register, but lately Merlyns’ gone through a lot. This episode alone had some great scenes with Tommy confronting Ollie over his getting back together with Laurel (who I still can’t find out why people are fighting over.) Merlyn also ended up doing a lot of good this episode by saving Laurel from her crumbling office and being killed in the debris, which means he was the real hero all along or something. Anyway, Merlyn ended up going from the worst character on the show, to a pretty cool dude. Nice job, Tommy.
4.) The Island
The Island, meanwhile, went from being the most interesting part of the show to being pretty forgettable. Here, Ollie, Shado, and Slade stopped Evil Mecenary’s plans of firing missiles at planes; a plot motivated by reasons. After blowing up the missiles, Evil Mercenary holds Shado hostage and threatens to kill her. In response, Ollie picks up his bow and shoots an arrow right into Evil Mercenary’s neck and thus displaying Ollie as some kind of archer type; a bowman if you will. Why, he may just become-
The Arrow!
What? Oh he still doesn’t have a name and it’s the end of the season? He has three separate names that three separate characters call him? Fine.
5.) Final thoughts.
So now that the season is over, we have some time to reflect. Overall, Arrow is a pretty good show on its own, but also a fairly crappy comic adaptation; especially when it comes to the adaptations of any character besides Ollie and some of the guest villains. John Barrowman as Merlyn was lots of fun, but it also made no sense for the forty something business magnate to own an archery set and be the most deadly person on the show. Laurel “Dinah” Lance, on the otherhand, is probably the most boring version of Black Canary possible. She doesn’t even need to be in fishnets and have a sonic cry, but Black Canary does not just sit around while two guys fight over her. The show did definitely have its high points though and those highpoints (Firefly, Deadshot) where the writing didn’t feel afraid to embrace its nature as a comic book show. The rest of the time though? It was “The Most Mediocre of The CW”. Arrow has a lot of potential (a phrase I think I’ve said a dozen times since this column started) and next season might be more brave in those aspects. Until then, Arrow has been a somewhat fun ride brought down by some CW staples.
