This episode was all about reveals: Slade reveals himself to Ollie in the present, as in the flashback Ivo reveals Ollie’s secret to Slade. Let’s dig in and, as always, be warned that spoilers for this episode are discussed.
1. After the Season 2.5 Trailer, Everything Seems Slow Paced
I’m sure most of you have watched the trailer for the rest of this season. And, as could be expected, it is awesome. Like, unbelievably awesome. It makes the show look like it is nonstop forward progress, with one amazing sequence after another.
This week wasn’t that type of episode – this week was all about tying up loose ends to get to this season’s end game. And so, by no fault of its own, the episode seemed a little sluggish and slight. On Twitter, I’ve seen a lot of comparisons to last season’s “The Odyssey,” when Ollie is in the Arrow cave, dying, and flashing back to the island as a touchpoint for this episode. And while I can’t disagree with that, I didn’t love that episode as much as the rest of Arrow‘s viewers did. I was binge watching Season 1, and that seemed like a large waste of screen time on the flashback stuff.
2. The Flashbacks, as a Tool
I am of the opinion that the flashback stuff is best done in small doses, and that entire episodes like this tend to not have me as interested. Apparently, I am in the minority on that. I blame the writers for crafting such an engaging story in the present day – why would I want to flashback to see what lead Ollie to this point? This point is so much more interesting!
That said, once a season or so, this type of episode makes a lot of sense. It lets the plot catch up in both timelines. So much has been happening in the present, that it gives the flashback sequences a time to feel significant again.
The best part of the flashback sequence was the battle for the “Amazo.” It was chaotic and disorienting, and worked perfectly to show just how difficult the task at hand was.
3. Ivo’s Motivation
I like that on Arrow there are very few maniacs who are maniacal for no reason. This week, we get to see Ivo call home to his wife, some sort of amnesiac, who Ivo has been dedicating his life to curing. While I like humanizing Ivo, I feel like the writers need to get a new motivation to give the villains – especially as the Clock King was more or less the same motivation last week, but swap wife for sister.
4. Team Arrow Seems a Little Mismatched
It seems odd to me that a former soldier, someone trained by the League of Assassins, a computer genius, the world’s greatest archer and a genetically mutated strongman would be so inept in taking down Slade. Sure, I get why you aren’t going to spray Wilson-brains all over that “Curtis Swan painting” (I see what you did there, Arrow), and I know that when there are still a few months left this season, but I expect more from Arrow and the Arrowettes. Hopefully, they begin to gel as a team more, and can do simple tasks like pull triggers without the process breaking down.
5. The Ending’s Non-Shock Ending
The last minute of Arrow is usually reserved for the big reveal. This week’s? Slade is putting cameras in the Queen house!
I mean, sure, you’ll probably get some images of Thea in her PJs, or Moira reading the Wall Street Journal, but this is supposed to shock us? If Slade’s intelligence is so good that he knows who Diggle is, and where he will be situated, wouldn’t he know that Ollie isn’t living at the mansion? And if he wants to spy on the other Queens, in order to expose their weaknesses and take them out, is that really so sinister that we need to build that up as much as it was here?
Unless the reveal was supposed to be that Slade only has one eye. But, you know, he wears an eye patch so that doesn’t seem particularly revelatory to me.
