Early this season, Arrow was the best of the CW’s superhero shows: it was doing interesting new things, it wasn’t relying on tropes, and it was introducing new characters that made sense. Well, strap in folks: this episode didn’t really do any of that.
1. Let’s get Rene to implicitly state the theme of the episode/season/show!
I understand that Arrow is not Proust – we aren’t supposed to take all day Thursday contemplating what we watched last night, struggling with its meaning and themes, and coming to knotty, complex answers. But anyone who has ever seen the show can tell you that it is a prolonged redemption story. Ollie is avenging lots of people, metaphorically giving them a chance to succeed again. Not only that, but he is trying to be redeemed for all the killing he did in his five years away and his first few back. Plus, there’s probably part of him that feels his teenage/young adult years were spent being such a fuckup that he needs to atone for those sins, too.
So to have Rene come out and say “Maybe this team is about second chances” is almost as dumb/unnecessary as Deadshot saying “we’re some kind of suicide squad“. Again, I’m not asking for the show to be metatextual and complex, but I am asking it not to insult the intelligence of its audience.
With the exception of Curtis, literally the entire cast is looking for a second chance: Felicity from her hacking days, Diggle from his time at A.R.G.U.S., Rene from being a hood rat, or whatever. The show is pretty clear about this time and time again. But thanks, Rene – for the one guy watching the show five years from now exclusively in reruns playing in the lobby of a Jiffy Lube, you really sank the point for us.
2. Talia al Ghul
I’m trying to find some positives here, but this might have been even dumber than giving Rene that speech. So Talia al Ghul meets Ollie in Russia, and she inspires him to be the Hood? And yet when Ollie hears the name “Ra’s al Ghul,” he never puts two and two together? He didn’t meet Lauren Smith and then Jacob Smith, and not know they were of the same Smith clan. How many al Ghuls do you meet in the average year, Ollie?
While the idea of taking the ‘monster’ inside of him, giving him a name, to separate the monster from the man, is a solid one for the show to explore, the idea of Talia being the one to teach him that is really silly. We have already seen one al Ghul daughter show compassion and love, why do the same story again?
I know the joke is that Ollie is just Green Batman, but this really feels reductive and redundant.
3. New Black Canary? More like…well, exactly like the old Black Canary
The idea of Ollie training a new Black Canary is one that the show clearly was going to explore but, and I know this is a reference I make all the time, this is essentially Landfill from Beer Fest all over again. Her name is Dinah. She has a canary scream. She’s already trained in martial arts. She has a real sense of justice from her time as a cop.
This is such a lazy approach to bringing a new team member in. One of the joys of watching the various Robins in comics over the years is – except for Jason’s original, sort of lame personality, each Robin has been very different from the last. Sure, this Canary has dark hair and lost her partner, but she’s just so damn close to the original.
The show has a lot of work to do to make this not seem dumb.
4. So…Ollie is killing again?
So much of this episode was spent trying to convince New Black Canary not to kill her partner’s murderer, but then he was all about letting Rene us uzis on henchmen and flat out blowing up a helicopter with a pilot inside. I know that Dinah’s situation was revenge based, but that doesn’t mean that her killing is any more serious than what Ollie and his team did this week. Sure, one could argue it isn’t pre-meditated, and doesn’t have the same impact on the soul, maybe (enough philosophy, Salvatore!), but it is still killing. And Ollie is supposed to not do that anymore, remember? I know he waffles on this all the time, but there’s a major difference between having to kill a super-villain to save the world, versus taking out a probably hired helicopter pilot because it makes a good visual.
Continued below5. Felicity’s fangirl
I don’t really have the space to talk about Diggle’s situation on its own, but it is tied into Felicty and her hacktivist (I hate that fucking term) fangirl. Essentially, Felicity’s reputation as a hacker is legendary, and she inspired folks (part of the hacker network HELIX, because everything must be an acronym) to do the sorts of things she used to do. This led to her getting access to the files to free Diggle through the aforementioned fangirl.
This is giving Felicity something to do along with being the team’s Oracle, and it adds some depth to a character that, frankly, keeps getting more and more well developed despite being around one-dimensional cardboard. I just hope this doesn’t lead to yet another Ollie/Felicity ideological argument. Those are exhausting and drag the show down.
So, what do you guys think – is the team really about second chances? Let me know in the comments!
