Oliver returns to where it all began, and it all begins again. This time he’s brought friends. Hopefully the island doesn’t explode, William wouldn’t like that.
1. Where it all Begins Again
For some reason I’ve been thinking that this final season of Arrow is only 8 episodes. With how heavily this show on a plot level is predicated on acting as a prologue to Crisis it wouldn’t be hard to imagine it that way. Emotionally speaking the writers room have done a good job of using that prologue plot to really ruminate and work through Ollie has a character in a way that makes this season stand on its own. There is actually going to be 2 more episodes after Crisis.
If this was the last episode of Arrow it wouldn’t be a bad one. The altered opening monologue by Oliver Queen sets everything up, on some level he has been in purgatory this season as he works for the Monitor and tries to fight his fate. It is only after accepting it that he can move on to something else. It was nice seeing Edward Fyers and Billie Wintergreen again, the nonchalnts they and the show treat their resurrection is kind of great. There isn’t some extended freak out or resurrection sequences, nope they’re all back by some unknowable force and except it as long as it means a chance to kill Oliver Queen. Heck I would be open to interpretations that this wasn’t even Monitor or Anti-Monitor business that Lian Yu is just like the Island from Lost or Krakoa and it gives its residence what they need even if it isn’t what they want.
2. The Long Goodbye, or the Slow Moira
Superheroes tend to have a Dead Parents problem, this week in particular highlighting that trope with both this episode and the midseason finale of Batwoman. Ollie has seen both of his parents die in front of them. These are quick choice and sequences, seemingly spur of the moment as they suddenly leave their son. Ever since his kids were brought to him in the present that trope has tracked but in the reverse to a degree. Ollie doesn’t know when the Crisis will take him, to a degree it is as if he has some terminal disease and all of his family are slowly dealing with that fact. Some rage against it but accept, Diggle. Others hold out hope for a Hail Mary moment, Renee.
His two kids, the children he never thought he’d get to meet, are dealing with it the best they can. William buries himself in work, making that energy weapon that doesn’t seem to be a weapon at all. Mia acts like her Dad in his younger days and buries her feelings and refuses to deal with them. Of all the things bringing them to the present has done getting to see Katherine McNamara play off Stephen Amell has been a real treat. It has given the character a means to work through her anger issues and the resentments that helped her survive the Star City of 2040, not too dissimilar to the way anger and negative emotions fueled Ollie in his 5 years on and off the island. Their final scene together in the forest was a beautiful moment that feels like Arrow in a nutshell: Overcoming anger issues and preconceptions that help to organize the world around you and the use of super heroic titles as something to be passed on from one generation to the next. Of course, the character of Mia doesn’t have that sort of screen time to really dig into the nuances of this anger, but for the time they’ve had with the character it is surprisingly effective – I was weary of McNamara’s casting after her performance on Shadowhunters.
3. Harbinger Out
On the unintentional comedy side of things, Lyala touching the MacGuffin Orb and doing the interdimensional equivalent of that gif where a business man jumps out the window was pretty great. Audrey Marie Anderson played the moment a little wooden, she finally understands her purpose but I didn’t catch the moment of realization on her face.
Continued below4. The Finally Did the Thing
Roy Harper first appeared on Arrow on the fifteenth episode of the first season “Dodger,” from the start he was a marked man. He’s been through a lot, from going on the run for being the Arrow, dying, coming back, killing multiple police officers, and doing absurd amounts of unnecessary parkour along the way. It took them 153 episodes to finally do the thing Roy Harper is most known for … besides having a drug problem: having a sweet sweet cyborg arm! To be clear “Purgatory” doesn’t end with Roy acting like Luke and slowly moving his new metal appendages, but they cut that arm off and with Crisis next week that arm is coming. Hopefully it comes with a built-in rocket launcher, it seems like the need it.
The feeling of slightly sadistic glee at the realization of what they were about to do was perhaps the opposite reaction the shows producers would want. What they would want audiences enraptured by was fate, maybe even the Monitor, forcing Diggle to confront that while he may have a choice and nominal agency in a situation, he isn’t always going to like it. Getting Roy out from under the bit of plane debris was his arc in a nutshell, with little time before sparks ignite fuel Diggle desperately tries to do everything but the thing that would get everyone out. While this sequence was about Diggle, it should be noted Roy is the one who asked for this he to had a choice in the matter (although you’d think he would be unconscious or something in shock by then.)
5. James Bamford Things
“Purgatory” was directed by James Bamford, someone I wish was getting more work outside of Arrow, it won’t be his last (he’ll be directing the last two episode.) While his stylistic imprint was felt in the action via the series of tracking shots and slow motion there was a novelty to it due to the setting. Setting the final fight at night with both teams lined up against one another like it’s Civil War echoes the tunnel sequence from the season 2 finale. His style is somewhat built on hallways or pathing, basically forcing the action down a corridor, through things, and so on. The opening where they filmed on was one long corridor but due the aesthetic difference of the setting made everything feel fresh and different. Through the use of tracking shots on a small scale he echoes the ludicrous digitally augmented tracking shot from the start to Age of Ultron and the third episode of Legends as a means to create comic book-esque splash pages on a much smaller scale.
