My name isn’t Oliver or Emiko Queen, it’s Mike, and here are my thoughts on Arrow‘s “Brothers & Sisters.” That is a title with multiple meanings and levels of importance as Arrow leans into the family dynamic this episode after two weeks off.
1. It’s About Fambly
While Marvel Studios over the past decade seems to have properly calibrated and introduced something of a more serialized bent to filmmaking, the litany of copy cats might do good to look towards another highly successful film franchise for inspiration: The Fast & The Furious. What started out as a blatant riff on Point Break will soon be a franchise that involves cyborgs! Through multiple jumps in the timeline and genre sensibilities F&F has become a highly successful vehicle. The fuel propelling that franchise over the finish line more often than not is Family, or Fambly if you’re mumbling like Vin Disel. Most things would likely be better if they leaned into F&F earnest familial melodrama. Arrow seems to be on a similar wave length with this episode, and season overall.
Family and all the forms it takes are front and center for this episode as various types and combinations of brothers and sisters fight it out to protect themselves and one another from equally various threats. One of the central conflicts through out the episode is choosing between family and livelihood. Arrow is at its best when it plays with earnest melodrama, “Brothers & Sisters” leans into that and is an overall solid return episode for the series. The family dynamic creates clear emotional stakes for every conflict, and those stakes will be necessary as Dante is revealed and seems to be staying in town for a little bit.
2. Being a Better Ollie: Diggle and Ollie
One of the operating theories of television writing is the main character cannot truly change and grow until it finally ends. Otherwise there wouldn’t be a reason for the show to exist. Now they can change in little ways and grow slowly but the final hurdle is left for last. With 6 seasons under the belt, Arrow has given Ollie and everyone plenty of space to show moments of little growth.
Diggle has been on an interesting path since the start of season 6 from his well-reasoned fallout with Ollie to joining ARGUS. While these character choices have made sense, Diggle’s arc has been reminiscent of season 3 Ollie. As the moral and ethical heart of Team Arrow, went down a fraught path of decisions leading him to reinstating the Suicide Squad all in the name of stopping an unseen greater evil. His capture of Diaz and decision to choose friends over livelihood cements his transition, the choice to finally come clean to Ollie and Felicity was another step on that path. If there is one thing Team Arrow should know by now it is that secrets are a bad idea. Diggle telling them about the new task force and Diaz this early in the season is a nice moment from the writing team choosing not to perpetuate previous dramatically inert storytelling decisions.
Ever since Ollie became Johnny Law/Functional Judge Dredd, he’s become a real square. All this enforcing who has the remit to seek “justice”(read: bloody personal vengeance) isn’t very punk or vigilante like. That new sense of understanding puts a strain on his tenuous relationship with Emiko as he comes in and tries to takeover her personal mission of vengeance. Unlike past Oliver, he realizes how much he messed this up pretty fast and is putting himself in a more support role. For how long, who knows, but it is a moment of self-awareness that shows how much the character has grown over the years.
3. Star City 2046: New New Team Arrow or Team Arrow: The Next Generation?
So what are we going to call this motley crew of has been vigilantes and their progeny? New New Team Arrow or NNTA if you nasty. Team Arrow: The Next Generation has a nice ring to it. The flash forwards gives us a nice thematic echo for the episode as William Queen and Mia Smoak get to know their new sibling a bit better. Lamenting that your parents were deeply flawed, some would say terrible, people is always fun with company. Katherine McNamara seems to have more of her Father’s traits, with all that gruff not wanting to deal with your feelings business. Still there was something rather childlike, not in a naïve sense, but the way children are about the mythic idea of their parents when she asked Will about if Pops was a “hero.”
Continued belowI love me some heroes as bad parents trope, it’s a nice way to puncture that heroic veneer of perfection. From Aang favoring Tenzin too Harry Potter not knowing what do with Albus. So making Ollie and Felcity bad in this way works. No one on Team Arrow seems to be good parents, it just took Rene much longer.
4. Suicide Squad 2.0: Ghosted
The Ghost Initiative is no more after Dante learns that it’s coming after him. I’m bummed we didn’t get a Suicide Squad, Ghost Initiative, centric episode Arrow has done those well enough in the past. They were a good change of pace and one the series could use with the large episode order they must fill. Their mission, such as it was, was ok. It’s nice seeing Arrow do action sequences with people outside of Team Arrow.
It did cost Diggle his job, rightly so since the Ghost Initiative is terribly immoral and ethical idea. Something tells me he’ll end up a duly deputized member of Team Arrow soon enough. Which isn’t a good thing, as this batch of episode has been reminding us.
5. Enter Dante, Exit Diaz
Dante finally makes his appearance, and it left me slightly surprised. Now he isn’t (or at least not yet,) horribly burned looking like Mason Verger warmed over. But would you want to do that to Adrian Paul’s pretty face? Duncan MacLeod is back in a genre show! Overall his casting is a fun nod to better-than-it-has-any-right-to-be 90s genre TV. If Dante wasn’t going to be someone from Spartacus someone like Adrian Paul is the right kind of choice. Much like Ricardo Diaz, a direct emotional connection to Ollie isn’t completely apparent just yet. There is his ominous interactions with Emiko, and an eventual reveal that he was really behind her mothers murder seems like a fitting revelation to tie everything together. Barring these connections he has something of a petty reason to want to make conflict with Team Arrow. Petty connections do not make for good Big Bads, see Dahrke and Diaz. It could be a thing with villains starting with “D” as well.
With Dante’s entrance Ricardo Diaz seems to be taking a permanent exit. This is a character who was left bleeding in a derelict prison cell, but being immolated like that might have a stronger effect. The fire echoes his revenge on that person who wronged him in 6×19 “The Dragon,” but Marcus Stokes and DP Neil Cervin lack the time and space to fully echo the scene. Kirk Acevedo is contracted as a recurring actor so maybe we’ll get something more Dante appropriate out of him before writing him off. Much like Matt Nable, Kirk Acevedo’s performance lacked the scene chewing gravitas of other actors and in Diaz case an emotional reason beyond being a baddie for conflict with Team Arrow. With better material, Acevedo’s choices might have landed better. Overall he was a character the didn’t entirely work and will hopefully be replaced with something better.
