My name isn’t Oliver or Emiko Queen, it’s Mike, and here are my thoughts on Arrow‘s “Inheritance.” It’s all about Emiko as Sea Shimooka takes center stage as viewers are shown what got her to this place.
1. The Reasons for “Bad” Choices
I think about Jean Renoir, as both Octave and the director of Rules of the Game, and the quote: “The awful thing about life is this: Everybody has their reasons.” a fair bit. It works well within the context of this show. Arrow is the amalgamation of the choices the various showrunners and writers have made for it. Ollie certainly had his reasons for being a slasher villain in season 1. But his reasons also changed over time, the show put the character on the arc to choose change. People can justify doing awful things, but they can also justify doing better ones to. “Inheritance” written by Sarah Tarkoff & Elizabeth Kim, with direction by Patia Prouty, gives us a pair of women who have made choices and are dealing with the consequences. The different ways Laurel and Emiko go about dealing with their choices is made quite clear as Prouty mirrors the two off one another.
For all the Laurel of Earth 2 is really Black Siren and an attempting to reform baddie baggage, Arrow really does just treat her like their old Laurel. Both versions of the character consistently have their abilities, be they moral or physical, doubted. All the while the cool kids get to go out there and be morally flexible and physically dexterous. Captain Drake chastise Laurel for playing bad cop, while this show is built on being Bad Lieutenants in themed costume. Ollie gets mad at Laurel for spying on his sister, something he’s done with the rest of the team before on even less evidence. She has every reason to be lost, as the title of the next episode indicates. I wouldn’t call Katie Cassidy Rodgers the ultimate actress, but as with most of this cast works well for her role. It is the way she mixes fiery and sad eyed glare at Dinah, as her partner in law and order doubts her again. She chooses to stay and try and make those around her recognize the progress she has made, but they seem to be either uninterested or just not Felicity.
Emiko on the other hand cares not for the opinions of anyone it seems. She made her choices to not just join the Ninth Circle, but be in the upper echelons. The flashbacks show why she has plenty of reason to go to the dark side. Laurel is doubted because she is inscrutable to those around her. Emiko has a clarity of purpose, reason, and doesn’t really care what the others think it seems. She really is like the Ollie of earlier seasons.
2. Emiko Flashbacks
Functionally flashbacks in Arrow due to their compressed time frame tend to act more as explanation engines, larger thematic points that could be made from them were done through their context in a given episode or in totality. With Emiko’s flashbacks this episode, they weren’t done in a way that was meant to engender sympathy for the character. Everything about them was somewhat cold, distant. Her final scene with Robert before he went off on the doomed Queen’s Gambit, emphasized the distance between the two even as she proved to be the child he’d wished for. Their content was a slow succession of failures on the part of Robert and success on the part of Dante and the Ninth Circle.
You might not feel bad for Emiko, but you certainly see how she got to this place.
3. Ollie’s Blindspot
When Dante was first revealed, I was impressed due to the casting but weary that the character would have the emotional staying power of the memorable Big Bads. Well he isn’t really the main Big Bad at this point, that would be Emiko. A character that this episode makes quite clear has many reasons for hating Oliver Queen and all he stands for. Meanwhile, Emiko is the ultimate blind spot for Oliver. Dominic Toretto maybe the only other character who is committed more to the concept of you never turn your back on family (except for the secret ones you never tell them about.) Through her he sees another opportunity for redemption. Through him she sees the opportunity to finally take vengeance on the family that ruined her life. Now that’s just tried and true easy drama.
Continued belowWith the Ninth Circle revealed, hopefully we get to see their sweet catamaran come the finale.
4. That Escalated Quickly
With episode 17, Arrow is entering the final batch of episode, but, Beth Schwartz is pushing things at a much quicker pace. With so much of this seasons being a remix of previous ones, Adrian Paul playing Dante with that Ra’s Al Ghul air, this episode being a fake of the “big attack on the city” episode like S05E21 “Honor Thy Fathers” isn’t surprising in retrospect. These days it isn’t so much what you do but when you do it. This episode was jam packed with twists in turns as Emiko went from face to heel more times than the Big Show. While the parade of reveals was a bit much, it didn’t give the show room to fall back on its old secret keeping habits.
Ollie goes from learning about Emiko’s shadiness from Laurel to confirmation of a partnership with Dante in the first act! That sort of arc would’ve been at least an episode or two in earlier seasons. Burning through reveals like that has me very curious what emotional cards the season has left to play.
5. Great Benefits, No Vests
When Kacey Rohl popped up on screen, I perked up a little bit. Rohl has a very different energy to everyone else, and her hacker character Alena would be the first to call Felicity out on the monstrosity that is ARCHER. Diggle, ever the man of the military industrial complex would never think it would go to far to catch the bad guys – it allowed for a justifiable fiction to be created. But not super hacker Alena, working with ARCHER would be a violation of all those hacker ethics! Oh, she was offered benefits and Smoak tech lacks a tacky uniforms … ethics never stood a chance.
We maybe entering the final stretch of Arrow season 7, but they’ve thankfully taken ARCHER offline for a little while at least. It will be the Macguffin of choice for this final stretch of episodes as Emiko and the Ninth Circle set their sights on it (which would explain Star City 2040.)
