Arrow, Season 5, Episode 1: Legacy
So yeah, Arrow, I think, is kind of in a bad bind at the end of season four, and I'd argue all the way from halfway through season three. There was a string of pretty great storytelling around the middle portion of the fourth season, but for the most part, there really was a lack of unifying tone around just what the show was trying to do. It's trying to tell the darker vigilante story that Arrow was in its first two seasons (while not what I would think of were I to adapt Green Arrow into a show, it's a respectable story), it's trying to be more fun and campy and embracing of DC's larger lore (definitely a bonus on my book), and it's also trying to juggle a crapton of personal interrelationship drama thing. And a combination of an over-reliance on the Olicity drama, a shit flashback story, severely under-using a lot of its peripheral cast, running the Malcolm Merlyn is a wild card thing to the ground, way too much crossovers and multiple other reasons, the fourth season isn't the best that i could've been.
And "Legacy", therefore, has so much to live up to. The fourth season ended with Oliver breaking his no-killing rule and killing Damien Darhk. Laurel Lance's dead, Sara Lance and Ray Palmer have migrated to another show, ARGUS is all but disbanded, Quentin Lance is fired, Diggle and Thea both quit, Felicity broke up with Oliver, and Oliver is the mayor.
There are many, many points in this episode where other characters tell Oliver to move on, and perhaps it's true for the show as well. In some ways, the show has regressed back into its season one roots where Green Arrow ends up being a super-hardcore vigilante that murders people (definitely not how Green Arrow should be), although Laurel's death and angsting over it is definitely something that makes the character change feel kind of natural. Oliver is once more juggling between two responsibilities and shirking his day job in favour of going around shooting criminals with arrows, although now he trades in being head of Queen Consolidated as the new mayoral position he earned at the end of season four. Also Oliver is moping and angsting about Laurel's death and refusing to move on from the implosion of Team Arrow.
And Oliver's at the end of his wits. On one hand, he's hoping Diggle will come back, that Thea will turn around and suit up, but on the other hand he's more savage than before. Killing the corrupt cop that saw him do vigilante things is one thing, but callously shooting just another random vigilante, the Wild Dog, that just wants to help? That's another. Having Oliver struggle with this, and later acknowledge that he needed to move on by allowing Curtis and Felicity to recruit a new superhero team, is a pretty good mini character arc for the episode, but will it be enough to save the season?
Always impressive, on the other hand, is Quentin Lance. Who, after Laurel's death, finds no reason to stay sober. Without a job and Donna having left him, he has regressed back to alcoholism. Oliver didn't really push too much because the poor man is mourning, but the fact is, Oliver needed Quentin's help. Quentin being kicked out of the police force ends up proving absolutely nothing other than satisfying Donna Smoak's limited worldview and hypocrisy. He did end up moving on in the mini-B-plot, mostly thanks to Oliver's speech at the Black Canary memorial, and ends up helping Felicity in the Arrowcave and forming the ACI (if not joining it) with good, non-dirty policemen that he can trust. So while I remain a bit wary of Oliver returning to murdering people, Quentin is definitely one of the show's best characters at the moment.
The majority of the episode that doesn't involve Oliver angsting is mostly just fight scenes. There's a cool one at the beginning with Green Arrow taking down Anarky (also a brief glimpse of Wild Dog), which nicely wraps up a short plot hole from last season finale. Anarky is as confused as me why Oliver doesn't kill him if he's back to killing-people mode, but I guess it's a way to show that unless his secret identity is jeopardized, he's not going to murder?
The main beef is the newcomer Tobias Church, a.k.a. Charon, who is not a character I'm familiar with from the comics. Tobias is just kind of a big mafia man that takes charge immediately, and kidnaps Oliver while demanding Green Arrow come out and play. We get a pretty cool fight scene with that helicopter near the end, and Thea briefly suits up as Speedy before putting the suit back away because she wants to be normal and most importantly does not condone this kill-happy version of Oliver. There's no real beef for the actor's performance, because Charon was a fun, hammy and imposing villain... but after seeing Oliver fight the likes of Deathstroke, Damien Darhk and Ra's Al Ghul, I honestly don't see how a dude with a fetish of putting coins in dead people's eyes is going to really give much trouble. There's another potential new main villain at the end, of course, this hooded, mysterious archer that goes around murdering random people, but he just felt shoehorned in to an otherwise decently crafted episode, and honestly doesn't feel impressive after three seasons of Malcolm Merlyn as an antagonist.
We get a short scene with Oliver asking Diggle for advice near the end, and in the beginning we have newcomer Wild Dog meet Oliver and get shot in the leg for his trouble. Felicity honestly didn't do much other than just be Oliver's conscience. Curtis goes off to investigate Wild Dog for 80% of the episode off-screen, before deciding that he wanted in on this whole superhero fighting nonsense thing. None of these end up being overtly interesting. We did get a brief lineup of the potential candidates, namely Evelyn "Fake Black Canary" Sharp from last season, Wild Dog and Vigilante.
The flashbacks here aren't very interesting, still, other than the absolutely welcome return of Anatoli Knyazev, a.k.a. the KGBeast. Or Arrow's insanely cheerful happy Russian mafia man version of KGBeast, anyway. Basically Oliver buggers off to Russia, consumed with anger and vengeance in a way that's slowly turning him to his season one personality, while trying to murder this... Kovac dude that he promised Love Interest Lady in season four's flashback that he'll kill. Anatoli is absolutely fun, and the Bratva plot seems to be less outright dumb than the silly totem nonsense in season 3, but I dunno. I still groaned a little when, hey, Anatoli teaching Oliver to dislocate his thumbs ends up mattering right in the next scene. There's foreshadowing and there's being overly Chekov's Gun-y.
Oh, and Felicity has a new boyfriend, also shoehorned in at the last few scenes along with Mystery Archer Man. At this point I just don't care anymore for the shipping wars.
Overall, it seemed like they're trying to bring Arrow back to more dark, street-level vigilante battles more akin to the first two seasons, but at least they're doing it relatively organically by weaseling in the Oliver-kills route, using Laurel's death as an actual sensible plot point, and doing a nice little rotation to get some fresh new faces in. Definitely excited for Curtis "Mr. Terrific" Holt and whenever Adrian "Vigilante" Chase show up in the show, that's for sure. And for happy friendly KGBeast, which is the character reinvention that I love the most among everything that CW did. The thing about this is that, well, it doesn't make me as optimistic as Flash's season opening does, but at least it's not actively bad.
DC Easter Egg Corner:
- I'll refrain from really talking about Vigilante yet before the character debuts, but Wild Dog is a pretty obscure DC character that even I didn't recognize. Instead of Rene Ramirez, the comics version of Wild Dog is called Jack Wheeler, who's an ex-marine who inherited a lot of money from his dead girlfriend, killed by the mob, and decides to become a street-level vigilante. That's mostly all I could find out about him on short notice.
- Neither Tobias Church nor Charon are based on any characters from the DC comics. There is a Charon, of course, but that's the literal ferryman of the undead from Greek mythology and somehow I don't think that Charon goes around with brass knuckles trying to take over Star City's criminal empire.
- The mob boss that got killed is a member of the Bertinelli family, which is Huntress's mafia family. Huntress, if you've forgotten, last appeared all the way back in season two of Arrow.
- Hub City and Bludhaven are mentioned as cities that Tobias Church 'tore up'. Bludhaven, sister city to Gotham and the setting of many of Nightwing's adventures, had appeared before in Arrow. Hub City is the home city of the Question, and has been name-dropped a couple of times, but I can't recall where.
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