Arrow is back from its Olympic hiatus, and we’re jumping right back into the Team Arrow vs Team…Not Arrow? dynamic.
1. Quentin is a terrible liar
Sometimes the characters on this show can pick up the slightest shift in dynamic. Someone is being overly pensive, or snapping for no reason. Other times, Quentin can basically grab his collar like Jerry Lewis, speak nonsense as his nose grows like Pinocchio, and everyone’s like “oh, cool.”
I have a lot of thoughts on the Laurel/Quentin storyline, but it basically amounts to this: neither character has any idea how to exist in the world they find themselves in. Black Siren is literally on a different Earth, and Quentin finds himself in a situation where he can still interact with his dead daughter. Both are disorienting, but neither person is doing anything to make the situation better/more normal.
I’m not saying that Quentin needs to ‘get over’ his daughter, because who can do that? But I don’t know if hanging around her evil doppleganger is really going to do anything productive. Similarly, Laurel is somewhat trying to keep living the same life she was living on Earth Two, but it is not working.
2. Oliver’s deal with Laurel
I understand the visceral rage that Dinah is feeling right now at Oliver and co., but I also completely understand why Oliver makes the choice he does here. He is putting the city over his personal losses, something that Dinah is not willing to do which, again, makes total sense to me. There’s something in Dinah that snapped when Vince was killed, and she isn’t herself anymore. Curtis helped her come back from that a little bit this week, but she’s been so blinded by loss that she sees a deal like Oliver’s as being utterly unthinkable.
This season has done a reasonably good job of showing Oliver valuing his role as mayor over all but his role as father, and Dinah is so blinded by her own grief that she can’t see it. I understand why, more so than I understand why Curtis and Rene are still on board with her. I mean, again, I get it – they feel betrayed by Ollie. But they’ve done far more in retaliation than he ever did in the first place. Curtis, in particular, is doing stuff he never would have even considered last season.
3. “Mr. T”
Rene calling Curtis “Mr. T” was one of the lamer moments of the episode, but it was an attempt at levity, of which this episode was seriously lacking. Arrow has always been the darkest of the CW-verse shows, but this season is not just dark, but feels bleak in a way that is new for the show. The dynamic between the team members seems, perhaps, beyond repair, and that’s just not the show I’m used to. That’s not a complaint; the show is doing new things in its sixth season, which is a good thing.
4. Lines being drawn
Speaking of the greater CW-verse, The Flash has always been the show fastest to revert to the status quo. Things change in EARTH SHATTERING WAYS and then it’s back to normal. It seems like Arrow may never be able to go back to normal after this shakeup. Curtis basically telling Felicity and Diggle to get out of his life, after taking Diggle’s arm out earlier in the episode, seems like it my be a line that he can’t return from. Curtis has always seemed the most sensible of the ‘other’ team, but even he’s had enough at this point.
The problem with all of this is that both sides are right, but neither can see it. I thought that, perhaps, Rene’s serious injury would bring them together, but it just pushes them further apart. Is this truly the end of the team?
5. “I was kidnapped”
Black Siren posing as the Earth One Laurel is a pretty shocking move, for a lot of reasons, and will cause a lot of problems for her and the team, but it’s a fun move for the show to do. They have two options: expose her as a fraud somehow, or do the full Landfill.
Only time will tell.
