Arrow, Season 4, Episode 20: Genesis
This is that part of the season where things are made somewhat clear, where the mysterious villain's big plan and motivations are fleshed out a little and the stakes are higher, made so thanks to an important ally's death in a prior episode. Darhk has been a big thorn in our heroes' side, and regardless of how he was handled throughout the episode, we finally learn his cryptically-named master plan. "Genesis" apparently involves him, um, stealing Lyla's ARGUS microchip thing to nuke the world and start over with his chosen few hidden in that wacky hologram-dome world.
Which... is far less stupid than Ra's Al Ghul's obsession of turning Oliver into his son-in-law despite him clearly not wanting to. But why is Darhk doing all this? We don't know. I don't particularly care, honestly, but Darhk just waltzing back into HIVE and killing the other heads -- well, Milo Armitage and that one lady, neither of which never does anything -- and displaying his full posse of villains. Malcolm Merlyn, Murmur and Andy Diggle. See, it's far more interesting when villains actually have, y'know, elite mooks that you know will give our heroes a fight instead of some vague references to an army who only ever shows up one person at a time (*cough*Zoom*cough*) or a faceless army of mooks (*cough*Savage*cough*).
This episode breaks up the group, with Oliver going off to learn magic in Hogwarts thanks to a tip from Constantine (off-screen), Felicity going with Oliver, Diggle facing off against his brother in the episode's main plot and Thea going on a vacation.
We've done the Thea's boyfriend is actually evil plot in season three, and it really is no less banal in this instance. Though Beardface Whatshisname is certainly less obviously a villain the way Assassin Twatface was last season, the way -looks up- Alex was treated as a quasi-prominent wallpaper fixture throughout the entire season without ever amounting to anything but Thea's boyfriend of the season is kind of a red flag that something's probably going on with him. The twist that she's trapped in the weird dome-world is blindingly obvious and her subplot suffers somewhat thanks to that.
Meanwhile, Oliver and Felicity go off to meet the show-original mystic character Esrine Fortuna, who to my knowledge is not based directly on any of DC's legion of mystical characters... which is a bit odd. I get that they can't use Constantine himself for legal reasons, but DC has a crapton of mystic characters I could name off my hat, and Fortuna felt like just a colourful amalgamation of several mystical DC superheroes. We get some interesting visuals, but it ended up being a somewhat weak cliche 'you must fight the darkness within you' battle-in-the-mind thing that naturally ends up functioning just when Oliver fights Darhk in the climax, giving him glowy-eye powers. Fortuna is a very interesting character, though, from her introduction playing blackjack, to her remarks about Constantine and immortality, and how she teaches Oliver magic. Oliver and Felicity's scenes could be a lot worse, but at least they work somewhat decently as good friends who used to date.
I'm honestly surprised that Fortuna didn't offer to teach the light magic to Felicity, who's namedropped by Oliver as his source of light and goodness several times this episode. But eh, I suppose this works well.
Nah, the main bulk of the episode is John Diggle, and he's been overdue for screentime. Laurel's death still lingers on his head, and he's taking no chances with Lyla and little baby Sara, putting both of them in Optimus Prime's non-sentient cousin that drives around the city. But Diggle is still driven both by a desire to protect his wife and daughter, as well as a sense of guilt and desire for revenge against Andy Diggle.
Both Diggles come to a head quickly enough in an awesomely brutal fight scene that shows John Diggle not pulling his punches at all. But it ended up being a ruse for Andy to plant a tracker on John Diggle... to lead HIVE to Lyla, because, hey, the Shadowspire filler episode was actually crucial to the plot at large because Damian Darhk is hunting for the key that Lyla is holding. Without anyone coming to his rescue since everyone else is indisposed, Diggle and Lyla had to fight off the massed forces of Andy, a bunch of bike-riding ghosts and Damian Darhk himself, who can pull off a Magneto and stop trucks down cold.
Lyla has some awesomeness left in her, taking out a couple of ghosts on her own and standing up against Darhk long enough for Oliver to finally come to the rescue with his newfound mystic juju powers, while John Diggle... well, if there is one constant in John Diggle's life ever since he became a father is that you don't fucking mess with his wife and daughter. He got pissed off against Oliver for a controlled kidnapping, what do you think was going to happen to someone who basically used them as what amounts to collateral damage? Hell, Andy even mocked John's love for his family and Laurel's death to his face, threatening to hunt them down even in the future. I mean, I get it, there might be some HIVE conditioning still going on, but damn.
John Diggle ends up pulling the trigger that killed Andy Diggle in probably one of the more tragic moments of the show. I mean, yeah, the scene was ambiguous enough in that John might be constituted to be defending himself, but whatever the case, John Diggle murdered his little brother and that can't be healthy to live with. As the most unequivocally good characters in the show, Diggle finally has blood on his hands, arguably far worse blood than Oliver's many kill-counts due to the fact that it's his own brother. There's really no way that it could end otherwise with Andy threatening to keep hunting down John's wife and daughter, but damn! That wasn't the way I expected the Diggle war to go down at all. It's a hard decision, and I doubt it would come as an easy decision for anyone. I really wished Andy's character was more defined beyond being ambiguous and a plot device, but I don't care about Andy and I would want to see the fallout from John killing his brother in next episodes.
Oh, and we get a short cameo by Slade as one of the dudes that beat Oliver up in his trippy vision dream thing.
Overall, though, finally a truly solid Arrow episode whose concepts aren't hurt by a weak villain or a weak main plot. Too many of previous episodes have been marred either by the Olicity romantic plot tumour or simply underwhelming villains (Cupid, Fake Canary, whether Andy is evil or not). No, this episode puts Oliver on a bit of the backseat, puts Diggle in the forefront for some overdue spotlight, and gives Oliver a mystical power-up. Mystical power-ups don't make sense and in a less-studio-constrained show we would bring in Constantine and Vixen and make this show's incarnation of the Shadowpact, but that ain't happening.
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